Judging Freedom - Kyle Anzalone, Opinion Editor - Antiwar.com | Why Do All Presidents Want War?

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

Kyle Anzalone, Opinion Editor - Antiwar.com | Why Do All Presidents Want War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate 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. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, January 4th, 2024. Kyle Anzalone joins us now.

Kyle is the news editor at the Libertarian Institute and the opinion editor at Antiwar.com and a colleague of our regular guest, Scott Horton. Kyle, I have been reading your work for a long time. It's a pleasure to meet you, even though we are thousands of miles apart, and it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you for coming here today. Thank you so much for having me on. I've been reading your work for a long time as well. Well, thank you. You focus on war and the horror and terror that wars cause and the reasons for war. So just taking a step back from the wars that we have been covering in Ukraine and in Gaza, why do you think American presidents like wars? Our libertarian colleague, Tom Woods, has a great one-liner, and that is, no matter who you vote for president, you end up with John McCain.

Right. Yeah. And another great one-liner is from Randolph Bourne, and Antiwar.com is, of course, associated with the Randolph Bourne Institute, which is, war is the health of the state. And that's one of the things that I really learned through Ron Paul when I was becoming a libertarian is so much of what the state does, so much of the power they grab is through the war issue and claiming that there's all these outside threats that they have to confront. That's why the defense department budget or the so-called Defense Department budget is so much larger than that of

all other agencies is because what the state dedicates itself to the most and how it fundles and lenders a lot of the money to the elite class of this country is through the empire and through the war state. You know, some people, innocent mourners were just killed at the grave of General Soleimani in Iran. And when I reminded people that General Soleimani was murdered by the United States while he was on his way to lunch in Iraq, they all thought, this was at a cocktail party around Christmas, they all thought it was done by Barack Obama. It was not. It was done by Donald Trump. So even Trump, who claimed to be against the overextension of the American Defense Department, was willing to use drones just like Barack Obama, just like George W. Bush, and just like Joe Biden. There doesn't seem to be any restraint because they know what they can get

away with. Yeah, absolutely. And also just like Benjamin Netanyahu, right, taking out a Hamas official in Beirut. And just like Soleimani, who was in Iraq on a diplomatic trip, he was there to try to work out a deal with Saudi Arabia that was going to be mediated through Iraq. And instead, Trump insulted the Iraqi government in such a large way by taking their diplomatic summit and turning it into a massacre, killing two very prominent figures, one, of course, Soleimani, and then the other, the leader of the Iraqi militia forces at the time. And so, you know, that was a huge strike. And just like, again, what Netanyahu did in Beirut by taking out the Hamas official, that was somebody who was engaged in diplomacy. And so these strikes not only are murder, but they are also setting back any kind of diplomatic efforts that you've had in the Middle East. You know, the Hamas official that Netanyahu's government just murdered not only was engaged

in diplomacy, he was engaged in negotiations for the return of Israeli hostages. He was the key communicator, the key line of communication between the negotiating team, American, Israeli, and Hamas, and the actual human beings that had control of the hostages. I guess, in a sense, that shows you what Netanyahu and his colleagues think of those hostages, that they were willing to assassinate the most important person on the other side involved in these negotiations. You have written recently about how horrific the circumstances have become in Gaza for children. Without being too graphic, can you tell us what your research has shown? Yeah. So, you know, it's really hard to get a lot of very good information out of Gaza.

And this is by design of the Israeli attack. There's a widespread communications blackout. It's very hard, not only for international organizations to bring aid into Gaza, but just to get their staff into Gaza to observe what's going on and try to especially get into the northern half of the Gaza Strip. Aid convoys have been fired on. So very good numbers are hard to come by. These are rough estimates. But UNICEF has reported that there have been a thousand amputations done on children of their lower extremities, children losing either one or both of their lower legs. I don't have any other figures as far as

amputations go. That was the only one I could confirm through an international source. I have seen other UN-associated officials say that there have been thousands of amputations on children. At least a good number of those amputations have been done without anesthesia, but I haven't gotten like, you know, seen a UN official actually say that's number of have been done that way. And part of the reason why is that this is just an utter chaos war zone situation. Doctors who were interviewed by Middle East Eye reported that they were doing SIDS amputations on children per night. And so, you know, trying to document and count things, it just isn't that important when you're talking about that volume of injuries going on that need to be treated. And so we really don't know the true numbers. Under what circumstances are many of these surgical amputations conducted?

Yeah. So the facilities are unsanitary. A lot of these amputations are taking place on the ground because there's no additional hospital beds. And of course, without anesthesia. So the kids are feeling all the pain that they're going through. So that's, you know, a part of the absolute whores. Another 500,000 plus Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are now in a state of starvation either upper respiratory infection or diarrhea. And the two combined together, you know, the infection plus the starvation is very lethal, particularly in children under five and the elderly. And there's a lot of, you know, talk about what the casualty count is in Gaza. And I really don't think we're even going to see the horrors until months down the line when they start to count all the young children who have died due to the deprivation inflicted on them by the Israeli

government. Does the Israeli government, do you think that the Israeli government really believes that it can stamp out Hamas? I mean, Hamas, I realize there are some horrible people in Hamas who have done horrible things, but essentially it's an idea. Do you think that the Netanyahu government believes that by this utter demolition and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, it can stamp out this idea? No, I don't think that's what they're doing. I think Netanyahu sees the military campaign in Gaza as his clinging not only to political life, but as you have pointed out on your show several times, also staying out of jail because there are serious corruptions and substantial corruption charges against Netanyahu that would certainly move forward if he was not prime minister of Israel.

And so he has to keep this conflict going. And if you need a perpetual war, what better enemy to have than an idea? We've seen what the U.S. has done. As my boss at the Libertarian Institute, Scott Horton, says so well that on 9-11, there were only a few hundred members of the al-Qaeda that were hanging out in caves in Afghanistan, because that was the only place they were welcome, and that was all they could do. And because the U.S. went to war with this idea, we now have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of jihadists spread all the way from North Africa to the Philippines,

who carry out more attacks now than ever before. And so this is only going to spread as even our chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Brown, pointed out that when you kill innocent civilians, you create more militants that are willing to fight against you. Well, I think that that's the catastrophic and colossal failure of American foreign policy in the post 9-11 years that whatever George W. Bush did to cover up his indifference and somnolence on 9-11 made things infinitely worse. South Africa, the nation of South Africa, has filed a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court, accusing it of genocide. We're going to play a clip in a minute. So this is Admiral Kirby, the spokesperson for President Biden's National Security Council,

being rather flippant about this lawsuit. And then there's a follow-up question about does the United States, just what I asked you a few minutes ago, Kyle, does the United States agree that Israel can defeat Hamas? So it's about a minute and a half, but it's interesting. I think it, I'm sorry to say, shows Admiral Kirby at his worst, but here he is. South Africa's filed this 84-page lawsuit against Israel, accusing them of genocide. Israel says that this is blood libel. Does Washington agree? And where does this put Washington and Pretoria? We find this submission meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever. What's the U.S. assessment of the larger goal that Israel has set to eradicate Hamas?

Is that still considered to be a realistic and wise military objective? I think I just answered that with Peter. We don't believe that military attacks alone are going to eradicate an ideology um and it's not likely that you're going to get rid of every single hamas fighter uh so in that sense i mean you still have to uh you still have to reconcile yourself with the fact that there may still be some Hamas around, even when your military operation is over. That said, what they absolutely can do is eradicate the threat that Hamas poses to the Israeli people. And you can do that by going after leadership. You can do that by going after

their infrastructure. You can do that by going after their resource. And we showed that with respect to ISIS and al-Qaeda. It can be done. ISIS and al-Qaeda still exist, but they are nowhere near the kind of threats that they once posed. So it can be done militarily. We can say that the allegations of ethnic slaughter are meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever. If he truly believes that, then he doesn't know what's going on and he shouldn't be in this whatsoever. If he truly believes that, then he doesn't know what's going on and he shouldn't be in this job. If he's just trying to put a good face on Joe Biden's failures, I get it. That's his job. Right. And the thing about that, Judge,

is when you look at what the South Africans did is they just compiled statements from Israeli government officials calling for the complete eradication of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. And so it's not that the South Africans are saying, oh, we're analyzing the data and it says that Israel is killing too many Palestinians. No, they're saying that the Israeli government is saying that the only way to move forward here is to completely remove the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. And the U.S. government has to know this because the U.S. condemned Itmar Ben-Gavir, a member of the Israeli war cabinet and, you know, a very prominent Israeli politician, for making statements about ethnic cleansing. And Ben-Gavir directly responded to the U.S. and said, you know, with

all due respect to our friends in Washington, we're going to do what we want here. And so what, you know, Kirby is saying there is just an utter lie. I guess he probably hasn't bothered to read what any of the Israeli officials are saying, if he intends us to believe. He's just not outright lying. And their friends in Washington, of course, are providing the means with which to carry this out. Our mutual friend and colleague, Max Blumenthal, has argued, I think quite persuasively, that without American support, this would stop tomorrow. There would be no spare parts for their military equipment, and they would run out of ammunition in a couple of weeks. I know that some people think, Tony Schaefer among them,

also one of our regulars, that the Israeli military can carry on without the U.S. aid. I don't think it can. And I think they know they have virtually a blank check from Joe Biden. Let's switch to Joe Biden's other catastrophic failure. This one far more glaring, far more obvious, far more universally, not universally, but far more widely grasped as a failure. And that, of course, is Ukraine. The latest event over there was the bombing of a town square in a Russian village at Christmastime, which killed a few dozen Russian civilians. What conceivable military purpose is served by Ukraine, which wants to portray itself as the good guy in this war, doing something like that. Even Putin has gone through great pains to minimize exposure to Ukrainian civilians of the Russian military forces. Yeah, so it seems to be a complete act of desperation on the part of Zelensky.

We know from a Time magazine report that even a adds to the Ukrainian president say that Zelensky has become delusional about this war. And so without the arms and ammunition needed and really the manpower needed for his troops to make gains on the ground in Ukraine and achieve his stated objectives, you know, he needs at least symbolic victories because there's been two reports this week, one in the Times of London detailing how Ukrainians are turning against the war, but they're afraid to speak out against it. And another in the New York Times explaining how the viewership of the Ukrainian 24 and 7 news program, the only television news allowed in Ukraine, has absolutely plummeted and people no longer believe it. They say all the rosy pictures painted just simply are not true. And so Zelensky is trying to paint pictures of success by carrying out attacks inside of Russia. This is only going to provoke larger and larger responses from Moscow in targeting Ukrainian infrastructure.

And it's unclear how long Ukraine is really going to have the air defenses they need to defend their cities, especially if the U.S. doesn't pass more aid for Ukraine soon. Well, you have recently done some work on the deplorable state of the Ukraine military. And isn't it true that they are nearly running out of ammunition and by their own mission, excuse me, by their own admission, are running out of ammunition and by their own admission are running out of manpower. Yes. Yeah. So both of those are true. We have Ukrainian frontline soldiers reporting only being able to fire 10 to 12, maybe at the most 20 artillery rounds per day where early in the war, they were firing hundreds of rounds per day due to a lack of ammunition. A lot of the artillery rounds they have are now cluster versus more conventional warheads,

which mean they're less effective for most of the targets that they're trying to hit. Ukraine is running out of air defenses. The U.S., in desperation, is taking on Japanese-made Patriot missiles so we could ship more of our Patriot interceptors to Ukraine. The U.K. has had to convert some of their air-to-air interceptors into ground-to-air interceptors in order to try to help out the Ukrainians. And their German tanks, only a few are still operational. And the German government is desperately trying to get its manufacturers to make more spare parts so they could get their Leopard 2 tanks back up and running. So the Ukrainian government is not in a great place. They're dropping their conscription age for non-previous veterans. So people who

previously had not served, the conscription age was 27 and that has now dropped down to 25. You see all these videos of them just scooping up young kids off the street and throwing them on the front lines, too. Has the Ukrainian public soured on the war? I mean, at one point, Zelensky was a hero. But now it appears, and you correct me if my observations are inconsistent with your superb research, Kyle. It appears that the Ukrainian public recognizes that but for the intervention of Boris Johnson and Joe Biden, there would have been peace two years ago without this destruction, without the loss of 500,000 human beings, mainly young men, either dead or so disabled they can't go back to fighting,

and that Zelensky is delusional if he thinks more American aid is coming and if he thinks that there's some miraculous way that they can win this war. Yeah, well, Zelensky operates a Soviet-style government, so people are afraid to speak out and tell the truth about the war. There's videos from throughout the war of Ukrainian soldiers going around and rounding up people who posted negative things about the war on social media. They've shut down churches that they feel are too pro-Russian. And so the level of control in Ukraine is at stream. They've nationalized the media. So a lot of things, there's probably a lot that Ukrainians don't know. But what we do know is that the Ukrainian people are turning off their TV because they don't believe what they're seeing on it. We know that

the Ukrainian people are saying that a truce would be good, but are afraid to speak out on it. So, you know, there is that forming within Ukraine, it'll just be, I guess, a matter of time before the truth really starts to get out to them because Zelensky has such a stranglehold on Russia for the past 20 years, many of whom now advise the president, recognize the wrongfulness of what they've done. Do you think their attention is just going to turn elsewhere to Gaza and Israel or to China, wherever else they, Iran, wherever else they want to start another war? That certainly seems to be the plan. I'm sure if it went the way they wanted, they would never stop talking about it. But wars never go the way they want. just carried out some drills on simulating the assassination of Kim Jong-un and are now carrying out live fire drills on the Korean Peninsula. So stoking tensions there, making sure there's always a conflict to disperse the Americans' attention to. Now, Kyle, I didn't know that. The U.S. held a mock assassination of Kim Jong-il

in South Korea, publicized to the people in the North. So, yeah, this was reported quite quietly by NK News last month, and the New York Post just had a write-up on it. I did one for the Libertarian Institute. But yes, U.S. Special Operations Forces met with their South Korean counterparts and simulated the assassination of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, and then also mop-up operations. And this are, I think they just concluded, their live-fire drills along the border. And those are, you know, out in the open for the North Koreans to see. You're a young person, and it seems like a about Democrats and the young liberals that want to have nothing to do with war on the other side of them. It seems to be going that way now. You know, Joe Biden had a track track record to be in the most firm Zionist in all of Washington for years and years and years.

And during the Obama administration, he worked to undermine the president to adopt a more favorable policy towards Netanyahu and the Israeli government. And so everybody who voted for Biden in 2020 should have known that if a war were to break out in Gaza, that the result would be something like what we're seeing here. But now that they are actually seeing it, we are seeing poll numbers. Trump is polling better among young people and Latinos than Biden is. His approval rating, particularly among young Americans, is low. His approval rating on his foreign policy is particularly low. All those numbers are in the 30 percent tile

along with his approval rating. So this is not going well for Biden. I think, you know, there are a lot of people in my generation who were either swept up in the fervor of the, you know, Bush-Iraq war or were opposed to it at the time. And, you know, the war certainly went poorly. There's nobody in my generation. There's a few. I've met a few neocons in my generation, but a very small number. Most people at least know that the Iraq War

was a complete disaster. And for that reason are at least somewhat sympathetic to the idea of staying out of Middle East conflicts. Kyle Anselone, boy, it has been a pleasure. You and I didn't even know each other, but we knew of each other before a half an hour ago. But thank you very much for your time and your thoughtfulness and your intellect and the clarity with which you explained all the things that you have found in your research and have articulated in your

writings. And I can tell from the comments by the viewers, A, there's a good number of them, and B, they like what they saw and heard. All the best to you. Thank you so much. Of course. Coming up today at four o'clock Eastern, just you and me, ask the judge.

Send in your questions ahead of time because we try to go through that questions before we start so that we can just give you 20 or 30 minutes of your questions and my answers. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time. Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu.