Judging Freedom - Larry Johnson: Strategic Conundrum - The United States Positioning in the Red Sea

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Larry Johnson: Strategic Conundrum - The United States Positioning in the Red SeaSee 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 Monday, January 15th, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time. the United States boxed in a corner? Is the United States the unindicted co-conspirator at the International Criminal Court in The Hague? But before we do, can you tell us about Gonzalo Lira, a person whose work many of us admired, an American citizen whom the American

government and the Ukraine government permitted to die a horrible death in a Ukraine prison. Yeah, Gonzalo was sort of an internet raconteur. He had the gift to be able to sit down, talk about a variety of subjects. But I came to know him when he was talking about Ukraine. And you know, Judge, that getting in front of a camera and being able to talk and keep people entertained and interested is a difficult thing to do. You've got that down pat. And Gonzalo Lira did, too. He had a unique talent and sort of a mischievous curiosity and he was not afraid to tackle icons and other narratives that were floating about. I stumbled across him in like two months into the war in Ukraine.

And he was talking about the, this is when the ghost of Kiev was rampant, the fighter pilot that shot down six Russian jets. Turned out it was from a video game. All the Russian tanks that were being destroyed, but it turns out those were intelligence operations staged in part by the United States with the help of some American citizens. And Gonzalo was great at calling those out. So he was a real tough critic of the Biden administration, of U.S. policy towards Ukraine. He was critical of the Ukrainian government, but at no point did he do anything that would have jeopardized the security or the national interest of Ukraine. Where did he live and work, Larry?

Well, he'd been traveling around the world. He moved to Ukraine, got married, or at least was in a relationship with a woman that had two children. He had a son that was seven years old, a daughter that was 10 years old, and he broadcast from his condominium in an apartment building. At no time did he ever show any photographs, any of the outside of the horizon of the city that could have been used. And so he had been arrested twice.

And on the second arrest, he was in for, you know, three or four months. He got out in July, middle, No, I take it back. It was August. And when he got out, he decided he was going to flee to Hungary. He called me late one night and I was, the phone was turned off. I'd gone to bed and I didn't get the call, but he was calling, asking to talk about his situation, to figure out what to do. The next thing I knew was like a day or two later, a video appeared on YouTube of him describing his, what had happened to him in prison, that he had been beaten. He'd been extorted to the tune of about $70,000, that he wasn't receiving proper medical care.

You know, it was a very difficult situation. And his crime, that he talked on a podcast and talked about the situation in Ukraine and was especially critical of Joe Biden and Victoria Nuland and others. And so he came down, he tried to get across the border to Hungary. He didn't make it. He was taken back to prison. And at no time did the United States government intervene in any significant way. Was he an American citizen?

Yes, he was born in America to Chile. His parents were Chileans. You could call him an anchor baby, but he was born in America to Chile. His parents were Chileans. You could call him an anchor baby, but he was born in America. He spent some time in Chile. He was a conservative. He came in for a lot of criticism because he had been more a supporter of the Pinochet government. The left always got exercised over that because they saw Pinochet as, the left always got exercised over that because they saw Pinochet as having, you know, dethroned their favorite Allende. So, you know, he could be politically controversial. But, you know, fundamentally, he was a kind man.

He was not a malicious type. And he did a great job of bringing people onto the Internet like you where they would talk, and they'd get a chance to have an exchange and explore issues. And so he'll be missed greatly. And what caused his death? Just a deterioration of health? No, the report is that he came down with pneumonia, so he was not being kept in a heated cell. And then he had had some prior health issues, but the combination of the pneumonia, pulmonary edema, and the lack of adequate medical care, and frankly, the failure of the Biden

administration to intervene in any significant way. It's too bad he wasn't a black lesbian basketball player. They would have given a damn, but he wasn't. Well, I know that a lot of our viewers and your viewers and your commenters lament his passing. I never met him. We tried to get him on the show a few times but obviously he was uh not able uh to do so he will be sorely missed uh it's uh it's terrible before we segue into israel and just to put a little smile on our faces i want to show you a clip of somebody you and I know well from North Carolina just over the weekend. Dead, okay, that are dead. And you're asking me to get out because you don't want this candidate to address the question. He's chickened to address a question. And what he does, he repeats Israel lobby. Israel lobby.

Everyone to the right, please. That's Ray being yanked out of a speech given by Bobby Kennedy. Ray stood up in the middle of speech and said, I worked for your uncle. He knew the truth and you don't. Boom, they yank him out.

Yeah, Ray, man, he's fearless. He did say he was expecting much rougher treatment. But Joe Biden refuses to allow the Secret Service to protect Bobby Jr. So Ray was escorted out by Bobby's PR people, not by professional law enforcement. Yeah, that was at least smart on Kennedy's part. RFK's stance with respect to what's going on in gaza is is it it's insane it's it's really it dishonors him it's not a it's not an honest uh assessment it does and he went from one end to the other i mean uh before october uh or at october 7th he was on the right side but the donor class got to him yeah um is israel its own? Oh, yeah. They've lived in this protected

environment where the United States shelters them. They can do anything. They can kill as many journalists as they want. They can kill as many children as they want. And then they hold up the Holocaust. The Nazis tried to slaughter us. So that justifies everything else. And it's wearing really thin now because they tried to describe what happened on October 7th as a Holocaust that Hamas was trying to exterminate Jews. Absolutely not. That's a damnable lie. Because if that's what they were trying to do, they would have done it, but they didn't. Instead, they were trying to take hostages.

And a significant, if not a majority, of the deaths among the Israelis that day were caused by Israel itself. His untrained, unprofessional military was indiscriminately shooting at vehicles and at gatherings and at houses by their own admissions. You know, we've got the actual video evidence of it. And they were killing the Israelis.

And yet they come out and they say, oh, this was the Holocaust against Hamas. And so let's just do basic math. Let's assume that every one of those 1,200 people that died that day were killed by Hamas. That justifies Israel killing now almost 30,000 people, men, not the majority of it. It's women and children that are the majority of those that are dying and israel insists that oh no we we're acting in a professional manner we're we're giving the citizens warning yeah what they do is they warn people to go to a particular area and then they shell that area when they get there just like a hunter putting out a salt lick to attract the deers who can shoot the deer. They bomb hospitals. They bomb UN centers. This is criminal on a scale that really we haven't seen since the Nazis, what they did to the citizens of particularly Eastern Europe.

There's a female Irish barrister with an unpronounceable name who made a terrific argument in behalf of South Africa at the International Court of Justice on Thursday. And she pointed out that Israel is using so-called dumb bombs, bombs that intentionally spread their destruction, and they're bombing them in such a sequence that there is literally no escape. They could be using smart bombs, but instead they're using these 2,000-pound dumb bombs that just destroy everything in sight with a huge radius, and the next radius overlaps the previous one. So it's almost like the effect of carpet bombing Dresden at the end of World War II. And she did make a great argument.

I don't know if you know this. Alistair Crook, our mutual friend and colleague, pointed out that in Western Europe, you were unable to watch the South African lawyers. You could only watch the Israeli lawyers. The only way you could watch the South African lawyers was to go to Al Jazeera. Yeah, that's shocking. Well, you know, it's becoming a fascist continent, not just a state. Well, we couldn't watch it here unless we went to Al Jazeera. John Mearsheimer who has watched every minute of every

proceeding before this court on this issue told Chris you got to go to Al Jazeera because nobody in the U.S. or the West is covering it. Nobody is speaking out against this except South Africa.

Yeah. Well, and then Israel turns around and calls South Africa terrorists as well. And anybody that points out the uncomfortable fact that Israel is killing women and children. And, you know, they are talking like a bunch of slimy lawyers, the lawyers who will, they'll come up with some word defense that ignores the issue. You know, for example, one of the Israeli spokesmen is out saying that when Netanyahu was using the reference of Amalek, which is an Old Testament people that were ordered, that God supposedly ordered Israel to slaughter all of them, not just some, all. That all, that, oh, Netanyahu, yeah, he said that, but he just, he was just referring to Hamas.

He's not referring, we're not at war with the Palestinian people. Meanwhile, they're stacking the bodies of babies, toddlers, women, teenagers. I mean, it's sick. I mean, the amount of what's being shown is, I've gotten more angry with each passing week over it. It's really, it is an outrage. And the world is sitting by saying nothing, largely, except for people like South Africa and Yemen. You know, the so-called civilized countries are allowing this to go on. It would stop in a minute with the United States told Israel, we're not sending you another bomb. You know, because the dumb bombs you're talking about are bombs that they can't direct. They drop

them and gravity decides where it's going to go. The smart bomb is where you can have it guided in to hit a particular location, a pinpoint. But they want to destroy and level Gaza to drive out the Palestinians, force them from that area so that the Israeli citizens can move in and take over. Chris, let's play the first minute or so of Professor Malcolm Shaw, first minute or so of Satu. This is the lead Israeli lawyer. He happens to be a British barrister. And then let's play the edited version of the Irish female barrister making the case for South Africa. South Africa

casts its net widely. In its application, it uses the word context many times. In particular, it declares that it is important to place the acts of genocide in the broader context of Israel's Mae'n bwysig lleoli'r ffyrdd genesydd yn y cyd-destun fwyaf o ddynion Israel tuag at y Palestyniaid yn ystod ei ddiweddaraeth 75 mlynedd. Gan adael y gwirionedd anhygoel o'r ystadeg, pam ddim yn parhau ar 75 mlynedd? Pam ddim yn ystyried 1922 a'r cyfrif gan y Cyngor y Llywodraeth o'r Mandat Brif? neu 1917, y proclamad o'r Ddychlariad Balfour? Yn fawr, y gwirionedd.

Mae angen arbennig ar gyfer penderfyniadau cynaliadwy i ddiogelu'r Gwasanaethau'r Pallestynion yng Ngaza o'r anghyfweliad anodd for provisional measures to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the irreparable prejudice caused by Israel's violations of the Genocide Convention. For children in particular, the last 12 weeks have been traumatic. No food, no water, no school, nothing but the terrifying sounds of war day in and day out, Gaza has simply become uninhabitable. Its people are witnessing daily threats to their very existence while the world watches on. Turning to the Court's case law, as the Court has recently reaffirmed, and I quote,

the condition of urgency is met when acts susceptible of causing irreparable prejudice can occur at any moment before the court makes a final decision on the case, end quote. That is precisely the situation here. Any of those matters to which I have referred can and are occurring at any moment. United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding, quote, the immediate, safe, unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale throughout Gaza and full, rapid, safe and unhindered humanitarian access, end quote, remain unimplemented. United Nations General Assembly resolutions calling for a humanitarian ceasefire have been ignored. The situation could not be more urgent.

Since these proceedings were initiated on the 29th of December 2023 alone, an estimated over 1,703 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and over 3,252 injured. As to the criterion of irreparable prejudice, for decades now, the court has repeatedly found it to be satisfied in situations where serious risks arise to human life or to other fundamental rights. In Qatar, United Arab Emirates, the court considered provisional measures to be justified having regard to the risk of irreparable prejudice deriving from factors such as people being forced to leave their places of residence without the possibility of return,

the psychological distress of temporary or potentially ongoing separation from their families, and the harm associated with students being prevented from taking their exams. If provisional measures were justified there, how could they not be in Gaza? Well, she makes a very compelling argument. were justified there, how could they not be in Gaza? Yeah. Well, she makes a very compelling argument. Is the United States of America the unindicted co-conspirator? Yeah, we're the enabler. Israel would not have the ability to do any of this without the United States.

We're facilitating the crime. And, you know, frankly and it's you know frankly it's not the first time we've facilitated international crime but in this case it's particularly egregious because the women and children that are being killed

they're not out throwing rocks they're not posing any direct threat to anybody in Israel the attack that was carried out by Hamas was carried out by men. And it wasn't carried out just on the spur of the moment because we hate Israelis, we hate Jews. We're talking about 70 years of pent-up anger that has,

there's been guilt on both sides. I don't want to pretend that Israel has not faced some threats. But Israel had other choices. That's the point people are missing. On October 7th, let's think, October 7th happened, Israel had other choices. For example, we knew at the time that Egypt and Saudi Arabia were not supporters of Hamas by any stretch. Turkey as well.

All Israel had to do was to go to Turkey, to Egypt, and to Saudi Arabia, quietly, diplomatically, enlist their support in going after cutting off the funds to Hamas and asking that the people who carried those attacks out be turned over and that the hostages released. There was a diplomatic way that this could have been done. It could have been solved without all this death and destruction. And Israel would have maintained the high road. But instead, it climbed right down into the mud and decided that it would be dirtier, more filthy than anything that Hamas did.

You probably didn't see this on the news either. This is not the Middle East. This is Washington, D.C. on Sunday afternoon. Yeah. Crowd estimates as large as 200,000. Yeah, it's starting to grow in the United States. The lock that the Israeli lobby had through AIPAC on the U.S. Congress and on the American political scene. It's eroding. If you're under 40 years of age, you're more likely to be a supporter

of the Palestinian cause, not the Israeli cause. The rabid support for Israel is particularly strong in people, you know, they're over the age of 60, you know, my age. Why is Joe Biden bombing Yemen? And what, if anything, I already know the answer, that's why I'm smiling. What, if anything, are they accomplishing? Well, Yemen, he said, okay, we're going to shut down the Red Sea, and they've effectively done that.

Any ship that's going to Israel to or from, they vowed to attack and have been attacking them. In fact, they just attacked another one today. And so, yes, under international law, the Yemenis are interfering with, at least the West can legally argue, that the Yemenis interfering with the right of navigation. And so the United States is going to take measures to open it up. Well, dropping bombs on Yemen, you know, the phrase, oh, we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. How do you bomb someone in the Stone Age who's already living in the Stone Age? Okay, you're not going to be able to damage them.

The United States has been bombing parts of Yemen. It goes back almost nine years. And to what effect? Well, the Houthis actually ended up winning the war that we were fighting, we were helping the Saudis fight against them. So they're accustomed to taking a beating. The United States can continue to launch bombing attacks. And the problem is the missiles, the rockets, the rockets, the systems that are used to attack these ships, they're mobile.

And we're not talking one or two. We're really talking thousands. And so the Yemenis can get them out there and have them running around, and you're trying to find the right one to hit. So it is, it's a futile effort on the part of the United States. And then what it is exposing is that the aircraft carrier

with its two accompanying destroyers that are there or the Marine, the Bataan, the amphibious ship, these destroyers have what are called vertical launch systems. And they've got a, they're like canisters that sit in the deck, shoot the missiles up. And usually for every incoming missile, you're going to fire two missiles at it.

Well, they don't have an unlimited supply. So after they fire like 80 of their missiles, they have to then go back to a port to have that system reloaded because they can't reload it at sea. We got rid of the ships that could do that 30, 40 years ago. And so what the United States is engaged in is a futile operation because they're not going to be able, through military force, through dropping bombs, killing Yemenis, that that will get Yemen to go, oh, we better stop this because the United States is going to attack us. They don't care. They literally do not care. They are convinced that they're on the right, that what is happening in Israel, what

Israel is doing to the Palestinians is a violation of international law. And so they're fighting on behalf of the Palestinians. Isn't it a violation of international law for the United States to attack another member of the UN? Well, yeah, not just that, but think about this, Judge. The use of military force overseas against terrorist targets was done under the authorization for the use of military force, AUMF, an order that came out in 2001. I mean, I know the guy that was involved with actually drafting that. So by 2002, that AUMF authority was used, and Congress blessed it, said, okay, yeah, you're good.

You can now go after those terrorists. Well, Yemen is not identified as a terrorist state. Actually, Donald Trump put them on the terrorist list, and then Joe Biden came in and took them off. So they no longer can be covered by AUMF. So here is the United States, the president, carrying out military operations overseas without the consent of Congress. Now, people will say, well, under exigent circumstances, you have to do that. And this is where Biden's so stupid. Why do you want Congress to approve it and give you the green light? Because when things go in the toilet, if it goes sour, if there's an aircraft carrier that sunk and we've got 4,000 dead sailors,

if Congress approved it, it's not just Joe Biden and his team of idiots that caused this. He's got to say, hey, Congress told me to do it. So he doesn't even understand the concept of political cover. And ditto for these people like Lindsey Graham calling to attack Iran. Okay, if you want to attack Iran, go to Congress, get permission. Let's see how that works out. They don't want to do that. They want to attack Iran, start a war, and then force Congress to come along. And that's a recipe for political disaster in the United States. Here is Admiral Kirby doing one of his Baghdad Bob routines, cut five, Chris, on Face the Nation yesterday, defending these strikes on the Houthis.

Does the U.S. assess that these coalition strikes will deter the Houthis, or are you bracing for retaliation and an open-ended conflict? I think it'd be Pollyannish for us to think that there couldn't or may not be some sort of retaliatory strike by the Houthis. We're watching this very, very closely. We've taken the requisite necessary precautions in the region to make sure we're ready for that, if that should occur. These strikes were meant to disrupt and degrade their ability to conduct these strikes. And so we think that we had good effect on that. We're still assessing the battle damage assessment of those strikes,

but we think we had good effect. We'll see what happens. The Houthis have a choice to make here now, Margaret. And the right choice is to stop these reckless attacks. And no matter what they say, this is not about punishing Israel. I mean, one of the ships they took a shot at yesterday was Panamanian flag that it was taking Russian oil. It had nothing to do with Israel. So it may be an open ended conflict. We don't know if deterrence has been established. Nobody wants a conflict with the Houthis. We're not looking for a conflict with Yemen

here. We're trying to get these attacks to stop. You know, he's a retired admiral. He should know especially that about which he speaks. And apparently he doesn't, Larry. Yeah. Well, you know, the other element, there's a financial element here. Each one of those missiles, the defense missile, air defense missiles that those ships fire, they cost between $1 and $2 million a pop. And so it's not like the United States is sitting on this completely full warehouse where we've got just an overabundance. The missiles are pouring out the sides. We've got too many, so let's use them up. No, we can't

even produce enough every year to sustain this kind of operation over, say, a six-month period. So what's going to happen is the Yemenis, they're going to launch a $10,000 drone. They could maybe swarm a ship with 100 $10,000 drones. And then the United States is going to have to fire, if they're swarming us with 100, we're going to have to fire 200 missiles at the tune of, let's just go with a million dollars a pop. Well, right there, $200 million. Quarter of a billion.

How can you sustain that? Kirby claims we're degrading the hoodies. We're degrading ourselves. That's what's going on. In a PR way and in a military way, we're degrading ourselves. Well, and one of the other things that's happened is one of the reasons they returned the ships, that original, I think it was the Gerald R. Ford that was there, they ordered it back to port. It's because the crew is, it's undermanned, understaffed. So they can't really do everything that they need to do at sea

and sustain themselves out there. So, you know, this notion that the United States is the greatest superpower in the world and that we're invincible, boy, we got some feet of clay. And what's dangerous is when our political leaders refuse to acknowledge that and they maintain this pretense that all we got to do is just launch some bombing strikes and some cruise missiles boy that'll show these people and it's not gonna it's not gonna stop Yemen I mean candidly the only way that way that you would stop Yemen is it would

require an actual invasion of the United States, a ground invasion of Yemen, and a full-scale war to destroy the military. And we'd be talking hundreds of thousands, if not millions of casualties on the part of the United States, not just to mention what would happen to the Yemenis. And we can't do that. We don't have the financial resources to do it. We're already $34 trillion in debt. One of our viewers writes, we don't have leaders. We just have warmongers because old Joe wants to run for reelection.

It's a wartime. The president doesn't care who dies in the prospect of that happening. Larry, it's a pleasure, my dear friend. We made a government promise not to give you a heads up that we were going to run that. He didn't. He didn't.

I hadn't even heard about that. We're looking for more. Chris thinks he can find a clip of Ray actually shaking his fist at Bobby and the look on Bobby's face. We'll get it. I'd love that. We'll see you Friday for the roundtable.

Thank you very much, Larry. All the best. Thanks, Judge. Have a great week. You too. Coming up later today, not very much later, at 1.30 this afternoon Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor at 1.30 this afternoon Eastern, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At 2.45

this afternoon Eastern, Bill O'Reilly. Yes, that Bill O'Reilly. And at four o'clock Eastern, Professor John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. We'll see you next time.