Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Who Sets US Foreign Policy?

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Who Sets US Foreign Policy?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, November 20th, 2024. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much for coming here. Why do you think in the death throes of the existence of the Ukrainian military and Ukrainian government, the Biden administration has authorized the use by American technicians and military of offensive weaponry reaching inside Russia? To encumber Donald Trump and to make it more difficult for him, if you will, to end the war and to end it on any basis that might be acceptable to the American people and for that matter to Donald Trump himself. It's clear that's his primary reason.

And the secondary reason is, I think, despite he lost the election, the Democrats lost the election, Obama forced him to step down, he wouldn't have lost the election, and all manner of other personal things like that, but mainly to encumber Trump. I have speculated aloud, and I run it past you for your comments, that Biden may feel that Trump pushed the disastrous departure from Afghanistan, which Mike Pompeo negotiated, with the Taliban, as you know, not with the government of Afghanistan, into Trump's watch. And now Biden may feel he wants to push the coming disaster in Ukraine back onto Trump's watch. I think it will be extraordinarily difficult for him, for the majority of the American people, and for that matter, the majority of the Europeans or the global community, if you will, to do the same thing, though, because in this case, it is quite clear that both the genocide in Gaza and the war in Ukraine has had as its major enabler, supporter,

and motivator, Joseph Biden. Right, right. Is Trump pro-war? I don't think he is. I've listened to him a lot now, ever since I was on the political committee looking at the 2016 election. I listened to tape after tape. And the one thing I would say about him, and I base this mostly on his criticism, which was quite exquisite of our invasion of Iraq in 2003, because he seemed to be really getting into it and really serious. I would say he's not disposed to starting wars. Is he likely to give Netanyahu whatever he wants, or will at some point he'll say enough is enough. Remembering the $100 million debt he has, not a personal debt, a political debt, to Mrs. Adelson.

Right. I think it's $30 million. Who knows how much she gave. That's enough. That's enough. I don't know. That's the big question. I was parsing a Haaretz article today because I'm really frustrated with

people telling me this, that, and the other thing, and with Netanyahu lying all over the map about casualties. And Haaretz finally revealed an official figure from the Israeli Defense Force of 800 KIA. I figure it's double that. But if you remember my mathematics with regard to WIA and modern armies, in Afghanistan, we were 11 to 1. In Iraq, we were 11.7 to 1, KIA to WIA. So if you multiply that out, that's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 to 10,000 wounded, probably more because I said the 800 figures probably low. And then I looked up the 73 figures, which are the worst for the IDF since 1948, the Yom Kippur War. And we're getting in that category. This is really devastating for Israel right now. And you're hearing nothing in that regard from the Western media or from Israel, of course.

Netanyahu seems to be in some hot water as we speak. His chief spokesperson has been indicted for espionage, translation, the release of secret documents, or translation, the alteration of top secret documents concerning with whom Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke and when he spoke with them on the morning of October 7th. And this gentleman, the spokesperson who's been denied bail, has as his attorney Netanyahu's criminal defense lawyer. Add to that Netanyahu's been ordered to testify against himself in his own criminal case. Add to that this movie coming out called BB Files, which catches him in some very awkward moments, including, I don't know how they got this, talking to his wife about a $42,000 diamond bracelet sent by a billionaire ex-spy, now Hollywood movie mogul, which she didn't like.

Is Bibi on his way out? Have the Israeli public had enough? I think I would say yes. But, you know, Bibi, he's a very surviving character. What I have also heard about the bribes he took in the submarine sales that were in the millions is a huge component of the scandal case that they want to bring against him. Notwithstanding the fact that I think the major motivator right now is no investigation of October the 7th. There is no freedom of speech in Israel, is there? Because the BB has banned this BB Files movie from being shown in Israel.

If there is freedom of speech, it's very narrowly confined. Well, let me show you something. I don't know if you've seen this. It's all over the place. This is Ayman Odeh, a member of the Knesset. He's a Palestinian Israeli, leader of Hadash Ta'al, one of the Palestinian parties. Watch what happens to him on the floor of the Knesset when he accuses Netanyahu of having blood in his hands. Cut number 13. There are 17,385 babies in Gaza, which your system has killed. Of those, 825 are under the age of a year.

There are 35,055 orphaned babies in Gaza. The blood of all of them will haunt you. And still in your impudence, you wonder how you are accused in the International Criminal Court. Benjamin Netanyahu, what is your vision? What is your vision? For over 30 years, you have been a serial killer of peace. Get off the platform immediately.

Get off the platform immediately. Get off the platform immediately. A serial killer of peace. What is your vision? A serial killer of peace. Get off the platform immediately. What do you think, Colonel? That's the Knesset.

This is dictatorship. No question about it. I mean, Adolf Hitler couldn't have done it any better. He would have shot him right there with his own Luger, but at least Netanyahu didn't do that. Here's a similar comment in a more civilized environment. This is the Deputy Palestinian Representative to the United Nations, Majed Bamia, and this is earlier today, cut number 15. There is no right to mass killing of civilians. There is no right to starve an entire civilian population.

There is no right to forcibly displace a people. And there is no right to annexation. This is what Israel is doing in Gaza. Maybe for some we have the wrong nationality, the wrong faith, the wrong skin color. But we are humans. And we should be treated as such. Is there a UN charter for Israel that is different from the charter you all have? Tell us.

Is there an international law for them, an international law for us? Do they have the right to kill and the only right we have is to die? Whereupon the United States representative vetoed a ceasefire resolution. Yes, yes. It reminds me of Thucydides' description of the Melian dialogue, if you will. The Athenian generals were getting ready to massacre every man, woman, child, beast on the Isle of Melos. And one of the people asked him, asked the Athenian general, why are you doing this? And he said, because I can't. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about brute force.

We're talking about dictatorship. We're talking about the kinds of things we thought we had put into the past with the latest iteration most visible, and that was with the trials at Nuremberg and the condemnation of the Schutztoffel and the Nazis and their entire apparatus and the same thing with Tojo in Japan. We haven't. It's back. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli finance minister who has declared himself the governor general of the West Bank, is rejoicing in the election of Donald Trump because he assumes that the Israeli annexation of the West Bank will soon be complete. Do you think Donald Trump will go along with that? His past actions would say he probably will. But as I said before, I think there is a dichotomy in his attitude about Israel. And I've listened to a number of statements that he made over time that would indicate to me

he understands the problem. At a minimum, the problem is Bibi Netanyahu and that kind of leadership as much as it is anything else. And to pursue complete support of him and all that he wants to do with that knowledge would be pretty heinous in my view. And I don't think Donald Trump is capable of being that heinous. At least I hope he's not, but I wait to see. Who really sets American foreign policy? Is it the elites, the establishment that you once managed in the State Department? Is it faceless, nameless people who are not answerable to the public? Is it the president? Is it the secretary of state? That's a very difficult question to answer, one I would try to answer and have answered before, however imperfectly, for the whole

panoply of national security and foreign policy issues. But for Israel, it's simple to answer, the Israel lobby. You have argued, and almost everyone on this show has agreed with you, that Netanyahu controls Biden rather than the other way around. Would you make the same argument with respect to Netanyahu and Donald Trump? I don't know yet. I have to see what he does. My expectation is I would probably sadly have to answer that yes. But I don't know. And I'm holding out hope, forlorn hope perhaps, but nonetheless, I'm holding out hope. Because as those statements by the Palestinians indicated, both the statement in the Knesset and the one at the United Nations and a host of other statements across the globe, we need this to stop.

And the U.S. is increasingly seen by everyone in the world, without exception, as the expediter and the supporter of this action. Without us, it wouldn't be happening. How dangerous is, for the United States, is its current relationship with Israel? Extremely so. I said a few years ago at the National Press Club, got bugs in the house, that Israel was a strategic liability and not an asset. I think it's become a strategic

liability that might bring us crashing into a concrete wall here very shortly. That wall might be nuclear. And that wall, how do you see that coming about? What will happen if Netanyahu talks Trump into backing him up with major military assets in an invasion of Iran. It'll be a disaster. It'll be a disaster for us. I keep telling people, I was talking to an individual this morning who more or less came around to agree with me, military officer. I said, if you liked Iraq, you liked Afghanistan, just add trillions of dollars, maybe four or five more years, and the end result will be no better than in either of those two countries, Afghanistan and Iraq. You will have a mess on your hands, plus you'll be trying to manage 90 million people, 90 million people in some extremely different terrain. They will be doing to you

what Hezbollah is doing to Israel right now, tearing you up. Will Israel attack Iran without U.S. assistance? I don't think so. I don't think so. Not in a meaningful way. They might, you know, do another hundred plane strike and all that hullabaloo that they propagandize, and Iran might strike them back, and we'd have a tit for tat, and nothing would happen unless we get in there. Israel simply does not, even with all the tankers we've given them over the last 20 years, even with all the extended range airplanes we've given them, all the ordinance we've given them, they do not have the capacity to do what they want to do to Iran.

And why do it if you can't do what you want to do, which is destroy their nuclear program? Senator Graham has argued that the United States should destroy Iran's oil refineries. I wonder what President Xi, who buys 90% of his oil from Iran, would say about that. Yes. And China is also the greatest benefactor of Iraq's oil coming out of the strait, which I always point out to people. You know, the Iraq oil was for oil, oil for Israel and oil for China. And China is the biggest benefactor of that oil, plus what you said about Iran's oil and natural gas. I don't see China staying out of it if we mess up their energy situation in a significant way. So you've got that to look at, too. They might not come in directly, but they would certainly come in supportively. And so would Russia.

Russia's already there supportively and might even come in more so than just support. Professor Mearsheimer has argued on this show that if Trump wants to go to war with Iran, the donor class, AIPAC and those folks, would go into overdrive and help him sell it to the American people. Do you think Trump could sell war against Iran, which poses not a, correct me if you disagree, a scintilla of threat to American national security? Do you think he could sell that to the American public? I think it would be a difficult sale. And I don't, I don't, this guy's an astute politician in many respects. I think he would realize that. I think he realizes that right now. He's probably pondering over this as much as any issue he's going to confront if he ponders anything. And I think he would sense that that is not something he wants to do. For today, I was on a webinar with a group called Clean Capital, and I was stunned that the senator from Nevada, and I really was stunned, when she came on, she won again, so she's a

Democrat in Nevada. She said the number of jobs, for example, that have been created with regard to solar, EVs, electrical vehicles, wind power, and so forth. 300,000 jobs in one sector, a couple of states, will make it impossible for the Republican Party to attack the climate change efforts of the Biden administration significantly, because they'll be eliminating all these jobs, and there's nothing that'll ruin you quicker in politics than eliminating America's jobs. So I think the same thing is going to play on him even in a grander scale with regard to backing up Israel in a war with Iran to include U.S. entering it. I just don't think it's going to happen. I may be wrong and I'll be sad if I am because it will be a disaster for us. What are the risks to the United States

if any, of not getting involved in a war between Israel and Iran? Here's the kicker. What we need to be doing right now is bringing this to a close. We're going to lose the state of Israel. If we really do

care about the state of Israel, not Bibi, not Smotrich, not Ben-Gavir and those other zealots, but the state of Israel and the Jewish population of some six million now, it's down from seven, then we need to stop this because the state of Israel is going away. It's going away as surely as I'm sitting here talking to you. And if nothing else, it's going to be defeated so roundly militarily that it'll have to go away. Because once that happens, every vulture in the region will fall in on the body. And what will cause Israel to go away? Just overextending itself, fighting too many wars?

Yes, economically and financially, it's a disaster right now. And I'm wondering, couldn't find out this morning from even my contacts in the oil community, where are they getting their oil now? Because Erdogan is supposed to have turned off Chehan. Kirkuk is supposed to have turned off the Kurdish regional government's oil flow, and we've been kicked off the oil fields in Syria, so I've got to assume Assad is back in control of his own oil, and it's not being pumped to Israel. So where's its oil coming from? Are we shipping it to Israel? I don't know. That's a very good question, Colonel, and it would be fascinating to get to the bottom of it. Colonel, it's a pleasure,

my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. These things we talk about don't seem to be happy lately, but I appreciate your insight, and I love it when you come on here. We have a short week next week, but I hope we can find some time where we can chat with each other yet again. I look forward to it, and let me tell you, if you've got some happy things to throw at me, I'll take them. All right, Colonel, thank you. All the best. Take care. Thank you. Coming up on Friday, as usual, end of the day, end of the week, the Intelligence Community Roundtable with Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern. Thank you for watching. Thank you for liking and subscribing. We are oh so close to a half a million subscribers. We have a month to go to Christmas.

Christmas is a month from Monday, and we're up to 480,000. Thank you for liking and subscribing. Help us reach that goal. Help us spread this word. Help us get voices like Colonel Larry Wilkerson's out, which you don't hear on mainstream cable TV. He once did, but not anymore. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thanks for watching!