Judging Freedom - COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Will US Troops Fight in Gaza?

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

COL. Lawrence Wilkerson: Will US Troops Fight in Gaza?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 Thursday, February 6th, 2025. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson joins us now. Colonel, always a pleasure, my dear friend. When President Trump made his announcement the other night about owning Gaza, I thought of you and can't wait to hear your thoughts on it. But before we get there, General Kellogg, whom you may know, the President's advisor and emissary on matters Russia and Ukraine, recently publicly offered a resolution to the Ukraine-Russia military conflagration, which involves a demilitarized zone patrolled by Western troops separating Eastern Ukraine from Western Ukraine. Wouldn't something like that be dead on arrival in the Kremlin? And shouldn't General Kellogg, of all people, have known that before articulating

it in public? You're right on all counts. I would think that if there were to be a demilitarized zone, Vladimir Putin would declare it and it'd be about 60 kilometers further into Ukraine and he would patrol it. But even he doesn't want to do that. It's nonsense. They're just searching for things that they believe will give them some sort of negotiating leverage. In this case, maybe with Zelensky, which I find hard to believe because I wouldn't let Zelensky dictate anything to me right now. I'd get rid of Zelensky. I don't think there can be any amicable resolution to this until Zelensky's gone. You and I are on the same page. Now, whether they just say to him, go live in your mansion in Miami or Paris or wherever it is, or whether there's an election and he runs and loses, or whether his life is jeopardized by

the right wing that somehow thinks they can still win this war. I don't know the answer to that, but it's hard for me to believe that he is present at the end of it. I mean, he can't even legally sign any documents memorializing the end of it. He can't sign any treaty. And I'm being given insights. I admit they're just insights from a few people. Were there to be free and fair elections or reasonably free and fair elections, he would lose dramatically. And I think he knows that.

And that's one reason he doesn't want to touch him with a 10-foot pole. But you're right. We need to get him out of the way. He's an obstacle to stopping the killing of his people, Ukrainians and Russians. Is the pipeline, is the Biden a few things going through, including dollars. And I don't know why, because Trump said so many things he said in the last few days and just prior to being elected that are simply not true or not coming true or have been changed. But he said it would stop immediately. And it hasn't. At least from what I'm hearing, it hasn't. Well, of all the things he has said since he began his first term as president, this may be the wildest. Chris, cut 8A. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too.

We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area. You were talking tonight about the United States taking over a sovereign territory. What authority would allow you to do that? Are you talking about a permanent occupation there? Redevelopment?

I do see a long-term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East. And everybody I've spoken to, this was not a decision made lightly. Everybody I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs.

His out is everybody I've spoken to. He apparently didn't speak to the head of state of a single other country, Colonel. He spoke to Jared and Miriam. Right, right, right. Jared, his son-in-law, Miriam, Mrs. Abelson, and of course his buddy, the murderer and war criminal was standing five feet away from him. But did you see the look on his face and the body language? I don't believe Trump had told him about that before he made the announcement at the podium. You know, it's funny you should ask that. I thought that Chris, my executive producer, pointed out,

even if you notice, we zoomed in on Netanyahu's body language. Apparently, a lot of people noticed it as well because Carolyn Leavitt, the press secretary, was asked the next day if Prime Minister Netanyahu had been told ahead of time. She claims he was. I don't think he was, but I'm not saying she lies. She was misinformed, I think. She claims he was told about it ahead of time. What are the military implications of effectuating Donald Trump's will as he just articulated it? Deadly. Deadly for the U.S. Armed Forces and anathema to H.W. Bush, Colin Powell, and all the people who talked about the possibility of residual ground forces after the first Gulf War. And we more or less reinforced that, the Pentagon, with every president since.

You just don't, you know, we got too many troops there anyway. Americans don't know. We have so many troops in the Levant right now. They outnumber Europe. They outnumber Korea. They outnumber, almost outnumber the ones that we have left in CONUS, the continental United States. But their naval and their air force predominantly, there's some army and marine, but marines are usually afloat and the army's not really there in great number. You put the army there in great number and you have disaster for the empire, unquestionably. Can you foresee U.S. Army and Marines forcing people at gunpoint to leave their homes? The response would be catastrophic, deaths of civilians and deaths of American military personnel. Absolutely, absolutely.

And they're not going to do that, in my view, even if Hegseth orders them to, they're going to leave the service before they'll do that, or the majority of them will. They will refuse to go. And if they get there and are ordered to do that, they'll refuse to do it. And should they do it, Hamas will take them on and do the same thing to them they did to the IDF. Beat the crap out of them right right you know the night uh after trump made the announcement uh tuesday in the evening he then went on social media uh his own uh website that he calls truth social i don't know if he types these things himself or not. But it came out under his name, quote, Israel will turn over Gaza to the U.S. Colonel, how misinformed could the president of the United States of America possibly be

if after the past year and a half of watching this every night on television and on our computer screens, he thinks that Israel could turn over Gaza to the United States. You just described Donald Trump's greatest weakness and his greatest danger to this republic, as far as I'm concerned. He is naive to the point of being dangerous, and he lets that naivete flow over, as you just saw in that press conference and in other places he's done the same thing. He did it with the tariffs. And I think somebody got to him and said, Canada, we're going to say Canada is going to talk about it and Mexico is going to take action. They're not going to do a damn thing, but you need to walk that back. Now, he's not done it with China because I've looked at those tariffs fairly closely,

and I'm not so sure that what he's done with China in the strict economic sense might not work ultimately. But I don't know. I'm not an economist. But the others, he just shoots from the hip all the time. He's worse than George Bush was. Do you think that he has the same either antipathy or disdain? You can put in whatever word you want that's in that category. For the personal freedom, the ability to make personal human choices of the Palestinian people that Joe Biden had? I mean, is this just an extension of Biden, but slightly different means?

If you look at some of the executive orders that are going out, and I don't know that Trump has personally blessed them, and some of them are not exactly executive orders, they're just mandates, like the one at West Point, which more or less eliminates everything at West Point that has anything to do with people of color, any color, Arab, black, you name it. They left intact the German club and the French club. This is very disconcerting for someone like me who's seen this, you know, grew up in this. What did he do? Well, at the risk of getting off our topic, but I don't mind because it's fascinating. What did he do with respect to West Point? He's limited what they

can do there in terms of the curriculum, in terms of their social and other clubs and limited what they can do and of course eliminated what they can do in terms of what they call DEI, diversity, equity, whatever it means, you know, diversity training. Wow. I don't know. See, I don't know if this is Trump doing this or his minions doing this. And were he to be alerted to the fact that, for example, they've done this at West Point, would he reverse it? I don't know, because a lot of these minions are out there operating now, and I think they're operating with carte blanche, and they are white supremacists in many cases. Oh boy. You mentioned Secretary Hegseth. This is a little gooey, I think, but you may have a different view. Here he is trying to make Prime Minister Netanyahu very happy.

Cut number five. You have a long memory. We have a long memory. And may our relationship continue to endure. We're going to continue to grow our defense industrial base. We've supplied munitions that were previously not supplied that are useful in eradicating radical enemies. And we are committed to continue to do so. So I hope you've noticed here at the Defense Department under President Trump, we are laser focused on reviving the warrior ethos, on rebuilding America's military and reestablishing deterrence. Just something you, Prime Minister, have done in your neighborhood in impressive, aggressive and

important ways. What do you think? What lies? What lies? I mean, you know, Judge, I was watching very closely the body language, the facial language of C.Q. Brown. Yes, that's the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was suited next to the secretary. Right. Yeah. Again, the way Netanyahu is reacting because this is crazy. This is insane. Hexeth doesn't know what he's talking about. First of all, our defense industrial base is not being revived. It's sorry shape, absolutely sorry shape. Read Dexter Filkin's

piece in the New Yorker magazine. The military's in sorry shape, and you're not doing anything making it sorry, or Pete, sorry, but you are. Everything he said, deterrence, Israel hasn't reestablished deterrence. Hamas has defeated them. Hezbollah has stood them to a standstill. And they're still killing people during a ceasefire to try and compensate for that. And their movement into Syria now is very apt to be opposed by really formidable Turkish forces because they're deep into Syria now. They are not in good shape, and they definitely haven't restored deterrence. So, Pete, where have you been for the last seven, eight months? Well, you understand the Pentagon better than most people alive. You understand the role of the Secretary of Defense. I worked with him

for 10 years, obviously not at the Pentagon, at Fox News. I thought he was obsequious, almost subservient to Netanyahu, and God knows who else was in the room. I saw Ron Dermer, who was born in New Jersey, who was Netanyahu's principal political advisor, smiling from ear to ear. I would have said he was kissing his rosy red rear end. Your military guys have your unique way of addressing these things. That's Hegseth's way. You've got to get Bibi on your side. You're the new minister of the Defense Department.

You've got to get him on your side. He's the number one man in the Pentagon. Comes in without even any need for security checks, as do all his people, Mossad in particular. Everybody on the Netanyahu side of the table enters the Pentagon without security checks? They did when I was there. I'm assuming it's still a practice. I would think, you know, you mentioned the body language of General Brown. I would, you know, I have no way of knowing what he's thinking, but I would suspect he was thinking, my God, how many of our people are going to be killed? How many of our people are not going to want to do this? Yes. And in more ways than you're thinking, perhaps, Judge, how many people are going to leave the military now, especially women, who are the survival category for the Army right now? The only reason the Army came squeakingly close to meeting its recruitment goal was women.

They enlisted in hordes. Why is that, Colonel? a colonel? I think it's principled because it is one of the few places where women who come from the areas that are being most heavily recruited, like West Virginia, the interior of Maine, interior of Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, to a certain extent, Louisiana, don't have any other opportunities of note, especially to get a baccalaureate paid for. And so they're coming in because the other women are communicating this to them from their own service and it's getting around. So we're moving up in women in all the services. And this is going to just kill that if it goes out the way

they've been preaching it's going out. And relieving the commandant of the Coast Guard. And I'm talking to officers right now who have just been told horrible things by their bosses, like get back in the kitchen and out of the cockpit. You know, you go in and you see your boss and you're going to Top Gun School. You've been selected because you're a good pilot. You've made a lot of carrier landings here. You've been in two years of combat with your jets. And all of a sudden, your orders are canceled. You're not going to Top Gun school. No women are going to Top Gun school.

And then laugh at her and tell her to leave your office. These are emails I'm getting. Well, I guess this is the new Pentagon. Do they believe that they're making the military stronger by doing this? I think they do, because Hegseth and others like him, they believe that it should be a man's world, period. And increasingly, a white man's world. How dangerous for our diplomatic relations with the rest of the world was President Trump's statement the other night about the U.S. will own Gaza? First of all, Judge, I'm not sure we have diplomatic relations with the rest of the world worth a damn anymore. And second, this was, if you will, another era in that quiver of disruption, if you will.

You can't talk to anyone. We were having a conversation last night about Sergei Lavrov and Wang Yi and several other foreign ministers in the world today, and our question was, how is it that other countries, particularly Russia and China in this regard, but others do, have at this particular point in time, fairly good foreign ministers, if not excellent foreign ministers. And I put both Wang Yi and Sergei in that category. Well, Lavrov is in a class by himself. Yeah, we have such sorry ones. We couldn't figure it out. What has happened to our system in terms of producing people who actually can speak for America in a way the rest of the world can tolerate, understand, and maybe comport with from time to time?

We do not have that. We have people. Look at what Rubio is doing right now. He's shocking me, going down to all the little countries in South America and essentially telling them shape up or ship out. If Donald Trump follows through on what he said on Tuesday night, his meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu was one of the most consequential meetings an American president has had with the head of a foreign state since FDR and Stalin and Churchill were at Yalta. Why wasn't the secretary of state there? Good question. Very good question. He's running for president, I guess. That's the thing I would, you know, I watched, I watched how George W. Bush treated Powell after Karl Rove kept telling George W. Bush that his most formidable opponent for a second term would be Colin Powell, his secretary of state.

And I watched how the gap grew between George W. Bush and Powell, partly because of that, because he really did fear, even though Powell told him again and again, Mr. President, I told you I would serve one term and leave. I'm not going to run for president. I think that even got the president more concerned that he would only go for one term. But that's what's happening with Rubio, too, I'm sure. And Trump doesn't like it and doesn't appreciate it. And I don't think Rubio is going to last very long if he does continue on that vein. Before Carolyn Leavitt, the press secretary and others, including Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, attempted to walk back the president's statements from Tuesday night, Secretary Rubio lauded them to the skies. Chris, cut number seven.

What President Trump said yesterday is an acknowledgement of the skies. Chris, cut number seven. What President Trump said yesterday is an acknowledgement of the following. Gaza has been severely damaged. If you look at the aerial imagery, you see what's happening. The billions of dollars that are going to be required for reconstruction are enormous. Some areas have been rendered unlivable now and for the foreseeable future. And so what the president, what President Trump announced yesterday is the offer, the willingness of the United States to become responsible for the reconstruction of that area. And while you are rebuilding, while you're clearing debris, by the way, there are unexploded munitions. There are all kinds of Hamas weaponry still buried underground. For people to be able

to live in a place safely, all of that has to be removed. It's an enormous undertaking. It's a unique offer, one that no other country in the world has stepped up and made an offer. But I think it's one people need to think about. Seriously, it was not meant as a hostile move. It was meant as, I think, a very generous move, the offer to rebuild and to be in charge of the rebuilding of a place, many parts of which right now, even if people move back, they would have nowhere to live safely because there are still unexploded munitions and debris and rubble. Do you think he was consulted on this before President Trump made the comments about owning Gaza? I do not. And I think he was trying to make up for Trump's abruptness with it there. You notice he didn't talk anything about replacing the Palestinians or moving them or Egypt or Jordan or anything else.

He just talked about the kindness and generosity of rebuilding Gaza. That's all he could talk about because that's the only part of the deal that makes any kind of sense in terms of international relations. It doesn't make any sense if you start. I was watching them go through the Nazarene corridor. These people are walking through rubble, absolute rubble. Their mosques, their churches, everything is destroyed. It doesn't matter what it was, it's destroyed. Their homes, most of all, and they're euphoric.

They're euphoric and they're dancing in the street as they go through all this rubble because, as one said in English to a reporter, I'm going home. I'm home. I'm finally going home. You're going to get those people out and send them somewhere else? No. You're going to have a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth intifada. You're going to fight them till the last female, the last baby, the last boy, the last girl. They're going to fight you to death, to the end. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a pleasure, my dear man. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the candor of your comments and the depth of your analysis. Deeply and profoundly appreciated.

I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thank you. have a good course sure uh coming up uh tomorrow at four in the afternoon friday is the intelligence community round table and at four o'clock today midnight in moscow the inimitable pepe escobar judge napolitano for judging freedom We'll be right back. Thank you.