Judging Freedom - Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: Is US Military Prepared for Middle East War?

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: Is US Military Prepared for Middle East War?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. Thanks for watching! Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, January 25th, 2023. Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer joins us today. Tony, always a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you for returning for your regular slot. I look forward to it as do so many of our regular viewers. Tony, since we spoke last, the government of the United States continues to pound the Houthis in Yemen. We're now up to nine attacks. I think it was two attacks at the time we spoke last. The president himself said after about the fifth attack that they're not

working, but we're going to keep doing it. So I have a couple of questions I want to ask you about that. The first of which is, from Biden's perspective, what is the reason for this? And from a realistic perspective, what is likely to be the response to this, either by the Houthis themselves or by other state actors? Well, I think, thank you for having me, Judge. Always great to be here. Biden gets the appearance of progress. That is to say, so much of what he does, and this is across the board, it's all about narrative management is what has happened, and we still haven't felt the full effects of it. Europe and the British will feel it long before we do. We will feel the effects of oil being threatened.

I think you're going to see some attacks on ships with petroleum products. So that can't really go on, and you can't ignore it. You can't really say, oh, this is just a local issue. It's affecting everybody. So it's virtue signaling. This is military virtue signaling. I said on our old friend Ed Henry's show, Ed Henry has a show I was on with him on N2. I said, after the first strike, I said, this is going to mean nothing. The Houthi will be back up and running within 48 hours. It was less than 48. It was 24.

Because, Judge, the policy is to not do anything to stop them. It's to make it look like we're doing something to stop them and not succeeding. The policy is to fail. Do you agree with some of our other colleagues, Colonel McGregor, Larry Johnson, Scott Ritter, the armaments that the Houthis use are mobile? They are. And we're not even hitting them. They're hiding them.

They're moving them. And this is pretty much consistent. I shouldn't ask you if you acknowledged, yeah, the hand of the Iranians are behind all of this. A female Pentagon spokesman, I don't remember her name, said it on the podium. It's like, yeah, we know this. So if you know that and you're not doing anything to address that, then that kind of makes you a co-conspirator. Again, I'm not a neocon. I'm not trying to get us into a war with Iran. With that said, if you're going to make the policy choice to keep American forces engaged in the Middle East, you got to do something to defend them. Does anybody not

recognize the link between lack of recruitment and lack of ability to actually conduct military operations that actually show that we can do something? And the second factor of this, Judge, is I don't believe for a minute that the fifth fleet or central command uh is incapable of defeating the houthi that this is not about capacity or capability this is because the targets that are being uh selected by the white house by the way this isn't even a military thing this is a political thing this is like lyndon you know, LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson with rice patty dioramas in the, in the Oval Office. This is, this is how closely managing, they're managing this thing from the, from the White House. And again, it's, it's, it's all political. This is something Lloyd Austin

should have stood up and said, I'm not willing to accept this level of political influence when I'm given a military task. And I think that's why we know what they're doing and the choice is to not do anything to actually address the root causes. I just want to take a little side question here because you mentioned the Secretary of Defense. He is nominally the Secretary of Defense. What has the fallout been amongst the military, amongst the men and women who wear uniforms and who have boots on the ground, so to speak, not amongst the hierarchy to his sudden and still unexplained disappearance

for a month, for a month. Well, it is what it is, you know, to quote an old spy school assessment of a situation. It is what it is. And it's obvious what it is. school assessment of a situation. It is what it is. And it's obvious what it is. Austin's not in charge. I mean, come on, who goes away for a month from

their job and nobody notices, you know, for several weeks, like, Oh, Lloyd Austin, is something wrong with him? Where's he, where'd he go by law judge that position, the position of Secretary of Defense, has certain weapon systems that may be related to the movie Oppenheimer attached to it. And by the way, if you haven't seen the movie, you ought to go see it. It's a good movie. Anyway, the point is, is that by law, by statute, that position has certain authorities relating to maintenance and response and use of nuclear weapons, period. You cannot have those things just kind of meander off in the night and hope that someone can tap them on the shoulder and say,

hey, we need you. They're about to have a nuclear exchange. This is a serious breach. And get this. Why are we the only ones talking about this? Nobody else is talking about this right now. This is all kind of, Oh, everything's back.

It is. It is a little spooky that the main, we saw him on a zoom call. He's fine. What? Yeah, it is spooky, Tony,

that the mainstream media is not speaking about it. It's almost as if the CIA or somebody, whoever does this sent out the word, don't talk about Austin. He'll be okay. Leave him alone. So what is he running the Defense Department and being the integral communicator between the president and nuclear codes from his bedroom in his house instead of in the Pentagon where he's got 10,000 people to work for him? So I've been in the National Military Command Center. It is, you

know, the big board. It's not exactly like the movies, but it's kind of like that. And yeah, you've got literally a full spectrum of real-time communications with all manner of operational capability that the Pentagon owns. And remember, we have the most expensive military on the planet. Now, it's not the most effective as we know, but it's the most expensive. And within that expense, we've spent oodles of money on command and control, which is what you're talking about, is the ability of the Secretary of Defense or someone else to be able to communicate and direct things. When you're sitting in a hospital or at your home with a laptop in one hand and a bedpan in the other, I don't know. You may get them mixed up and put your hand in the wrong thing. I don't think it's a good idea.

I don't think it's a good idea. I get the picture. I have not been in that room where you have, but I have been in government rooms like it. And there are New York Police Department Command Center. There are 200 200 television screens on the walls

of that room. It dwarfs Fox control rooms and Fox control rooms, which you and I have both been in are extensive. I can never imagine what this one is like in the Pentagon that he can't use because he's in bed with a laptop.

Right. Literally. That's how I'm saying this. And again, the issue was he didn't even go about trying to make sure that there is a process. There has been a process. Judge, we've talked about this. I publicly acknowledge some of the people I've advised, others I have not at that level. And I've worked with people at that level. And you always have

a handoff, a warm handoff to someone who's going to be taking over your responsibility. You know, Danny Davis and I spoke about this the other day. Danny and I have both relieved people for less. That is to say that I have had situations of dereliction of duty where somebody did a knucklehead thing like Austin and I relieved them. I fired them and I fired both military members and civilians. I actually put a civilian on an airplane out of Afghanistan because he was not able to perform his duties. Not his own, not his fault. He had medical issues relating to, to, um, to diabetes. It's like, dude dude you can't be in the desert in 110 degree weather it's just you know you're not going to function well and you can't do your job it's time

to go home let's get back to the military is not the secretary of defense so we have um military in yemen in syria and in iraq the The military in Iraq, who've been asked to leave and ordered to leave by the Iraq government, and it's not their fault, it's a Joe Biden decision, are being attacked by other people in Iraq, and they are attacking back those people in Iraq. How crazy is this

when you consider what we did supposedly to liberate, in air quotes, Iraq from Saddam Hussein, and now we're there, they don't want us there, and we're fighting them? blood and treasure on defending the Iraqis' boundaries and borders than we are our own. And as a matter of fact, as you know, I don't know if you want to go down that path, but, you know, Governor Abbott did a really great, I think, very constitutional letter to Joe Biden saying, F you, I'm going to defend the border. So, you know, I'm, I don't want to go down that path, but I have to comment. I'm 100% with Governor Abbott. If you read the Constitution, and nobody wants to do this, it's still the supreme law of the land. Naturalization, who becomes a citizen is left to the feds. Immigration, who comes here is left to the states. The feds have twisted that around in utter defiance of the Constitution. Governor Abbott is right. And yet he got smacked down by the Supreme Court, not substantively and not permanently,

but preliminarily, meaning for that time being until they hear the case the other day. Back to the- He's moving forward. And that's my point, is that we are now spending more money and resources in Iraq, where we're not welcome, where we've been told, hey, you can leave now. And yet we're there. And this is where we're endangering forces. Again, I'd like to believe, you know, I've been in combat. I've served my time. I've been under fire. We now have men and women who are forward based under fire. And you got to ask why. Why are they there? And one of

the first things I would do if I were SecDef or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is reevaluate our footprint. Where are we at? Why are we there? And what are we trying to achieve? Because those three questions, Judge, I can tell you are not being asked at the Pentagon or at the White House. All right. Here's a technical question for you. And I know you know the answer because you work there. Can the chair of the Joint Chiefs order the military to do anything, or is he just the senior military advisor to the president of the United States? Latter, but it's complicated.

So, yes, technically, he's the brainstem. Basically, anything that has to be done has to go through the Joint Staff. The Joint Staff, also known as the Imperial Staff, gives you a hint of how they're looked at. They're the ones who have to basically take commander's guidance. The commander being the president or the secretary of defense. As we know, and as you and I agree, civilian leadership is the requirement of the Constitution. I think it's a wise choice to not have you know military leaders in charge of of the pentagon and so the the chairman of the joint

chiefs is the the position and staff that translates commander's guidance into operational uh objectives and executable orders so basically the you, the chairman of the joint chiefs, I've, I've done this, I've had to do this. I've received chairman of the joint chief guidance before and messages. And it, you basically have to cite authorities. You have to cite who's involved. There's, there's a number of things that go into it, but ultimately the chairman himself does not have any authority. He is an advisor, but he is a very powerful advisor by the fact that he's the one that has to issue all the guidance and orders of the Pentagon. Okay. Does Prime Minister Netanyahu want to trap the United States into a war in the Middle East where we provide active support, either Air Force or troops on the ground.

I don't think the Israelis want us there right now, judge. I don't, based on some other things I've, I don't want to get into the sources that I have, but there's been a great reluctance to let us United States do anything directly within Israel. And, and, and, uh, this has to, I just put it out there, it has to do with hostages. We have several American hostages still left. Special Operations Command, I have to be a little bit careful, are leaning forward. I think they wanted to do things. They're not going to be able to do anything. So I think that the indications based on what I'm seeing, no, they don't want us there.

They're not going to let us in there. I think it's the other way around. I think the Biden administration wants to have a sufficient pedigree to show that they're a wartime administration without having to do what a wartime administration has to do, which is actually think about strategy, think about engagement, because look at what they say. Look at Tony Blinken's, look at every Tony Blinken speech. Every Tony Blinken speech talks about how successful they are, our engagement, how the world is looking to them. Heck, Judge, his Davos speech, he actually used the phrase, the world wants us to be engaged and help them. I don't think so. So I think this is more the Biden folks pushing, not the Israelis.

We're going to run a clip in just a minute of Tony Blinken at his worst at Davos with Tom Friedman from the New York Times asking questions and bobbleheading agreement to all of Secretary Blinken's- I heard they bunked together too. Before we get there, is the U.S. militarily prepared for a war in the Middle East?

Now, we just lost two Navy SEALs. They are young men, the cream of the crop. The government invested $1 million. You know what this training is like in order to train each of them. They drowned to death. One of them was drowning. The other jumped order to train each of them they drowned to death one of them was drowning the other jumped in to save him uh and they both died are are we prepared

for this and for what over the hooties so we're not prepared for two reasons first uh there's been a a mass influx of i'll just say diversityires. Basically, people are being judged by who you sleep with, if you have a mental condition known as transgenderism, and what skin color you have. Those are the prerequisites and distinguishing characteristics that are used to determine if you're competent to lead military operations and grow organizations. It's dangerously bad. I mean, this is the worst. It's always been there a little bit,

but now it's really, really bad. So that's the first thing. I think you have an inherent weakness based on the fact that the measure of a person, not a man or woman, the measure of a person is based on how many boxes you check within diversity, the DEI issue. So it's going to lead to catastrophic failure that we have not seen before. Secondly, is just militarily, but they're kind of still getting on their feet, by giving huge amounts of material to the Ukrainians. So we have essentially maybe 30 days, maybe 60, probably 30 days of ammunition, fuel, and other things that would be necessary to go to a near-peer conflict. That is to say, if we decide we're going to go to war, this is what we have. Because we've not had time to replenish.

700 days of providing material to the Ukrainians has really depleted everything we have. Got it. So it is a fair criticism of the Biden administration to say that our military defenses or offenses, where offense is needed in their mind, have been materially depleted by what we've done for Ukraine. And I'm going to add this part. I think you're great. Ukraine has been a dismal and absolute and catastrophic failure. I don't think there's any way of hiding it now. Even the Institute for the Promotion, I mean, the Study of War, has actually admitted that...

Is that Jack Keane? That's Jack Keane, our friend Jack. Right. Jack's going to be upset, but that's okay. Yeah, they have actually admitted that Avdoyevka... Boy, I'm terrible with these names. Avdoyevka, it's basically in the Donetsk-ish area,

is about to fall. They're admitting it. But the reason they're admitting it is because, hey, we need more money because, you know, Ukraine's about to fall. Now think about where we've started and where we've gone to. We've gone to, from the beginning

of the spring offensive last year, oh, yes, we're going to take back Crimeaa it's going to be a walk in the park uh we you know petraeus hodges everybody out there oh this is going to happen and a few of us your friends my friends like yeah it's not going to happen it's not in the cards and here we are you know coming we're in the winter it's been about nine months ten months and we're right and they're wrong and yet now they're saying oh we we need more money because if we if you don't give us the money that we said we needed to win uh that we're really going to lose because the russians are going to be back on the offensive there's no indication at this point that the russians

will go back on the offensive but they they have the option. So I think that's what the situation is. The photo we just saw is Patrick Lancaster, an independent American journalist who from time to time reports to us. And he called us before the sun came up on Sunday morning and said an open air market in downtown Donetsk has just been attacked and I'm there and I've counted 25 dead bodies and we went live with them. It turned out 27 were dead. What conceivable military purposes served, Tony, by attacking a civilian open air market on a Sunday morning? Well, no, that was a terror attack and I think the Ukrainians did it. I think there's all indicators of the Ukrainians did that with what you just point out.

It's like, yeah, it wasn't the military target. There's evidence that they may have taken down that IL-76 with Ukrainian prisoners on it. Right, right. This is switching to Gaza, but this is Tony Blinken, I think, at his worst. Blinken on Gaza, Chris, being questioned at Davos by Tom Friedman of The New York Times. Watch this, Tony. One of the things you hear so often from people, given the high civilian casualties in Gaza, is does the United States, do Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian and Muslim lives, Palestinian-Christian lives, Palestinian and Christian lives,

given the incredible asymmetry in casualties? And I've been asked that. I want to give you a chance to respond to that. No. Period. For me, I think for so many of us, what we're seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching. And the suffering we're seeing among innocent men,

women and children breaks my heart. The question is, what is to be done? We've made judgments about how we thought we could be most effective in trying to shape this in ways to get more humanitarian assistance to people, to get better protections and minimize civilian casualties.

And at every step along the way, not only have we impressed upon Israel's responsibilities to do that, we've seen some progress in areas where, absent our engagement, I don't believe it would have happened. This is the same nonsense. I feel sorry that people are dying. Oh, but do you need any more 2,000-pound bombs, BB? Because if you do, they'll be there tomorrow. So, look, this is cultural arrogance at the senior level. I've seen this from civilians like him. I've seen this in combat with McChrystal.

You know, I wrote Operation Dark Heart. We've talked about it before. In one of the chapters, we talk about how uh cia came up with some targeting information saying a warlord was meeting in a madrasa in school and we could we dod couldn't verify i couldn't get a team out there in time it would take two days they decided the bomb anyway and they killed a bunch of women and children because you know people lie to you about what's going on so it's that callousness at the senior level. It's like, yeah, what's a few people who aren't Americans? It's this arrogance. It's an utter arrogance I've seen at the top.

I was actually on a podcast last night with some colleagues who were in Iraq and Afghanistan and saw the same thing as I did. There is no dealing with that level of narcissism and sociopathy. John Kirby, John Kirby earlier last Sunday on the Sunday show was discussing what we talked about, the issue of having men and women deployed in Iraq and they were attacked. The defenses in one of the U.S. air bases there was overwhelmed by an Iranian militia and we had TBI, this traumatic brain injury. Oh, no big deal. What's a little brain injury between friends? That's the utter arrogance of John Kirby, of Blinken, of Austin. And shame on Austin, since I was in combat with Austin. Austin was the brigadier general in charge of task force, a combined joint task force 180, who was there.

He was decorated in combat. And for someone to him to be allowing this level of callousness, either for civilian casualties or military casualties, speaks volumes of who these people are. They are not human. They essentially have become animals focused on retention of power and power being that ultimate, the use of power and retaining it is the ultimate goal with no regard to how it's used. Sorry, you just saw Blinken. And now we're going to switch to his opposite number. You'll see a decidedly different mentality and persona in Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. I realize we're going back and forth between Gaza and Ukraine, but we're talking about the mindset and preparedness of government. Here is Foreign Minister Lavrov being interviewed

by CBS News on the willingness of the Russians to negotiate an anti-Ukraine and the obstinance of the United States. Anybody who is sincerely interested in justice, including justice being established in the relations between Russia and Ukraine, which would involve, of course, stopping the Western policy of using Ukraine as an instrument of war against Russia, we would be ready to listen. President Putin repeatedly said that it is not true when somebody is saying that Russia is against negotiations. Actually, Antony Blinken said this in Davos a few days ago. It is not true.

Russia was always emphasizing that any serious proposal which would include the discussion of the situation on the ground, of the origin of this situation, and of reaching a solution which would guarantee legitimate national interest of Russia and Ukrainian people, we would be ready to discuss it. Sounds credible to me, Tony. So, yeah, from what I can tell, the Russians never stopped wanting to have negotiations. This is something that I think even you and I have talked about, is that early on in the conflict, within the first, I think, 100, 150 days, there was an effort to negotiate a settlement, and the British and the United States pushed the Ukrainians away from that.

And I think that I'd like to believe the Ukrainians now are waking up to the fact that they were sold a bill of goods by the US and UK. I'm laughing. I just want to stop you for a minute. I'll tell you why I'm laughing and you'll laugh too. What you just said is so well grounded and well accepted that there was this agreement, this handshake in Turkey. We actually had, not live, we had a clip from him from the Ukrainian ambassador who was one of the Ukrainian negotiators. Yet, two people you and I know have denied the existence of this agreement, Bill O'Reilly and Jack Devine. I don't think you're surprised at either of them and their obstinance. And both said the same thing to me.

I don't believe it. How do you know you weren't there? So I'm disappointed more at Bill, but Bill can be very mercurial. I'm not surprised about Jack because Jack is, let me ask you a question about Jack. I don't want to get you sideways. Has Jack ever been right about anything he said over the last year and a half, two years? No, but Jack is consistent. That's a good point. Consistency is very important. Yeah, so I do appreciate that. So it's like being a whitey bulger.

Man, you can go a long time kind of flying under the radar and being consistently wrong. But anyway, I don't go down that path. Anyway, so the bottom line is to me there was off ramps all along and the russians are saying yeah we're still open to an off ramp we're just not gonna we're not gonna back down we've stated our policy objectives we're sticking to those and i still find it interesting judge it i find even uh now propaganda that's kind of little artifacts of it left over oh putin wanted to take over all of

ukraine in the first it's like now he's always stated it's a special military operation right and when he you know there was some i think uh feints done to make people think he wanted was going to go into kiev to distract and pull forces away from where he was going which it did work not as well as he'd hoped but yeah the russians have been the adult in a room. I'm not pro-Russian. I'm simply stating by what I can see, they've been far more effective and clear in what they want to do and willing to talk than what the mainstream media has been willing to portray. You know, Joe Biden and Tony Blinken have said over and over, Putin is lost. Putin is lost. And then Biden makes a statement. If Putin takes Ukraine, he's going to go into NATO countries and that'll produce American boots on the ground.

This is just crazy. It's not based on reality. It's not based on the facts. It's based on politics. Well, think about this. Think about the effort that's gone in just to maintain what the Russians have. Do you really think the Russians are going to turn and become mobile and be able to... Again, it's all about the numbers, Judge. The numbers aren't there.

And oh, by the way, yeah, they're quietly talking about a Ukrainian government in abstention because they think Ukraine may well fall soon. Yeah, it's interesting you said that. Colonel McGovern, or excuse me, Ray would love to be a colonel. Colonel McGregor recounted to us yesterday a piece from the Asian Times saying the U.S. government wants Ukraine to move its government out of Kiev and into Lviv. I don't know where Lviv is, but I assume it is west of Kyiv. Putin has no interest in governing Ukraine, a country that hates him. He only wants dominion over the Russian cultural areas, those parts that have been part of Russia, part of Ukraine, mainly Russia for 300 years, and no NATO in the rest of Ukraine. That's all he wants. The last thing in the world he wants is to take over Kyiv

and have responsibility for running the country. No, they're trying to whip up fear. I mean, some knucklehead in one of the NATO nations was saying, oh, you need to get supplies in your basement and water just in case we go to war it's like please i mean talk about fear-mongering it was it was it was obvious like no dude we're not going to war these things take time to build up if it's going to happen and there's no build-up for that so tony schaefer always a pleasure my dear friend it's a great conversation uh and i'm deeply grateful for it as are uh the fans who've been watching and commenting this morning.

Right. Well, thank you, judge. Always great to join you. Well, thank you. We'll see you again next week,

my man, all the best. Coming up at nine o'clock this morning, Medea, Benjamin, the founder of code pink and the queen of anti-war protesters in the United States. Medea, where's the anti-war movement these days? Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.