Judging Freedom - Connor Freeman: America's Failed Proxy War

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

Connor Freeman: America's Failed Proxy WarSee 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, March 27, 2024. Connor Freeman joins us now. Connor is the assistant editor at the Libertarian Institute, an entity devoted to maximum individual liberty and minimum government and peace. Connor, it's a pleasure. Welcome back to the show. You were much appreciated by our viewers and by our team last week, and I'm glad you could join us again. Thank you so much, Judge. It's an honor. Sure. Since we were together last, there was a vote in the UN Security Council in which the United States abstained on a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. There had been four previous resolutions, three in which the United States vetoed, one the United States authored, but it was so watered down

that the Russians and the Chinese vetoed it because they said it stood for nothing. The one the other day, I think it was Monday, called for a ceasefire. And then immediately, the United States representative said, well, it's not binding. What do you think is going on here? Is Joe Biden trying to give the impression that he has some sympathy for the Gazans that he's funding the slaughter of? Yeah, well, not enough to stop the genocide, of course, not enough to condition military aid to Israel, not enough to end the near daily weapons shipments to Israel, and not enough to cover, you know, up to this point, all the diplomatic cover Israel could possibly want. I think essentially what this shows is that the pressure on the Biden administration is having some impact.

If you look at the polling, about 50% of people who voted for Biden in 2020 believe he is complicit in genocide. He's losing to blacks, he's losingicit in genocide. He's losing to Blacks, he's losing to Hispanics, he's losing to young people, and Trump has the lead against him in all those demographics. And so, of course, we see, you know, they're going through incredible efforts to avoid college campuses and any kind of anti-war protests where Biden may be giving a campaign rally to the point where, as NBC News reported, they've gone to extraordinary measures to hide him, to not disclose the location of his rallies until essentially the last minute. But there's protesters, frankly, they're camped

outside Blinken's, Antony Blinken, our Secretary of State, ostensibly America's top diplomat's house, chanting, Blinken, Blinken, we see you and all the war crimes that you do. And I think that ultimately this pressure on the Biden administration is having an impact, at least where it's forcing them to make rhetorical adjustments to the way they were in the beginning of the war. Of course, doing the genocide denial tactic of saying we don't believe the numbers coming out of the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza. It's run by Hamas. And then eventually you get to the point where John Kirby is saying, you know, thousands of innocent civilians are going to die. And Lloyd Austin says Israelis have killed 25,000 Israeli women and children. It doesn't have any serious impact on policy, but further down the road, it possibly could. Of course, as you've been talking about all week on the show, Judge, they've been walking back

the extension, let alone not even vetoing the resolution. They're saying that it's non-binding, which is simply not true. And they are claiming that it's linked to a hostage release, which it is not. It demands a ceasefire and it demands a hostage release, but they're not, one's not contingent on the other. Let me hear the chant again, because it reminds me, this is long before you were born. When I was on college campuses, when I was an undergraduate, gosh, in those days, I had a crew cut and I wore a T-shirt that said Bomb Hanoi. I was a very, very different person than I am now. Anyway, I've been through this and I've done my mea culpa many times. But the kids used to chant in reference to President Johnson, hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?

Referring to American boys dying because there was a draft. What is the chant again that the college students or young people are saying in front of Secretary Blinken's house? They say, hey, hey, Blinken, hey, Blinken, hey, Blinken. It's something like, we see you and all the war crimes that you do. So, I mean, it's similarly catchy. And I mean, imagine these people have been camped out of his house for months, I believe. And so there's a lot of pressure on these architects of the genocide in Gaza. Tony Blinken being just an ardent scientist, you know, an almost even worse excuse, if you can imagine that, for a diplomat than Mike Pompeo. I mean, I really see him as more or less, at least in terms of policy, a liberal, a neoliberal analog to Mike Pompeo. But yeah, I mean, even Donald Trump is saying now that, look, you've got to finish the war. You've got

to finish the job in Gaza, which I think is greenlighting the genocide. Just saying, you know, finish it up rather sooner rather than later. But he is emphasizing that the footage that's coming, as he says, online every single day, all day of bombs being poured into buildings and people by the thousands dying under the rubble. This is having a horrible impact on Israel's PR and its image with and its global standing around the world. So even Donald Trump, you know, the most pro-Zionist president we've had in my lifetime, is suggesting that this policy is hurting Israel more than it's helping. I don't want to get too deep into the politics.

I heard what you did from the former president. I was surprised but happy to hear it. Of course, in the next breath, he says, well, if I were the prime minister of Israel, I would have done the former president. I was surprised, but happy to hear it. Of course, in the next breath, he says, well, if I were the prime minister of Israel, I would have done the same thing. Or if something like that happened in the United States, I would have done the same thing. I don't know if he knows what he means by saying the same thing, because this is genocide and it's a war crime and it's not acceptable in civilized society. You began your comments by mentioning the pressure on the Biden administration and their response to it. And this was in response to my question to you about the significance or lack of it at the UN Security Council.

Do you think the pressure on Israel will affect it? Prime Minister Netanyahu said as recently as this morning, typical of him, no amount of pressure on Israel will deter us from invading Rafah and completing our assignment, this assignment of the total ethnic cleansing of Gaza. Yes, I agree with you. The strategic affairs minister, Ron Dermer, recently made similar remarks. And we've heard essentially the same thing coming from the Israeli war cabinet for weeks. They're dead set on launching this blitzkrieg against Rafah, where estimates are now saying that it's more than 1.5 million Palestinians who have been

forcibly displaced internally within the Strip to Rafah, that it's now closer to 1.7 million Palestinians. So that's something like over 75 percent of the population. And Israel is going to go in and conduct the war the way they have in northern Gaza and elsewhere throughout the Strip so far. I think they're going to obliterate any remaining civilian infrastructure. As we discussed last week, roughly about 30 trucks are getting in of aid on a daily basis. When before the war, the Gossens required under the full air, land and sea blockade that Israel's imposed since 2007, 500 trucks of aid on a daily basis. So there's they're not getting obviously that need is shot up substantially. I mean, it is incomparable right now how much humanitarian assistance the Gazans need.

And so I think they're just going to go in, cut off any remaining assistance that's making its way through, even though you have thousands of trucks backed up at the Rapa Crossing. Has anybody asked Matt Miller at the State Department or Admiral Kirby in the White House or Karine Jean-Pierre, even the president himself, why we just don't send hundreds and hundreds of trucks worth of aid to southern Gaza? I mean, do they think that the IDF would stop American trucks, would shoot at American trucks? I believe that they do. And of course, you know, this discussion of setting up this makeshift causeway on the Gaza coast using U.S. military ships and contractors, Kelly Vlahos at Responsible Statecraft just wrote up a piece about where those ships are on their way to Cyprus, and they're not even halfway there.

The estimates for the project are that they won't be completed until mid-May, and as you and your guests have been discussing on the show, it's estimated that well over a million Palestinians will be in the throes of famine by that point. And of course, we can't even get off and argue of aid shipments that the American people pay for. The Israelis won't let in through these border crossings that they control. And yet we're still providing more than as The Washington Post reported at the beginning of the month. We've approved secretly and sold more than 100 or provided Israel with more than 100 separate foreign military sales since the outbreak of the war in October. And there's no sign of that ending.

Do you think that Joe Biden is afraid of Benjamin Netanyahu? I think he's, well, I wouldn't possibly. I mean, the Israelis have so much power in the United States, so much control over the Congress, frankly, so much control over the executive branch as well. And the U.S., as you saw, I mean, Lloyd Austin can say on the one hand, well, Israel's killed 25,000 women and children. And then yesterday with Yoav Galant, who called the Palestinians human animals when he announced the complete siege on the Strip and they were going to be cutting electricity, fuel, water, and medicine. He said, look, our security bond is stronger than ever. We're your best friend in the world, and we're going to support you through and through. And you have, you know, John Kirby as the heroic Matt Hosen on your show yesterday, describing genocide as self-defense. I think they're terrified, frankly, of the Israel lobby and the ramifications that would result in a substantive change in policy, not just rhetorical and not just abstaining from a U.N. Security Council vote and then saying nearly four billion dollars we just approved to send over to you and, you know, be willing to fight five countries or so in the Middle East on

your behalf if it comes to that. That has to change first. But I think the Biden administration is terrified of what might happen if they do do that. But in the meantime, his electoral chances are completely shot with the American people as a result of him, you know, kowtowing to Israel. Did the Israeli lobby approve and sign off on Chuck Schumer's controversial speech? Although from a, with the passage of time, it doesn't seem controversial. It seems like a footnote, but at the time it was controversial and the Republicans attacked him. Did AIPAC and those folks sign off on it, or did Schumer just go off half-cocked on his own? I'm not sure, but my understanding is that AIPAC at least gave a tacit approval to the speech.

There's this thought in Washington that the problem is Netanyahu, and if we can blame everything on Netanyahu, then we can maintain the status quo with Israel. And the problem with that is, as the Biden administration has found out in its meetings with Benny Gantz, for instance, the policy is not going to change. I mean, it has the possibility of getting much worse under somebody else. Netanyahu has, you know, he's the most capable Israeli political figure in terms of speaking to the American people and propagandizing the American people and sort of, I guess, selling the Israeli Zionist, the settler-colonialist genocidal project to the Americans. And as you can see, to your point about the Republicans, we have Mike Johnson inviting Netanyahu to speak to

Congress and going, I'd love to have you. That would be wonderful. And Chuck Schumer said he's looking forward to that as well and saying that our relationship is so ironclad that it doesn't hinge on any one prime minister or any one president of the United States. So even though Chuck Schumer gave a speech where he called Netanyahu an obstacle to peace. He's saying that, you know, he's very thrilled to have Netanyahu come in and promote his genocide and U.S. funding of it to the American legislative branch. And how many standing ovations will Netanyahu get from the American Congress. Last time he did this, it was 29 standing ovations. I'm sure they'll time it so that there's more this time. It is a basic principle of law that whoever knowingly aids, abets, in this case funds a felony is guilty of the felony. In this case, the felony is a war crime. The felony is genocide. Joe Biden, Tony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, Jake Sullivan, and now members of Congress are just as culpable, in my view, legally, for the genocide as are Benny Gantz and Defense Minister Gallant and Netanyahu himself. But they don't see it that way. And the press won't make that argument. People like you will make that argument.

People like I will, folks on this show will, and a few other shows. But that's it. Many Congress members who are confronted by anti-war protesters, whether they're with Code Pink or other organizations, are happy to tell you that they endorse genocide. They may not use that term, but they will say you can say goodbye to Palestine and we're standing on the Palestinians throats. One, I apologize that I'm blanking on the congressman's name, but it's in one of the articles I've written. There was a young lady who said to him, why are my tax dollars going to murdering Palestinian infants every single day? And he said, well, I think we should kill them all. You know, I don't know his name either. First name, Andy, Republican from Tennessee, said to one of the Code Pink girls, we should kill them all. And then she challenged them and he turned around while continuing to walk.

So he's like this. And he repeated it. Yeah. And then they tried to weasel out of it, saying he was talking about Hamas. But he was very clearly responding to this complaint about murdering babies. belief, obviously I haven't seen any of the evidence, but the growing belief on the part of Russian officials and Russian commentators that the United States through the CIA and Great Britain through MI6 knew about this, knew more about it than they revealed, and the growing belief on the part of these same people, Russian figures, political and journalistic, that Ukraine was involved in this. between this horrific event and Ukraine or any deliberate indifference on the part of the United States

or even any taunting by Mrs. Newland in the weeks before she left? Well, like you, her repeated quotes about nasty surprises on the battlefield coming soon was sort of bouncing around in my head when I saw the news of the horrible massacre. At this point, I'm not sure I can connect those dots. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the evidence that Russia is going to present. It's pretty damning that the assailants were fleeing to Ukraine or attempting to flee to Ukraine. And then a window, as Putin has described it, had been opened up along the border. You know, I mean, at the same time, we've seen so many attacks by neo-Nazi militias armed with NATO weaponry and American armored vehicles,

including just as recently as this month, where they were attacking civilian areas, for instance, in the Belgrade region on the border with Ukraine and kidnapping civilians. I mean, to your question about is there a difference? I certainly don't think that the cabal in Washington is shedding tears over 139 dead Russians and hundreds more injured. Again, you have a similar situation where you have a neo-Nazi militant group armed with American weapons going and kidnapping Russian civilians. And there's no, you know, I mean, it's not like we are still hearing in the midst of the genocide that, you know, nothing justifies what happened on October 7th. They took prisoners and all the usual propaganda spin about what happened on October 7th with a lot of the false claims, whether it's the mass rape or the beheaded babies and this

sort of thing. But here we are, on the other hand, endorsing it. And it and in fact reuters i was just reading a piece this morning from these neo-nazis who were saying we get intelligence support logistics support medical evacuation assistance and ammunition from ukrainian military intelligence and the russian volunteer corps has been tied with uh ukrainian military intelligence for a while and they were launching these attacks last year and happy to tell the financial times in fact a ukrainian military intelligence official was happy to say they were tied with this group at the uh last year as well and so uh you know and also there's been great reporting going back um years since the overthrow of the uh ukrainian government in 2014 that there have been isis

fighters fighting against russian ethnic russian separatists in the Donbass, meaning alongside the neo-Nazi militias employed by Kiev. And so, and Robert Perry covered this extensively at Consortium News, the late, great Robert Perry, and also it was covered at The Intercept. So there is a history of the Islamic State being involved in this war on the side against Russia. And so I'm looking forward to seeing more evidence at this point um i can't connect those up but i think uh we would be uh naive to rule it out of course that there's a connection with mi6 cia uh or ukrainian military intelligence here's a clip from dr g. Gilbert Doctorow, one of the EU's foremost

authorities on Russia. Number 17, Chris, I want you to listen. It's in English. He's American. His PhD is from Columbia. I want you to listen to the concluding line of this clip. We have many clips from him, but the concluding line says the Russians are accusing the United States and Great Britain. And that puts us in a situation as critical as we've ever been in since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But here he is, number 17. The Russians are saying that the Ukrainians proceeded with a terror attack against the objections of the United States because it had lost its rationale. It was supposed to take place before the elections. Instead, the Ukrainians staged it one week after the elections. And there is a point of dispute.

But when you say that the Russians are accusing Ukraine, I think it's missing the bigger issue. The Russians are accusing the United States and Great Britain. And that puts us in a situation as critical as we were in the worst days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I mean, this could very well, well, I'll let Professor Doctoroff speak. I want you to listen to one more. This could very well result in the flattening of Kiev. Cut number 18, Chris. The discussions now on the premier Russian talk shows,

and I have in mind the Vladimir Solovyov show of last night, have taken a radical turn towards violence. One of the Duma members, a member of a key committee on relations with the former Soviet Union, said last night openly, it's time to raise Kharkov to the ground. We should give Kharkov as where the terrorist attacks, the Russians call them terrorist attacks, they are missile and artillery attacks and also border incursions on the Belgorod frontier region of Russia. They're coming from Kharkiv. They are intolerable.

Dozens of Russian civilians are being killed each week, and that makes very bad news on Russian television. And there are patriots who say, time to finish this. The Ukrainians are no longer our friends. They never again will be our friends. And it's time to give a notice to Kharkiv that everyone should get in their car, pack their cars and head west because we're going to level Kharkiv to the ground. That language did not exist until after this terrorist event. There's also talk yesterday on the Solovyov show. It's time to flatten the presidential palace in Kiev,

time to flatten all of the decision-making military and civilian institutions in Kiev. That violent language did not take place until now. Now Putin, President Putin is known for being calm and being measured. But this slaughter of now 140 people, mainly young people, at a concert on a Friday night might unleash his wrath. What do you think? I mean, if even the Kremlin believes that there's reason to assume that Ukraine was involved in this or that. And of course, you know, it's like Putin says, what we talk about negotiations, we're talking about with Washington because Washington calls the shots in this war, not Ukraine. They very much understand what's going on here. And of course, they've been escalating the drone attacks against Russian territories within the mainland over the last several months and really the last year. And there was an article in The Economist last year where they were boasting how, look,

this relies on Western intelligence. They give us all this intelligence on the radar systems and the air defenses and the electronic warfare systems. And that's how we bypass their defenses or we're able to hit targets in Moscow, including residential areas, as well as elsewhere across Russia, including hundreds of miles into the mainland, attacking Russian air bases where nuclear capable bombers are stored.

And this is, I think, much more serious because of just the massive death toll. And that is interesting that this attack was supposed to be, or these claims that it was supposed to be launched in the lead up to the elections, because there has been rhetoric from the Ukrainian regime and its supporters that we want to bring the war to Russia to instill psychological terror in the Russian population and bring the war to its symbolic centers, as Zelensky has previously said, to Russia's symbolic centers. And so, you know, I mean, of course, the pressure from the Russian public and the hardliners in the government is going to be immense on Putin to respond very

forcefully. And it could result, as Professor Dockereau was saying, in the flattening of Kharkiv or extensive attacks in Kiev, or just more attacks on the energy grid and civilian infrastructure. At this point, the Russians have not attacked, they have not attempted to cause mass civilian casualties in this war. It's not like what Israel is doing in Gaza, but it could go that way, or they could escalate in Syria as well. This is no doubt very dangerous. And I think, as he said, that we are, we were already, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, for almost, I think, two years now, maybe a year and a half, we've been closer to nuclear war than ever in our history, including since the Cuban Missile Crisis. So this just takes us much closer to the war than ever in our history, including since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So this just takes us much closer to the absolute precipice. Though Scott Ritter reports that the original attack was scheduled for March 8th, that one of the four killers was actually seen scoping the place out on March 7th. March 8th was a concert by a fellow named Shaman, who's the Billy Joel, if you will, if I can use my generation, forgive me, of Russia, but a very, very super patriot. They wanted to attack the patriotic people there because a lot of Russian officials were going to be there,

and they wanted this to be before the election, and then they showed up and saw all the security for all the Russian officials, so they delayed. Now, whether they spoke to Mrs. Nuland or not, we don't know, but apparently their original plan was the 8th, and then they moved it to the 22nd. All right, Connor, great chatting with you, my dear friend, and I can tell you from the size of the audience and the comments, it's much appreciated. Thank you so much for your time. Happy Easter to you and your family, and we'll see you again soon.

You as well, Jeff. Thank you so much. See you soon. Thank you. Coming up later today, my dear friends, we have Phil Giraldi at 3 o'clock Eastern, Aaronaldi at 3 o'clock Eastern Aaron Maté at 4 o'clock Eastern

Professor John Mearsheimer at 5 o'clock Eastern and just as a little heads up at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning the aforesaid Scott Ritter Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.