Judging Freedom - Col. Tony Shaffer: How the US Lost Ukraine.

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

In the face of Merrick Garland's accusations of Russian war crimes, we call out other overlooked war crimes that deserve global focus. We take aim at the U.S. administration, particularly President Biden's approach to conflicts involving Israel. We don't shy away from asking the tough questions: when will the international community start holding other global leaders, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accountable for their actions? Tune in for an episode filled with thought-provoking discussions that challenge the norm and make you question the narrative surrounding global conflicts and war crimes.#Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostagesSee 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, December 6th, 2023. Tony Schaefer joins us. Tony, we've missed you. Good morning. Welcome back to the show. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. Good to be here. How did Ukraine lose the war with Russia?

Let me count the ways. So I think let's start off with the most obvious. There's no strategy. There was never a strategy. It was all about simply trying to what I would describe as virtue signal at the international level. We wanted to see NATO embrace the Ukrainians with training all over the NATO ranch. We sent all the people out with no idea how you're going to actually apply the training and tactics to the battlefield. And then you had weapons systems just kind of showing up randomly. Let's try this. Let's throw that in. It was chaos and not the kind of chaos you need to win battles. Patton was big on chaos. Patent was very effective in the use of chaos. In this case, Judge, it was chaos with the wrong or lack of focus.

That's first. Secondly, policy. The White House never once established a series of policy objectives which were achievable. Again, it was international virtue signaling, essentially people like the likes of David Petraeus, General Hodges, others who were essentially politicians at the State Department, Victoria Nuland, all these folks got together and

basically treated aspirations that were, first off, not achievable, and secondly, not in the interest of the United States. Essentially, they got us in the middle of what I believe to be a civil war. The Ukrainians and Russians are cut from the same cloth. I've said this multiple times. It was never in our policy interest to get in the middle of that. And third, most importantly, Ukraine was up until the war, the second most corrupt nation in Europe. Everybody recognized it, corruption up and down the line. And yet somehow we jumped in as their primary supporter and ally, thinking all of a sudden all that crime and internal problems are going to go away because we jump in.

So those are the three things that I think resulted in the defeat of Ukraine regarding Russia. And I think it was inevitable. We've talked about this, Judge, for over a year. There was no way the Ukrainians are going to prevail. So the $113 billion that old Joe sent there, $40 billion more or less in cash, the rest more or less in equipment, was utterly and totally wasted. Cash stolen, equipment destroyed, misused, not used strategically. Is that a fair summary? I think a fair summary would say we have to audit where all of that went. That the appearance at this point is, yeah, it was all wasted. The biggest evidence, the biggest fact that is apparent and undisputable is the offensive didn't work. So what did we buy? We bought failure.

And how did we, where did the money go to get us to the point of failure? Where did it go? And I think to your point, that $40 billion, I mean, where is it in our interest to be funding Ukrainian bohemian plays in the middle of cities in a war to make sure that their culture continues. Are you kidding me? What is it in our interest to fund their civil service? These are all things which have nothing to do with victory. And I would argue it was a distraction. If you're in to win a war and you're funding plays in Ukraine and the civil service, that's not helping win the war. So arguably, we need to find out where that money went. So, I mean, do you know of any recent experience

like this in modern American history where in addition to providing military assistance, we effectively funded the government? Question one. Question two, which is part of this. Did the Ukraine government continue to collect taxes during the war, or did it rely solely on the largesse of the American taxpayer to fund everything from civil service salaries to this type of cultural activity that you're mentioning? I don't know about the internal tax collection. I would presume, yes. People like Zelensky and others who run governance never want to give up anything they have. And in this case, I would suspect that, no, they continue to take taxes. It's just they've been spent on things other than providing support and help for the Ukrainian people. To the first point regarding, have we done this before?

Oh, yeah, it's become in our DNA. It's our now it's our job now as the US military to essentially nation build, which I would argue, I'm not saying I'm for it. I'm saying I'm against it. But I'm saying that that is what we have become as a military. If we go in somewhere, Judge, we then become the vector and provider of political perspectives based on whoever's in charge. And this is both left and right. Both left and right does this regarding Democrats, Republicans. Afghanistan, we came in once we achieved our specific initial victory in 2001, 2002. By 2003, my book talks about this. We were moving into counterinsurgency and nation building. We decided we were going to make Kabul like Minot, North Dakota.

Didn't work out. So we do that now. This is what we do. So it's not unusual. What's unusual in this case, Judge, is that we did it without us being there. That is to say, we franchised it. We let Zelensky and his government figure out, here's all the money, go figure out how to use it, but do it in such a way that we will, we, the United States, our policies are basically supported. So the situation in Ukraine now is such that it was described by General Zaluzhny as a stalemate.

Since he made that description, the battle line has actually moved west a bit. There have been some attacks in Kiev. in Kyiv. General Stoltenberg, the Secretary General of NATO, has said there is bad news in Ukraine. And the elites seem to be whispering. I don't know if this is Newland and Blinken and Sullivan, but the elites in Brussels seem to be whispering below the radar screen that it's over. So what value is there in sending another $68 billion, which Joe Biden wants and which the Congress is supposed to vote on before Christmas, which means in the next two weeks, of what conceivable value is there to send another 68 billion in military aid to Ukraine? Zero. This is something I've spoken on several times. Congress needs to do what its job is, is basically be the board of directors over the policies and interests of the United States. In this case, the board needs to say no more money until certain domestic issues are fixed. The

border needs to be fixed, period. And I believe Speaker Johnson's hard line on this is appropriate. We need to do that, period. And so not another cent for Ukraine until the United States issues are resolved, or at least on the path of being resolved. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, and I've described this in other interviews, is Dave Petraeus' whack-a-doodle strategy. There is no strategy until there is some idea, Judge, beyond the talking heads that the Kagan's and the Institute of War, all these other folks, until they figure out something that's deeper than the paper it's written on regarding a concept, you need to have a strategy. Again, I'm not for or against either side. I just don't think we should be involved. I'm not for Russia.

I'm not against Russia. I'm not for Ukraine. I'm not against Ukraine. Putin's a thug. I say this all the time. I'm not pro-Russian. With that said, until we, the United States, establish and understand specific objectives, American objectives assigned to what we're trying to do, then we shouldn't be involved. Why are we there? What do we expect to achieve? If we see Ukraine destabilize Russia, it's the other thing too, which is completely ignored by the deacons. What if we actually succeed in destroying Russia? What happens if Russia becomes ungoverned with nukes? Have you thought this through? Nobody thinks this stuff through. Well, there doesn't seem to be any question but that the Lindsey Grahams, Victoria Nuland,

Tony Blinken, etc. wanted to use Ukraine as a battering ram. We've used this phrase many, many times with which to drive President Putin from office. And it's having the opposite effect. The sanctions have strengthened Russia economically. The victories in Ukraine have strengthened President Putin politically. What happens if the Congress does not vote the $68 billion? What becomes of the Ukraine government almost overnight? Well, you got Lloyd Austin threatening to deploy U.S. forces in absence of money. I mean, he was asked this a couple of days ago. This has been covered by Breitbart.

Think about that, Judge. Well, if you don't give us the money, we're just going to send troops in. What? troops in. It's unfortunate that power that the Congress gave to George W. Bush, which was inherited by his successors and is now enjoyed by Joe Biden and upheld by the Supreme Court, regrettably, allows the president to shift money from column A to column B. So even if the United States does not give aid directly to Ukraine, the president can take it from somewhere else. And if he wants to send troops there, he has a war powers resolution issue, but he certainly legally could send them, unconstitutionally in my view, immorally in my view, but the law is what it is. How teetering on the brink is President Zelensky himself? I mean,

he has canceled elections for 2024. They don't allow anybody to leave the country, or at least not people subject to the draft. Who's subject to the draft? Everybody aged 17 to 70, male and female, is publicly disputing whether his chief general, the chief general's chief of staff was assassinated in his own home. How unstable is the presidency of Vladimir Putin as we speak? Excuse me, of Vladimir Zelensky as he speaks. I think there's parallels between the Soviets and Russia and the Soviets and Ukraine. In the old days, and I've said this several times, you can take the Soviet, you can take the man out of the Soviet, you can't take the Soviet out of the man. Deep down, the Ukrainians

and Zelensky are cut from the same cloth as the Soviets. They were part of the Soviet Union. So this bare knuckle assassination potential in politics is real. I think we've seen it. In Russia, a retirement is usually six feet under the ground, apparently, if you're a senior political leader.

So I don't see anything different here. There's clearly a battle going on between Zelensky, General Zelensky, and the military and Zelensky over the future of the country. And I think there's a good potential for a series of events which would see Zelensky, if not removed from office, marginalized to the point of where he's no longer able to function as president. Would that mean that he becomes a victim of assassination? It's always possible. Because again, Judge, their political system, the way they do things is completely different than ours. And I think that that is a good possibility. I think the ultimate thing we're going to see play out is the military challenging the government. I think that's going to be what we'll see over the next two or three weeks. How does one explain the failure of American intelligence, as in the intelligence community, in the American military to misjudge

Ukraine's strength and underestimate Russian strength? Judge, we've talked about this a dozen times. It's not about the intelligence not being there. It's about the intelligence being avoided and downplayed. What I've said to you and your audience and to the other folks I talk to, the intelligence community is known. They've known it in more detail at a higher classification level than I know. So what I've been saying they've known, it's all about aspirational intelligence briefing. That is to say, you have leaders in the intelligence community who are afraid of telling the truth, and therefore they're not going to tell you, by the way, all these layers of defense the Russians are building up. You're not going to be able to penetrate those with what you've planned to use. We've known this. This is not unknown. The reason that the failure

has occurred is the same reason that the failure to detect the 9-11 hijackers, the same failure that resulted in the fall of Afghanistan. All these failures are policy. It's not intelligence. It's not about intelligence officers like me going out, figuring things out. It's not about analysts not sitting down with all the facts, trying to put the pieces together and provide an effective mosaic of what's about to happen or what's happening. It's not the intelligence. It's the policy. You have far too many people, Judge, in the intelligence community who are completely tied and willing to compromise, tied to the ruling political party and willing to compromise their integrity for purposes of personal political gain. That's what happened. It happened here.

It's happened before. It'll happen again within the current system. So in Turkey, in March of 22, the Russians and the Ukrainians had negotiations supervised by the Turks. I think there may have been some other countries there. And there was a handshake agreement that Ukraine would not join NATO. The Russian eastern part of Ukraine would stay in some sort of a neutral but loosely allied with Moscow capacity and there would be no invasion. was Boris Yeltsin, the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who flew to Kiev and basically said to President Zelensky, the U.S. and the U.K. and NATO and the West have your back. Don't worry about it. We'll win this war. None of that is in dispute at all. That is well-known history. the chief negotiator for Ukraine at those negotiations, acknowledged publicly what I have just described.

So why would he do that unless he knows the end game is near? Well, I think you hit the nail on the head, Judge. The end game is near. You currently have a situation where good faith negotiations would have either prevented the war or early on in the war, there was negotiations which would have essentially limited the conditions of the continued Russian offensive to the point of where there would have been a ceasefire and a beginning of a negotiated settlement. Let me be very clear on this. The Russians will not back down. They see the encroachment of NATO and the West into territories they controlled during the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, as an existential threat.

This is not negotiable. I'm not pro-Russian. I'm just telling you what the position is. This is something that the United States knows and NATO knows. And the Russians have acted on the specific concerns they have regarding buffers. This goes back to the czars. This is not a new concept. So what we're seeing now is the end game where you're going to have the West have to basically give in to the Russian desire for that protective space. The question becomes what happens because this is going to leave Putin and

the Russians in a position to do whatever they want with Ukraine, literally. I mean, they could march to the Dnieper and it's all sorts of things they have the option of doing now. Let me correct myself. I think I inadvertently said Boris Yeltsin a few minutes ago. You knew I meant Boris Johnson. Yes, I do. You meant Johnson, yes. You're right. And I apologize for that.

And some of the comments, they're having a field day with my boo-boo. One of them even called me comrade. My mother would love to see that. Back to where we were. Do the D.C. and Brussels elites now recognize that the end game is here? Because the most bloodthirsty of all of them, the guy who never met a war he didn't want somebody else to fight, Senator Lindsey Graham effectively said over the weekend, I'm against all aid to Ukraine until we build a wall on the southern border. Now, that's the attitude that the Speaker of the House is taking.

Is that attitude the tip of the iceberg, or is this just Senator Graham playing politics? Graham always plays politics, and it's obvious. In this case, I think his politics and what's necessary for the neocons to save face is one and the same. The neocons, like Lindsay and others, have an excuse. The beginning of the excuse started on the 7th of October. The one bright spot for the neocons was, oh, this distracts from Ukraine. So this has given them another war to go invest in. And I'm saying that with a level of, I'm going to get, I'm sure I'm going to get some trouble for saying it, but yes, the Hamas conflict gave the neocons another focus and just say, oh, we have to focus on this now.

And the border adds to the justification for the neocons to step away. The other thing you're going to see, judges, don't look at the fact we failed in Ukraine. Oh, we have to go over here and look at this. We don't want to focus on the past. You're going to see that. And Lindsey Graham and those folks are now trying to quietly show Zelensky the door, hoping he doesn't make too much noise as they shove him out. And Russia is going to have the option of returning to the offensive. They already do. They've already made some limited tactical gains. But by March, they're going to have the ability to go all the way to the Dnieper with no problem and basically turn Ukraine into a rump state. I don't think they want all of Ukraine, by the way.

I just don't think they do. I don't think they do either. I think the last thing President Putin wants is a protracted guerrilla war and the obligation of governing. I think he just wants those sections east of the Dnieper River, which are culturally Russian, which he claims to have a legal claim to, and historically has been back and forth between Russia and Ukraine for hundreds of years. And it appears as though that's what he's going to get. The New York Times reports, and I don't want to get into Gaza

because we're nearly at the end of our time. I want your thoughts on Gaza and the Israelis the next time we chat. However, to put a bow on this, the New York Times reports that more civilians have been killed in Gaza in eight weeks than in Ukraine in 18 months. Fact number one. Fact number two, fewer than 100,000 Russian troops killed. 500,000 Ukrainian troops either killed or so disabled they can't go back to the battlefield. So I know you're not a fan of President Putin,

but his generals are apparently professionals. They're not killing civilians. Yes. The military effort by the Russians, I think, has been very professional. And I'm not pro-Russian. Again, Judge, I always have to clarify this because people get upset otherwise. Putin is a thug. He has personally murdered reporters and elevators in Moscow. Don't get me wrong. With that said, the Russian military has tried to conduct itself within what they, the Russians, believe is a concerted military effort. Much of the messaging that's gone with the military effort by Russia has been focused not on the United States, but on the third world and other nations which are going to be looking to Russia as one of the new world leaders outside of the United States. So the reason the

Russians are trying to play nice, if you consider not conducting war crimes nice, and by the way, I just watched the Merrick Garland press conference claiming Russia committed war crimes. I'm sorry. That's a distraction. As much as maybe what they said today, Garland said at the time we're taping this, it was about a half an hour ago. Garland did the press conference. It's a distraction. When you have a loss, murdering women in truly horrific conditions, that should be the focus of the investigation. What war crimes were conducted against women on 7 October and is continuing to be perpetrated against them who were in captivity. By the way, quick aside on this, I know it's a distraction a little bit. The reason Hamas did not release all those women is because they don't want the media, U.S. media, global media,

to be told about the atrocities they're doing. So the fact is Garland is trying to drum up more hate against Putin when there are clear war crimes out there that should be investigated. This is part of the Joe Biden mantra, just like giving weapons to Israel and telling them not to use them, just like the other way when Israel commits genocide.

This is part of the Joe Biden mantra. When is he going to accuse Benjamin Netanyahu of being a war criminal? The evidence is ample. Tony, I'll let you go. Thank you very much. But I have to tell you, the viewers are having a contest as to what kind of a car you are sitting in. You don't have to answer. I just want you. I don't want to cry.

It's all wheel drive and it's a turbo. So I'll leave it at that. They can figure it out from there. Wherever you are, wherever you're going, drive safely, drive carefully. Welcome back to the show. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. Good to be here. Thanks, Judge. Of course. Coming up this afternoon, Dr. Naomi Wolf at 2 o'clock, at 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi, and at 5 o'clock, back by popular request, Max Blumenthal. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll be you next time. sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.