Judging Freedom - Killing is Not Slowing Down in Ukraine Russia War w/Tony Shaffer, fmr DoD

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Killing is Not Slowing Down in Ukraine Russia War w/Tony Shaffer, fmr DoDSee 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 Monday, August 14, 2023. Tony Schaefer joins us in just a minute. And I'm going to ask him what he has to say about the neocons now pointing fingers at each other, suggesting that the reason Ukraine is losing is because Joe Biden has been too little too late. So Americans should have caused more killing. But first this. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Lear Capital.

You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital because it's the right thing to do because the government is regulating too much and printing too much money and reducing the value of everything you earn and everything you own. And the best hedge against this is gold and silver. That's what I've done. I know the folks at Lear. I trust the folks at Lear. I've worked with the folks at Lear. And I use their advice when it comes to my investing in gold and silver. You should do the same. Call them at 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenap.com. You'll have a very nice conversation with a very knowledgeable person who will send you literature to read, which you can review with your spouse and your financial advisor, and then you can call them back and decide what you want to do. Why Lear?

Lear has 25 years experience and thousands of five-star reviews and a 24-hour risk-free guarantee. And when you have this conversation with the Lear representative, you'll find out if you can qualify for a $15,000 gold bonus. So call Lear now, 800-511-4620 or learjudgenap.com. Tony Schaefer joins us now. Tony, always a pleasure. Before we get to John Bolton in this morning's Wall Street Journal, do you think that the Ukrainians have recognized that their spring offensive was nothing, their summer offensive is a failure, and is the war moving to the Black Sea? The war is definitely moving to the Black Sea.

I think that's been an objective. The Sea of Azov has been an objective of the Ukrainian military for at least as long as the offense has been ongoing. Do they realize it? Well, Judge, I think anybody who's rational understands what they're seeing on a daily basis. The American media has been corrupted, but I think they're starting to recognize some of this. I've seen interviews over the weekend of foreign correspondents, U.S. correspondents, which were pretty accurate in representing what was going on.

And they're even noting that the Russians are returning to the offensive in the north, which they are. The Ukrainians have had to evacuate buildings. So, Judge, I don't know how you can avoid understanding you're evacuating buildings because the Russians are regaining momentum and are back on the offensive. That is a fact. The British media has been the worst about this, where they, I think, more than any other nation, have been perpetrating a fiction on the world saying that, oh, no, no, no, Ukraine is going to win. It's just a matter of them catching their pattern, essentially their rhythm. I just think that at this point, there's no way to, if you're in the Ukrainian military, you know what's going on at this point. So you and I have known each other for a long time.

We worked together at Fox News. We also worked with John Bolton. John Bolton, I respect his intellect, but disagree with him on just about everything. He and I have had many friendly knockdown drag outs, but here he is in this morning's Wall Street Journal, basically saying too little, too late. The administration's timid. He's speaking of the Biden administration's timid, haphazard approach to aid has fractured U.S. public support. Mr. Biden has compounded this problem with his insistence that the war is about Wilsonian abstractions of democracy versus authoritarianism. Theories about price caps on Russian oil have failed and Western sanctions generally remain piecemeal and seriously under-enforced. Well, what does he want us to do? Have the 101st airborne land in Eastern Ukraine and start World War III? I think this is all by design. I don't think the,

John is a bright man and the representations he puts forth are, I think, factually correct. With that said, the goal is not to win, Judge. The goal of the Biden administration is to maintain the appearance of winning. This is woke goes to war I I don't think John gets that there's no interest in winning it's all about trying to enrich those who were bribed I do believe Joe Biden was bribed I think there's no doubt at this point that he accepted funds and did things uh that were inappropriate at the minimum uh probably criminal at worst and And there's Jake Sullivan, the Institute for War, Victoria Nuland. These people are not serious about winning. It's all about appearances. If you wanted to win, you would bring in someone like a Schwarzkopf, a Norman Schwarzkopf, and say, General,

we want to achieve these five things. How do we do it? That's how we won World War II. We actually had generals who understood what the requirements were, logistically, strategy, and implementation at the tactical level. So there's not a whole lot. Isn't their goal, isn't the neocon goal? Now I'm trying to think like I think Victoria Nuland and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken think. Isn't their goal to degrade Putin, to humiliate Putin, embarrass him, to drive him from office?

And hopefully, I don't think that's going to work, get somebody to replace him that'll be easier to work with because they want to degrade Russia. They hate Russia. They think it's the old Soviet Union. They think it's the old Soviet Union. They think it's the old evil empire. Am I right? Yeah, well, there's many aspects of the current Russia that remain from the Soviet Union. I think Putin's attitude is one of those artifacts that remain. With that said, yes, that's what they're trying to do.

But again, they lack the intellect and understanding of how war works. They're not warriors. They're politicians politicians who have a an aspiration of using military action to to for conquest are as far as i'm concerned always going to lose they don't understand how to actually accomplish things so yes i i believe as john bolton said they did the sanctions they weren't going to work. They've done this kind of nipping on the edge of military activity. It hasn't worked. They, Nuland and the whole Biden White House project what they want. They work on aspirations, not on reality. It's almost like they have a collective psychosis, Judge, that they somehow believe that they just do X or Y.

It's going to result in the outcome that they want. It's literally governmental insanity at this point. So over the weekend, a Russian fighter jet destroyed a United States surveillance drone over the Black Sea. So I assume over the Black Sea is international waters and the Russian fighter jets can legally go there and the American drones can legally go there. That's correct. Yes. Okay. Are you surprised that the Russian fighter jet destroyed the American drone? And did the Americans, does the Biden administration or the CIA or the DEA or whoever sent the drone

acknowledge that it was there? So I haven't seen any acknowledgement yet, but I don't doubt it. And plus, you saw about eight months ago the Russian fighter spraying fuel on a drone, on one of our drones. Right. I remember that. Yeah. And we didn't respond other than saying, oh, this was a misunderstanding. So it's kind of like, okay. So it's, no, I think that there's going to be very little said about this. And basically, for most people understand, both DOD and CIA have surveillance drones, and they have lethal drones, both do. Oversight is completely separate. Legality for use is completely separate. So I don't even know whose drone this drone might be. All right. So how high up are the drones? And if it was surveillance, what can it see at that height? Well, if it's a high altitude, one of the later versions of the, I'm trying to think of the Predator and we've got some other global hawks. Global hawks have a long loiter time, George. They can hang up there for signals intelligence, which is just basically radio waves, communication intercepts, as well as precise video. They can do some level

of kind of zooming in on things from a distance. So they're very effective as kind of what we call an ISR, intelligence surveillance platform. But the fact that they were over international waters, I'm not sure how much good they would do, but it's very clear. And we know this, Judge, we've talked about this. The United States is providing the Ukrainians lethal intelligence support for purposes of striking Russian targets, which I think is a bad idea because it gets us in the middle of things we shouldn't be in the middle of. But I think that's what probably happened. The Russians decided to send a signal that they're not happy about what we're doing and took out the drone. Paul Jay Here's Jack Devine from last week

arguing that the Ukrainians have a new strategy, more offensive, take the war to Russia, and hopefully it'll work. What is the new strategy, Jackson, since the Supreme Attorney failed? They're clearly now taking the battle inside Russian territory, okay? This is a change of strategy in the last couple of months, and it's getting bigger. Now, I have mixed feelings about it, and one is I understand why they're doing it. I think they have to do it, but they must do it very carefully. They cannot hit civilian targets. In other words, this can backfire. But this is strange that they're attacking Russia on the motherland.

Who thought that the day Putin went into Ukraine, that the Ukrainians would be attacking their ships in the harbor, flying drones in front of the Kremlin? I mean, who thought that that's where we would be? All right. Flying drones in front of the Kremlin, a pinprick. Attacked a bank at 4 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday morning on the 40th floor. Blew out a couple of windows, a pinprick. But does he have a point that the Ukrainians are becoming more offensive? And does he have a point that the Ukrainians somehow think they can prevail if they move the theater of war to the Black Sea? Yeah. I have a question about Jack first. Does he have like a moonshine still in his house or something? Because he always seems to, I mean, I don't know,

that guy's kind of buoyant for all the wrong reasons, just saying. Tony, if I could read aloud the comments that our commenters make about Jack, I think YouTube would take me down. Eddie, let me, on a serious note, I don't know what Jack's thinking because any offensive action to date so far has been considered by Russia and most of the world, by the way, as a quote-unquote terrorist act. What the Ukrainians have done to go on the offensive has simply reinforced what Putin has been calling the Ukrainian government as a government of terrorists. So it's kind of like,

yeah, the actions Ukraine's taking in their new strategy is actually helping Putin in his narrative. So I don't know how that's helpful. I mean, I've done this a day or two, but I can't circle that square. So I don't know what Jack's talking about. The idea of a new strategy is, and that's, by the way, one of the fears I have heard from the Biden administration. You give them F-16s, next thing you know, you got F-16s flying low level into the Kremlin, dropping off napalm. And I'm just telling you, that's one of the fears.

So that's why they're, I don't think the F-16s are ever going to show up because of the very strategy Jack is promoting right now. You remember, and we ran this tape, it's an old tape, it's about a year ago, of Joe Biden saying, you know what F-16s in the hands of the Ukrainians mean? And then he got close to the microphone and whispered, World War III. He may very well have been right when he said that. A year later, he said, OK, we're going to give you F-16s. You've explained to us you can't just give them. It takes a year for their pilots to unlearn what they already knew, and then another year for them to learn it.

Two years from now, the war will be over. Where are the F-16s? Are they there, or are we not even letting them get there until their boys are trained to use them? No, you can't give them F-16s until there's a logistic system in place. There's a system for maintenance. There's a system for weapons. I mean, flying the airplane, Judge, is even though we're talking about six months, is the easy part. The next part is navigation in the aircraft, figuring out how weapon systems work, how to use those weapon systems as part of a team. Because when you fly, you fly with a flight of at least two, sometimes

12. And so it's not just the airplane. It's about the systems that go on the airplane. It's about the systems that that are used in conjunction with a larger weapon system that has to be put into the strategy. So there's like multiple layers of complexity here that is just you're not going to send them. You might as well send them tactical nukes and think that they're going to do something. I mean, that's the only thing you can give someone that would not require training, and they're not going to do that. So this is just, like I said, I think the Biden administration is just trying to do lip service at this point, to John Bolton's point.

I think John's correct. This is lip service to the Ukrainians. Here's the Biden administration doing more lip service. This is Admiral Kirby on with my friend and our former colleague, Martha McCallum. I mean, he's all over the place. He's talking about a domino theory. You know, if Ukraine falls, the world. He's talking about Putin might attack NATO. And she's trying to get him to acknowledge why the war is becoming less popular and why more people think we've already given them enough. But I'll let you watch, listen and analyze it as you see fit.

Sure. This poll says 51 percent of the U.S. say of those polled has the U.S. has done enough to stop Russian military actions in Ukraine. Forty eight percent say that we should do more. Those numbers have moved over the past few months, John, in the direction of we've done enough to help. Well, look, I think, you know, sure, there's lots of people all over the world that want this war to end. And we understand that. Heck, the Ukrainian people want it to end. They want it to end more than anybody. They'd love to see this war over and have their cities not be bombed and their children not taken away and abducted. We all want to see it end. But I also think that the American people understand what's at stake here. It's bigger than just Ukrainian sovereignty,

although that is first and foremost what it's about. It's about Mr. Putin. It's about sending a strong message to Russia that they can't just take another nation by force. And if he succeeds, Martha, I think the American people understand that if we just walk away from this and Putin is able to subjugate Ukraine, where does it stop then? And if you think that the cost to the United States has been high in supporting Ukraine, think about what the cost would be in blood and in treasure if Mr. Putin feels empowered to go ahead and attack NATO's eastern flank. Then we're in it and we're in it in a big way. I think the American people understand what's at stake here. I can't believe that a retired admiral could say something

that dumb that Putin is interested in attacking NATO. That is the last thing Putin wants. He would avoid it at all costs. I agree. And I think the posturing of NATO, as much as I don't think NATO could win against Russia right now, I don't think Putin wants to push towards that war. I think, as we've talked about, Judge, the biggest danger to the expansion of a war is miscalculation or accidental engagement in the Poland or in Poland, along the Polish border in Poland. I just don't think the Russians want that. The Russians have stated their goals very clearly. And again, he, John Kirby, at least I like to believe he does, should be studying Putin's speeches. Putin's is very clear and precise in the language he uses. He is trying to do a series of policy things using military

force and diplomacy that they've stated as goals since the beginning of the Russian Republic. It's all about what they believe to be their preservation as the Russian Republic. That's what it's about. And the longer they ignore the grievances of the Russians, the more this is going to be prolonged. I don't believe for a minute, as much as I know Putin's a thug, that he is indeed trying to work to help secure what he believes is important for Russia. I don't believe for a minute that he's insane, but he's not irrational. He clearly has a level of evil that he will do whatever it takes. But you have to separate that from the fact that he's doing it for purposes of preserving the Russian Republic.

Going on the offensive against NATO would not preserve the Russian Republic. It would indeed damage it. So, again, you need to look at the psychology of the man. And I don't know where John gets his points, but those were talking points from some think tank somewhere that I don't even know who would have given it to him. Those are not rational points. Talking about psychology and talking about being irrational. Here's President Zelensky talking about the circumstance to say this with a straight face, the circumstances under which Crimea will be returned to Ukraine. Today, I held a meeting on the content of our return policy, specifically regarding

Crimea and its reintegration. It is obvious that after the liberation of Crimea from occupation, economic opportunities, personal security for people, and a sense of real freedom, which has not been there since 2014, will return there. But all of this should not be just abstract. Every detail of the de-occupation of this should not be just abstract. Every detail of the deoccupation of Crimea should have a specific meaning. How exactly normal life returns, what exactly this means for Crimea and for all our people, this should be clear to everyone.

Step by step, we are making the deoccupation of Crimea more and more achievable and well thought out. Step by step, we are making the deoccupation of Crimea more achievable and well thought out. Step by step, we are making the deoccupation of Crimea more achievable and well thought out. What step by step is he talking about? I think he was referring to the first man mission by the Ukrainians to Mars, Judge, because he might as well be talking about putting a democratic colony on Mars at this point. What he's saying is complete fiction. I mean, come on. There's no indication they're anywhere near liberating Crimea, nor do they have the military capacity to do it. So this to me is, I don't even know what audience he's speaking to when he says this stuff. This is a distraction without any regard to the fact that it just makes him look like a clown.

And it does. There's no in-state that would at this point be apparent or available to them that will result in them doing anything in Crimea. So I don't know why he's saying this stuff. It's just insane. So the spring offensive failed. The summer offensive never got off the ground. Ukrainian forces moving eastward haven't even approached, much less breached, the first of the three Russian lines. They've come close, but not even the first line. Right. Okay. And Ukraine is the most mined country on earth, and we're making it worse by sending cluster bombs.

Where is this going to go, President Zelensky? I think that it's very clear, Judge, that no one has an idea of what they want to do at this point. And I think that's the danger that we face. We have an administration who's not seeking resolution or peace. They're simply trying to promote the neocon perspective on things, which means war and enriching those who make the weapons of war. That's what it is. What was it Smedley Butler

talked about? War is a racket. $113 billion buys you a lot of war, Judge. And so there's no adult in the room willing to sit down and say, this isn't working. It's time we enter into negotiations and discussions with Putin to bring an end to this. And look, we didn't win the Korean War. There's still an armistice there. During World War II, we lost the Philippines. It took time to understand that you're not going to win a battle if you don't have the resources and strategy to do it. That's where we're at.

There's no strategy. There's no amount of resources unless NATO comes in, which I still would not be confident NATO could win or prevail against Russia. So at this point, the only path forward is seeking a negotiated peace or ceasefire with Putin. That's the only path that's viable at this point. And yet President Zelensky keeps doing and saying what his MI6 and CIA masters tell him to do and say. Pretty much. I think so. I think that Zelensky is a victim or a volunteer to those who have provided the funding and support to this effort. back to 2014, Victoria Nuland's color revolution, where they forced Ukraine out of the orbit of

Russia into what they wanted to make it into the orbit of the EU. It hasn't worked. So it's time that they recognize that this was not a wise strategy and it's not going to result in the outcome that they want. Tony Schaefer, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Judge Gow. It's great to be here. Of course. More as we get it. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. And remember, we're looking out for your liberties. We'll be right back.