Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone: Biden Widens War!

Episode Date: January 23, 2024

Kyle Anzalone: Biden Widens War!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 Monday, January 22nd, 2024. Kyle Anzalone from libertarian.org and antiwar.com joins us now. Kyle, always a pleasure. Glad you could be here and thank you for coming back. Thank you for having me back on. Sure. Is the United States preparing for an open-ended war against the Houthi group in Yemen? Yeah, absolutely. That's what's going on right now. There's a new report out in the Washington Post talking with U.S. government officials who explained that they have little exit strategy and no firm end date for the war in Yemen, but they're going to continue to carry out attacks anyways. We also had a report out from Bloomberg yesterday that explained that the

U.S. and U.K. are looking at ways to escalate the conflict. So not only does it seem endless at this point, but also that they're looking to escalate it. Take a look at this. You may have seen it. It's ridiculous. It's Joe Biden, President Biden, right outside the White House, being asked a question about whether or not his bombing of the Houthis is, quote, working. Are the airstrikes in Yemen working? Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue?

Yes. I mean, does the United States stand in a position to stop the Houthis, or is this just the beginning of a wider war? Because that's what Prime Minister Netanyahu wants. He wants to draw the U.S. in. Yeah, well, it certainly seems like the start of a wider war. And you're talking about not just Yemen there, but potentially Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and even Iran. But in that particular comment, I think that's Biden and some of his most honest that we've seen him during his presidency. It makes absolutely no sense, but the US policy for Yemen largely doesn't. The US from 2015 until 2022, bad Saudi

Arabia waging an absolutely brutal war in Yemen. And they were unable to remove the Houthis from power. Not only that, the Houthis got stronger as time went on and fought the Saudis to stand still. And Saudi Arabia ended up having to ask Yemen for peace. And that's the peace that they're negotiating right now. And the Saudi war in Yemen was absolutely brutal. During the middle of a cholera epidemic in the country, they were bombing cholera treatment facilities. They were depriving the country of food, water, bombing farms, factories, anything that you could find. Even school buses were bombed by U.S. bombs by Saudi Arabia and Yemen. And still, the Houthis did not relent. And the U.S. is certainly not going to wage a more brutal war in Yemen than the Saudis did. And they used American technology and warplanes and things

like that to do it. And so the tech is the same as well. And so there's no reason to expect that the U.S. will be able to dislodge the Houthis from power or force them into to meet their demands. Does the American public know that the American military bombed school buses and murdered children in a country in which the Congress never declared war or authorized the use of military force and for purposes that the president can't even articulate? You know, they certainly should, because this was reported in CNN. It was Saudi Arabia, you know, with all U.S. help maintaining their planes, all the logistic help flying their planes, and using U.S. made bombs to hit that

school bus. I think that was in 2018. It was reported in CNN that was a U.S. bomb and everything, but it didn't turn the American people against the war. Didn't two Navy SEALs recently die in some effort? I don't know exactly what they were doing. Were they trying to board Houthi ships? What were they doing at sea that caused them to be killed or to die? So this occurred 10 days ago, and it occurred around the same time, within maybe a few hours of the initial round of U.S. airstrikes in Yemen. And what they claimed, they were intercepting a ship that Iran had sent with components on it for Houthi missiles. And they were sending that from Iran to Yemen when it got intercepted.

What they say is during rough seas, an eight foot wave forced the American Navy SEAL off the ship they were trying to board. And apparently it's Navy SEAL policy for the next man to jump in after. And so after 10 days, they gave up the search and amid the soldiers died. But it now seems like this is a part of the war effort against Yemen, trying to intercept these components. They published pictures of them. They claim they're from Iran. The US has made this claim several times. It could be true. I don't see any reason to believe the Pentagon just because they published a picture okay so there are ships in the red sea destined for uh israel with supplies for the israeli government and the israeli public and the hooties are stopping them and that's uh wrong and the u.s has got to break that up

uh but if there are ships destined for the hootis with supplies for them, the U.S. can stop those ships. And that's right. Yeah. Now, right. Yeah. And they've been doing that since 2015 on. And not just, you know, ships that the U.S. claims has weapons. But Saudi Arabia has forced even, you know, U.N. and other international organizations, aid ships, to undergo a very intense inspections protocol that would force ships, even those going to southern Yemen that were in a city that was in the hands of the Saudi-backed government, to have all their goods inspected in Saudi Arabia and then sail to Yemen from there. And so this really slowed down aid transport to Yemen for years.

And there's been about 400,000 people at the very least who have died from the Saudi war in Yemen. And about half of those deaths, I think actually the number is 60%, was from starvation. And so the U.S. blockade of Yemen was far more consequential than the Houthi attempt to reroute Israeli ships from the Red Sea. And now Congress wants to do what? Congress wants to pay the military industrial complex to produce more weapons to replace those that were expended or destroyed in this undeclared, unauthorized, illegal war against Yemen. Yeah, that's right, Judge. We have a case here where Biden has unilaterally declared the authority to just wage an endless war in Yemen, and Congress is looking to take action, but not to rein in the president, just to fund, give extra funding to the

Pentagon to replace the missiles that they're using there. And so this seems to be spearheaded so far by Mitch McConnell. And what they want to do is that massive aid bill that they're using there. And so this seems to be spearheaded so far by Mitch McConnell. And what they want to do is that massive aid bill that they've been talking about with border security and Ukraine aid, aid for Israel, they also want to include, I'm guessing, a few billion dollars for Tomahawk missiles and sea-based interceptors to replace what's being used here in the war in Yemen. You ever see on C-SPAN Rand Paul standing on the floor of the Senate making a speech using one of the words that's forbidden in Washington, D.C., peace, P-E-A-C-E.

You might occasionally see something from one of the lefties as well. So C-SPAN's camera, I know this personally, is stationary. It can't move. But if it could, you'd see that the Senate is empty. That when Rand Paul uses the word peace, he's not staring at Mitch McConnell's face or Chuck Schumer's face. There's nobody there because the Senate is not interested in a debate about war and peace. The war party in Congress, which is about 80% of both parties in both houses, just wants to kill. And they're happy, I think, give me your view on this, when the president does this on its own, because if something goes bad,

they can't take the blame. And if something goes well, they'll say, well, we funded it. Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. That's why Congress isn't acting in one way to, you know, institute the War Powers Act to rein in President Joe Biden and say, you absolutely cannot do this. You know, they can also cite the Constitution for that, but neither of those things are happening. They're just going to fund the wars. You know, from Congress, it seems like mostly positive, Biden bombing Yemen. There are some members of Congress, particularly Democrats, who have come out and said that they're opposed to it. Also, some of the, you know, better Republicans, especially Congressman Thomas Massey, have come out and said that we cannot allow this

to happen. It's a violation of our Constitution. But it seems more likely what's going to happen is Congress is just going to fund this. And that's the way they're going to give approval for Biden to do this. Thomas Massey is terrific on this, except he's in the House of Representatives where they give you one minute to speak. At least in the Senate, paul gets to speak as mine uh here's uh john kirby cut number two uh chris on uh well who t is a ceasefire and what joe old joe thinks he can accomplish does the administration believe that the hooties will stop their attacks if there's a ceasefire in Gaza.

And does that play a factor into the calculus of pushing it? Secretary Mnuchin I think you've got to take anything the Houthis say with a grain of salt. We're not taking what they say to the bank. And this idea that this is somehow about Gaza just doesn't square with the facts. I mean, most of the ships that they're going after have nothing to do with Israel. So we're not taking anything at face value. They need to stop these attacks. We've got capabilities available to us to use it if we have to.

Just to clarify, what's happening in the Red Sea, the attacks from the Houthis, does not play a factor into the calculus of whether or not you're pushing Israel for a ceasefire? No. You know, I never know whether to believe him or not. I know it's difficult being a spokesperson for somebody else, but he's really a modern day Western version of Baghdad Bob, who just put spin on everything. attacking Americans in Iraq? And does the government of Iraq want the Americans to get the hell out? Yeah, the government of Iraq is desperate not to have its country turn into a battlefield between the U.S. and Iran, which seems more and more likely. There's this group of Shiite militias in Iraq that, you know, are associated with the

security forces of the Iraqi government, but also are, you know, independently and on their own. And they have the ability to do this because they were crucial in defeating ISIS in Iraq when, you know, the U.S. policy in Syria absolutely blew up and created the Islamic caliphate. And so because of this, these groups have a lot of sway in Iraq, and they're very unhappy with what the U.S. is doing, not just occupying Iraqi territory, but also backing the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. And so they've been carrying out, on average, about two attacks a day on U.S. forces since mid-October. And Judge, you know, the real concern here is that there's a new report out in the New York Times where U.S. officials are explaining that they're worried that eventually one of these attacks is going to kill an American soldier and they will be forced.

Their view, the White House's view, is that that will force them to carry out an attack inside Iran and start a war with the Iranians. And so, you know, just like in that clip you play from John Kirby before, the Americans won't look at the situation here and say, oh, we have to address the situation, what's going on in Gaza, but rather everybody else in the region must meet our demands or else we'll go to war with all of you, whether it's in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, or even Iran. Well, every one of those countries that you mentioned, except for Iran, as far as I know, we have troops there. It's almost as if they have targets on their back. Come and get us. Oh, an American was killed in Syria. What are Americans doing in Syria? Did I miss some declaration of war against Syria? Everybody from Lindsey Graham to Victoria Nuland and everybody in between will say it's time for war. It's time to fight back. They hurt an American. They killed an American.

Okay, the American didn't belong there, but they killed the American. Is this their game, Kyle? Yeah, it certainly seems like there's a lot of neoconservatives in Washington who, and Biden has allowed this to happen to himself. But, you know, they've helped Biden to paint himself into a corner here where the only solution ever to anything is escalation. And so you can't have diplomacy with the Houthis or with the Iranians in order to de-escalate tensions here. No, the solution has to be that we bomb them into submission. And so Biden has, you know, said this.

And what does the situation now call for, which is escalation after escalation. So the U.S. is going to bomb, the Houthis are going to bomb the Shia militias. They'll strike back until American soldiers end up dying. And every single American soldier that dies, you'll have Trump, Nikki Haley, Lindsey Graham, all of Washington, particularly the Republicans saying that the response has to be striking inside Iran. And eventually, you know, I'm worried they're going to get the war that they so desperately want. What happens when an American civilian is killed? A 17-year-old Palestinian boy was murdered by the IDF in the West Bank, shot once in the shoulder, once in the head, dead. He was born in Louisiana.

As American as you and I. What does the State Department do about it? What does the government give a damn? Yeah, well, the State Department actually has, you know, just for Israel, they have a special process, and this was recently reported on in The Guardian, where if Israel is accused of committing a war crime or some kind of atrocity with U.S. weapons, that would normally trigger the Leahy Law and would prevent weapons from going to the Israeli defense forces or at least a portion of the IDF. But rather, when it comes to Israel, they have a particular process where they have

to get consensus from a whole bunch of bureaucrats that Israel really, truly did do something wrong, and then Israel gets to review it and dispute it. And through this process, Israel has been able to kill other Americans, most prominently Shireen Abu Akleh, who was a Palestinian American journalist who was killed while on duty by an Israeli soldier. And this got whitewashed in the American media

and nobody cared, even though investigation after investigation proved the Israeli forces just opened up on a group of journalists and killed one. What conceivable defense is there or stated differently? What conceivable military purpose is served by killing a journalist, killing a 17 year old Palestinian American boy? Well, if you're going to carry out widespread war crimes, you need to target the journalists. And we saw this with the killing of Shrein Abu Akleh in the West Bank a couple of years ago. But more recently, we've seen it time and time again in Gaza, where not only has Israel knocked out the communications, caused the internet and cell phone blackout,

so it's very hard for journalists to publish any information, but also just killing over a hundred journalists. Now, uh, Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israel and Gaza so far. So, you know, it really helps to cover up the war crimes. If you're going to commit them to make sure nobody's there to report on them. Uh, here's, um, a gentleman who was referred to in the Irish parliament as the butcher of Gaza. You'll recognize him immediately. A cut number six in Tel Aviv earlier today. We continue the war on all fronts.

We do not provide immunity to any terrorists, not in Gaza, not in Lebanon, not not in Syria and not anywhere else whoever tries to hurt us we hurt him regarding our hostages to date we have returned a hundred and ten of them back home and we are committed to returning them all this is one of the objectives of the war and military pressure is a necessary condition for its completion I work on this around the clock. But to be clear, I reject outright the terms of surrender of the monsters of Hamas. In exchange for the release of our hostages, Hamas demands the end of the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza, the release of all the murderers and rapists of the Nuhba,

and leaving Hamas intact. If we agree to this, our warriors fell in vain. If we agree to this, we will not be able to guarantee the security of our citizens. We will not be able to return the evacuees safely to their homes. And the next October 7th will only be a matter of time. He obviously made for domestic political consumption. I mean, his government, this was confirmed, I think, this morning in the Israeli press, told troops to shoot and kill Israeli captives on October 7 because they knew of the military, political, and diplomatic obstacles to

getting them returned. Do I have that right? Yeah. So this is a new report out from Israeli media that just goes through the Israeli orders given on October 7th. And this is becoming very important, Judge, because we were meant to believe that 1,400 Israeli citizens, civilians, were killed on October 7th initially. And while that number has been whittled down to about 700, a large portion of those now seem were killed by the Israeli military. And that would certainly go against the narrative that initially came out, which is Hamas just broke into southern Israel and butchered people person after person. And that's why Israel is so now allowed to do whatever they want in Gaza is because, you know, we've seen what happens.

The Hamas butchers will get out. And so we have to kill them all, even though that's really impossible. And Netanyahu there talking about wanting to return the captives home is really rich. There's even reports out from the Israeli war cabinet that they understand that, you know, eliminating Hamas and getting the captives back are not both things that you could achieve. You can either cut a deal with Hamas to get the captives back, or you could, you know, continue fighting and trying to eliminate Hamas, which isn't really an achievable objective either. But yeah, that's the Israeli policy right now,

which seems to be killing a lot of its own captives in Gaza rather than trying to free them. Switching to Ukraine, one of our colleagues, Patrick Lancaster, called in the wee hours of Sunday morning saying there's just been missiles fired at an open-air market on a Sunday morning saying there's just been missiles fired at an open-air market on a Sunday morning in Donetsk, and I'm here, and I'm ready to go on air and report it. And he did come on air, and we did do an interview with him yesterday. It was heartbreaking. The bodies were still warm,

and he was there. Chris is running the tapes now. We blurred it so as not to upset anybody by the sight of dead bodies and so as to comply with the YouTube regulations, which we respect. But Patrick, there he is, is in front of a camera explaining that the missiles just suddenly arrived and slaughtered what at the time was 25. He counted 25 dead. It turns out there were 27. Again, no legitimate military purpose served by Ukraine doing this. There's the aftermath, one of the aftermaths. Well, Judge, if you look at what's going on on the front lines now, it's try to weaken Russia through Ukraine. And so it's really disturbing.

My guess is it's going to continue. And my colleague at Antiwar.com went through and after he found out that they were 155 millimeter and 152 millimeter shells that were used in this massacre. He went through and noted that the U.S. has transferred Ukraine about 2,155-millimeter shells and 200,152-millimeter shells. And so it's very likely that American weapons were used in this slaughter of civilians. Have you heard what we've seen a little bit bubbling under the surface? This has to do with war crimes, and I'm going to go back to Israel now. That South Africa may bring a complaint or a cross-complaint against the United States for being complicit in Israeli war crimes. You just reminded me of this when you reminded me that this slaughter that occurred Sunday afternoon in downtown Donetsk was perpetrated by weaponry supplied by the U.S.

Would the U.S. supplying of weaponry for what we know to be genocide in Gaza trigger an action against the U.S. at the International Court of Justice? My understanding is it could. I'm not an expert on international law, so I can't say for sure what qualifies as actually supporting. But in the past, the U.S. officials have been worried about their support for Saudi Arabia and Yemen amounting to things that would make them being able to be indicted for international war crimes. And the war Saudi Arabia waged against Yemen was pretty close to the level of brutality targeting a civilian infrastructure, widespread death of civilians, restricting of aid, causing plagues and starvation that was widespread and killed a lot of people. more support to Israel than we gave Saudi Arabia through that war would make American officials right now in the Biden administration. So Biden, Blinken, John Kirby, and the rest of these

cretins would certainly need to be prosecuted for war crimes. Certainly, I think they're guilty of them on my own moral compass. The international press is reporting this morning that the IDF has desecrated or destroyed 16 cemeteries in Gaza. Again, I ask, what conceivable military purpose is served by desecrating and destroying a cemetery? Well, the Israeli military is going to claim that they're doing it, looking for the bodies of dead hostages to confirm that they're being killed. And again, if that's a concern of Israel, they could just negotiate a deal right now with Hamas to get their hostages back. But in reality, this seems like a part of an ethnic cleansing campaign or a genocide to me, you know, destroying the cemeteries is in a way destroying the roots of the culture

in that particular place. And it's just a way to force the Palestinians out. And, you know, the Israeli government has said that, oh, Hamas is launching a task from these cemeteries. But if you look at the images, it's clearly bulldozed. It's not like, you know, they fired an artillery round and there's a crater there. They just, they destroyed and desecrated these burial places. And again, I think it's a part of the genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign. Where is the anti-war movement in the United States? Is there an anti... I know you work for antiwar.com, but when I was your age, way back when, there was a huge anti-war movement against Vietnam. Where is that anti-war movement today? Well, I certainly hope it's building and

it's coming. I will say I feel a little bit more energy in the anti-war movement now than even in maybe 2022 when there was a it is, there are people who really do want to have a more restrained foreign policy. Unfortunately, all of our political leaders are all hots. And so even when we're presenting with choices for the upcoming election, there's not a single candidate who is calling for ending U.S. support for Israel. That's not even an candidate who is calling for ending U.S. support for Israel. That's not even an option among the top candidates. We're looking at about 200,000 people in Washington, D.C., two Sundays ago. Nowhere mentioned in the mainstream media. Kyle, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend.

Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back again next week. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back again next week. Thank you so much for having me. All the best. Very smart young man. Coming up at four o'clock Eastern today, the great Professor John Mearsheimer. Can Israel have it both ways? Can it both destroy Hamas and save the hostages at the same time? The answer is obvious. The analysis will be something to behold. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.