Judging Freedom - Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: What I Told the UN Last Week.

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski: What I Told the UN Last Week.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 Tuesday, April 16th, 2024. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Karen, always a pleasure, my dear friend. I want to talk to you at some length on your very articulate talk that you gave to the Security Council of the United Nations. But of course, before we get there, I'd like to go to some of the events over the weekend and the hot news that are dominating the conversations in the past 24 hours. Were you surprised that the mainstream media made the Iranian retaliation appear to be toothless and fruitless and the Israeli-American, Jordanian, and UK defense sound ironproof, ironclad, iron dome, to use their phrase, when in fact it was the other way around. Yeah, I mean, they were very quick to proclaim it to be a complete failure,

when in fact, and even I did say in the Western media, I did see the comparison of the costs for each side. And so that's where the big imbalance, they didn't talk much about that, but it was reported. But yeah, it was almost a knee-jerk reaction in the Western media that this was a failure, when in fact, it was wasted shooting down $10,000 drones, which were actually lost leaders sent out there so that the Iranian radar could pick up exactly where the defenses were and from where their drones were being shot down. And it was the heavier-duty missiles, not even Iran's best, that got through. Moreover, the Israelis murdered generals and civilians and destroyed, under international law, a diplomatically immune building and killed civilians.

The Iranians aimed for and hit only military and intelligence targets and told the Israelis that they were coming. Yeah, that's amazing. I mean, it's almost as if that was a gentlemanly way that Iran is giving an example of a gentlemanly way to retaliate, something that Israel, of course, you know, leads with its emotion and its hatred, and it doesn't act as a gentleman. I mean, you know, they're conducting a UN-declared genocide in Gaza. We know this. So it was almost by Iran's example, not only did they probe and gather important intelligence and do it at low cost compared to the high cost of the Israeli defense, they also demonstrated to anybody who is looking, and that's the world, it's not just Western media, the whole world is watching this, and they demonstrated to anybody who is looking, and that's the world. It's not just Western media. The whole world is watching this. And they demonstrated to the world how,

you know, kind of gentlemanly combat can be conducted. You know, they let them know. They said they were coming. They had plenty of warning. They did military targets, as you said. Very, very different than what we see the Israelis do. And I think that's not lost on a great many people. Well, under international law and under the UN Charter, as I understand it, when there's adversity, combat, violence, adversity between two member nations, the nation that started it is fair game for response by the nation that was attacked. diplomatic mission in Damascus opposed a real legitimate legal opportunity for the Iranians to retaliate, and they did so by retaliating against military facilities. There's no moral equivalence here at all, is there? No, no, no, I don't think so. And I know most of the people in

the UN, because I had to watch some of these UN Security Council representatives speak, many of them understood completely what you just said, that yes, Israel basically conducted an act of war when they attacked the Damascus, the Iranian embassy in Damascus. So that is in the books. That is, you know, the rule system says, you know, you violate this, you have conducted an attack on Iran's property and Iran can retaliate. And they did so. And like you said, in a way that was well planned, but also ingenious too, because this was not only a demonstration of future capabilities, ongoing capabilities, but also data gathering, also intelligence gathering, how, you know, looking at all the players. And, you know, there were more than just, I've heard that Israel spent 1.3 billion, but that doesn't count what was spent by the United States. It's debatable whether Saudi Arabia played. They first said they did, then they denied it. So I don't know. But the total cost to allies of Israel in defending this was over well over a billion dollars. And that's just in just a guess. I'm a lawyer, not a military guy. That much of the Israeli equipment used to shoot down the drones came from us, came from the United States. Well, the F-35s were launched.

They came from the United States. A lot of the stuff we facilitate and supply materials for the, not just the Iron Dome, but the other layered air defense systems that Israel uses. Yeah. So it's a big time. And in fact, this is what's not good for the United States, but there's so many things that are not good for the United States. It's hard to prioritize them, but it's not good for the United States for their so-called best ally that we fund and uses our technology. It's not good for them to behave in such a way that demonstrates Western military weakness, defensive flaws, problems. It's not good for us, for Israel to go out there and basically

accelerate the loss of reputation that the United States military once had, and it's declining. And I think this is one more example of how rapidly it's declining. I mean, our friend and your former colleague, Scott Ritter, says this was a significant victory for Iran, I'm sorry again, for Iran, notwithstanding the way the media have portrayed it. And the media portrayed it the way the governments want to portray it. I can run clips, I've been running it all day, of David Cameron making an absolute fool of himself on British television on Sunday morning,

making it sound like because one, the Israelis fired one missile to destroy the consulate and the Iranians fired many hundreds and only a few got through that the Iranians are morally decrepit and militarily miserable. Wow. Yeah, it's it's he can say what he wants. Obviously, he doesn't know what he's talking about, but it is a real problem because. Not just did did Iran show its capability and its strategic strength in depth and do a great job of gathering intelligence for all the BRICS, really. I mean, any of its friends will have the intelligence that it's gathered. Not only is that good for them now, but it is also an example of how we can, how the United States can be taken down. How we can be, you know, it's kind of a continuation of the theme of what we saw with

Operation, what is the Operation in the Red Sea with the Houthis? You know, we said we were going to ensure free passage of all the ships. But in fact, what happened is, you know, our allies had to hightail it out of there. And we're not being very effective at all in securing passage of any ship. So we showed our weakness. And this coordinated attack with Iran, not just coordinated amongst Iran, but also with their allies or proxies, if you want to call them proxies, this kind of thing can be repeated. This is the problem. It can be repeated any number of times and in any number of places. So if I'm as an American, I'm a little bit nervous. You know, I don't like I don't like seeing us look incompetent, although I've been talking

about it for a long time. Right, right, right. Let's look at it from the Israeli perspective. Can they afford a billion dollars a night? No, not at all. Not at all. And not only that, what Israel has lost, and I have to give credit to Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, back in December, November timeframe, he said that Israel will do what they're doing in Gaza, but it's a strategic error. And Israel got all mad at him and said, oh, no, he didn't say that. But he did say that. And what he meant was the loss of friendship among the world, a loss of admiration, the loss of trade around the world that Israel is facing. So you have Israel conducting itself very badly, conducting genocide in Gaza. Nobody likes it. Everybody's condemned it. Israel's not listening, but they are being, in a sense,

boycotted in many ways by many different countries. There is a cost added to Israel's conduct of business that they have added themselves by their behavior. So it's very expensive for Israel to do anything right now. And plus, then you add on a billion dollars a night to run your air defense system. Well, how many nights can you afford that? Especially when you're not making a lot of money. And what are the Israelis doing? You know, sure, they're all being called up and they're very patriotic and they hate the Palestinians. Okay, I get that. But many are leaving. They're sending their kids out of country. You know, they're looking at who's, you know, what's good for me as a, say, a Jewish individual living in Israel. Is this really where I want to be right now?

And so, yeah, there's economic, the curtain is coming down economically on Israel. And then you see militarily that they are vulnerable. And that's what I think was demonstrated last Saturday. Watch this montage emphasizing the word don't that we put together for you. Mr. President, to Iran in this moment. Don't. I have one word. Don't. To any actor, state or non-state, trying to take advantage of this crisis to attack Israel. Don't. We have just one word. Don't. All right. So obviously the members of Joe Biden's team got the message,

but the people that run the military in Iran did not. And they don't have to listen to the U.S. anymore. This is what we've been seeing going on for a long time, this erosion of American authority, the realization that the United States is not as strong as it says it is. And it's actually quite arrogant. It is filled with hubris and it can't back up its words with its wallet. So the rest of the world sees this. And I think what we saw, what Iran is doing and what many other countries are doing is they are assessing correctly the power that the United States really has. And it's limited and it's declining.

That's what was demonstrated, I think. What is the current state of affairs, segueing into your talk at the Security Council, Karen, what is the current state of affairs on the ground in Ukraine? Well, as far as I can tell, it's terrible and getting worse. I think what I've seen just in regular media is that after two, almost two and a half, I guess, years, this really harsh conflict, many Ukrainians are looking at their situation. It's kind of like under Joe Biden, you know, are you better off or worse off? And they feel worse off. You know, the population has declined. You've got a lot of families separated. You've got certainly the death and destruction and the harming of not just the people who serve in the military, but their families, their homes and houses. You know,

it's not something that was quick. They see, they recognize that now. They're not winning. They recognize that they're not winning. And they're asking why. Who can answer why? Well, Zelensky has to answer why. And I don't think he's doing a very good job. Of course, you know, the why is complicated, right? I mean, why did the United States want him to do this?

I think there's another example where it's going to come back to bite us. We push this so, so hard. If I was a Ukrainian living in Ukraine and I'd lost somebody, I would be so angry at the United States. But Karen, you articulated that so beautifully in your talk. And for those who want to read what Colonel Kwiatkowski said to the Security Council. She posted it at JuddSnapp.com. It's right there. But when you, I know you weren't physically there,

so maybe you didn't get any feedback. I don't know. Did you get any feedback when you said the West is opposed to peace? It was profound, and it put goosebumps on my arms. Did any of them respond to you? Well, you know, I don't think they, I think a lot of them, the Western, the U.S. allied members that were there and participants probably didn't like that. But I think.

Was the U.S. there? Did the U.S. representatives hear you? Yeah. And it was funny because when they finally got around to the U.S. spokesperson, who was one of the second the second or third tier people, because it was a Sunday, I guess. No, I forget what day it was. Anyway, it was not the primary guy, right? Just one of the guys that's a stand-in type people. But they purposely, many of them were kind. Even people who disagreed with what I said were kind and acknowledged the two speakers that had been invited or were there. But the U.S. and the Brits, of course, did not acknowledge my talk. And it's funny because I'm an American.

And, you know, whether they like it or not, you know, we have a republic with some democratic features, and we have a voice, and I'm an American with a voice. So I don't think he liked it very much, what I said. But one of the arguments you made I found fascinating and novel, and that was our mishmash support of their military has turned it into a Rube Goldberg machine. Now, for those too young to remember who Rube Goldberg was, he's actually, I'm too young to remember Rube Goldberg, but historically was a character that crafted these fantastic and absurd do-nothing machines.

You know, the ball started at one end and it went all over the place and it came back to where it started from. But the phrase Rube Goldberg has come to mean much ado about nothing. A lot of activity, but no progress. You have characterized the Ukrainian military infused with American equipment that they don't know how to use as a Rube Goldberg machine. What did you mean? Yeah, well, obviously, it complicates everything. It's the opposite of the very simplest, you know, Occam's razor. If that's on one side, Rube Goldberg machine is on the other side. So it complicates everything. And a lot of people, we've been talking about this for a long time, this sending in of odd numbers of, in some cases, poorly maintained already equipment that doesn't speak to each other, the various NATO equipment, the American stuff. It's offensive, it's defensive,

it's a little bit of these supplies and a little bit of those supplies and dumping that into Ukraine's system, which was already stressed even from the beginning, which was already corrupt, even from the beginning. You know, now they're facing the Russian invasion. Now they're kind of the pressure's on and you pour all this in there. And so the Ukrainian military and the people who are using this equipment have to do interesting things to make everything work. And of course, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. And that's my point was, I wasn't anti-Ukraine at all. I think it's torture to have, you know, said to Ukraine,

you go fight this war and we're going to help you. And then to help them in such a way that actually harms their ability to even make the science fit of progress. It is so wrong. And why did we do that? Oh, I don't know. We could get rid of our old stuff. Europe could get rid of its old stuff. And then we could feed, we could say, oh, aid to Ukraine,

but 40, 50, 60, 70% of that is actually feeding the military defense establishment in those various countries. That is evil. That is evil. Chris has a full screen of one of your lines. Western aid has caused NATO division, which has increased risk of escalation and silenced common sense and peaceful voices. Karen, you're right. Yeah, well, it's not fun being right. It's tragic to see everything that people have worked for just to be thrown out. Even NATO, you know, NATO could have gracefully contained itself. It could have gracefully

gone away. That's what it should have done. But instead, it's turned into a monster. And the members of NATO, they're not unified. They've got their grubby fists. You know, how much can I get from other countries to do things? I think there was a survey the other day, and I don't even remember which country it was, Austria maybe. And they said, I don't know, even though Austria is even in NATO, but it was a member of NATO. And they surveyed the people and they said, well, if we're attacked, 90% of us expect NATO to defend us. But if someone else in NATO is attacked, only like, you know, 25% said, oh, we should go do it. I mean, that's about what's in it for you. And that is, I think, characteristic of what NATO has turned into.

If you care about those kinds of institutions, which I really don't, but if you do care about them, you have to be appalled at what NATO has turned into. But certainly we didn't help. We did not help Ukraine very well. Do you think that Finland and Sweden actually think that if Russia challenges one of their borders, the United States and France are going to come to their defense? Well, they clearly they clearly realize that's not going to happen. I mean, we we stoked the fire in Ukraine and yet we still have just thrown, you know, done only what benefits the United States. You know, we print money. We goose our own military industrial complex. We send them stuff we didn't want anymore that we would otherwise put in the boneyard. OK, we do what we wanted. That's the example of how we will help other NATO countries. Now, Ukraine's not a NATO country, but the whole purpose of this war was the whole kind of thing that kicked it off was we're going to turn Ukraine into a NATO country.

It's not even qualified to be an EU country in any way, shape or form. But this was our agenda. And the U.S. was in it for itself. Also, this whole idea that anybody cares about Ukraine in the West, it is so wrong. They don't. And I tried in some way to emphasize that because I don't want people to be killed for no reason. And I think that's what's happening. Karen, another great point you made that I didn't know about was Ukraine trying to blow up its own nuclear plant. Well, they've been doing that for a while, you know, off and on. And yeah, this idea that,

I talked a little bit about the environmental damage. It's already been done in Ukraine. That will take decades. And this is what Matt Ho talked about. I mentioned his previous talk to the same group. And he went into a lot of detail about the damage. And it's bad. I mean, unexploded cluster bombs, you know, contamination in the environment, these kinds of things. But they've been lobbying, Ukraine has been lobbying all kinds of things for months, not continuously, at Zaporizhia, the big nuclear plant, which is very large. It's a very major nuclear plant. And I think a lot of it's shut down now, but they're trying to,

they're trying to cause some sort of environmental damage. And, you know, we all remember, well, not all of us, but if you're of a certain age, you'll remember Chernobyl when they had the meltdown there. And I was in Alaska when that happened. And we said, oh, we're far away. We're not going to get any radiation. But we got radiation because of the way the global currents go.

So that's a global problem. And I know, I know they say, well, we're desperate. We got to get the west to back us. We'll blow up this plant and cause an environmental disaster and everybody will rush to our aid. That kind of thinking is criminal, especially for Ukraine, which doesn't have a chance, never had a chance from the beginning, refuses to negotiate. But instead of negotiating, yeah, we're going to try to damage this, our own nuclear plant to bring everybody on board. And, you know, I hate to keep on going, but, you know, Zelensky's like,

oh, we should be treated like Israel. Well, nobody should be treated like Israel, quite frankly, including Israel. But for him to bring that up, I mean, what a selfish, selfish person. Well, this is a guy who canceled the elections this year, who makes it illegal to leave the country and who expanded the draft. He was elected as a peace candidate. He's facilitated the most catastrophic military action in the history of the country, including World War II. So I don't know where he's going to go politically.

He's probably at some point going to wake up in Tel Aviv or Paris or Miami or wherever his mansions are, and he can bring his, his cash with him. I don't know. None of the people with whom we speak, who have a handle on this, the military folks see this lasting beyond the summer. Even if the house passes this 61 billion, you know, 40 billion of it is staying right here. It's not going to make any difference whatsoever to what's going on over there. That's right. And we are seeing more voices for negotiations, peace, that kind of thing from places that before were advocate advocating for the war. Certain of the think tanks that really are neocon think

tanks are partially, you know, they're pro-war, they're pro-the West, kind of this concept of the West. But you're seeing the voices saying, look, this is just, it's not productive. Nobody's going to make any money. And this is what they, this is what the West truly cares about. Nobody's going to make any money if they go too far for too long in Ukraine. They really need to get started on the next phase. And that's going to require concessions. It's going to require talking directly to the Russians and dividing the country with new borders and establishing some sort of non-aligned status. Certainly no NATO membership ever. I wish President Zelensky would listen to you. He's as combative as ever. Here's his latest. Modern aviation is proving its effectiveness,

and modern air defense systems are capable of protecting lives. This was demonstrated in the Middle East when aviation and air defense systems shot down Iranian missiles and sabers aimed at Israel. The whole world sees what real defense sees that it is possible, and the whole world saw that Israel was not alone in this defense. Allies also destroyed the threat in the sky And when Ukraine tells its allies That unity is the best defense

The effectiveness of this They already know and provided themselves And when Ukraine says that its allies Should not turn a blind eye to Russian missiles and drones It means that we must act And act strongly. It is not rhetoric that protects the sky. The production of missiles and drones for of terror and the fact that sanctions against Russia are still being circumvented

and the fact that we in Ukraine have been waiting for months for a vital support package. He's living in a fantasy world. All he should do is to call up Joe and Joe and his friend Rishi Sunak and say, guys, it's time to negotiate because I won't have a bed to sleep on in another couple of months. Yeah, yeah. He's, you know, he is very isolated because he is sitting at the top of what has turned into almost a quasi-totalitarian government in a state of martial law. He's fired people that question him, people that are in touch with the reality in the rest of Iraq, the rest of Ukraine, I should say. So he's out of touch. He is kind of in a bunker. And I hate to use that word. It brings up a certain connotation, which I'm not trying to bring up, but he has a bunker mentality right now. He's not getting good advice. He even lost his best friend in the State Department, you know, with Vicki Newland. So he's isolated in a corner.

He's made incredibly bad decisions, made some poor bets. You know, I mean, you could, the information that all of us have access to have caused many of us to say this should have never happened. And once it did, we can watch it from a perspective of reality. And I don't think Zelensky's really connected to that reality. So, you know, he'll hopefully, not in a life or death way, but his days are numbered. Let's hope that that's the case. Every indication is, except what's in his own mind is leaning that way uh karen thank you very much again if any of you are interested in karen kwatkowski's dramatic and informative comments to the un you can see them at judge nap.com karen we'll see you again next week all the best my

friend okay same to you judge thank you of course pleasure coming up at uh four o'clock eastern uh anna perampel and at five o'clock eastern professor jeff sachs judge napolitano for judging freedom Thank you.