Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: Can NATO Fight Russia?

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Matt Hoh: Can NATO Fight Russia?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, May 28th, 2024. Our dear friend Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, a pleasure. I know it seems like this is your regular time, but for the rest, it's like a Monday because of the weekend. But over the weekend, you gave an unbelievable talk to a gathering of people about morality, anger, and guilt with respect to war. And I got into two private arguments, nothing public like your speech about the misinterpretation of Memorial Day and the American glorification of war. Why do we glorify war? Why is it everywhere I went yesterday, everybody was praising organized murder. Right. And thanks, Judge, for having me on and for, you know, this space to talk about this, right?

Because this is un-American, this is unpatriotic, or at best, you know, this is not the time to talk about this. We should only honor the troops right now and have this conversation later. In the meantime, you see people posting these things that dishonor the troops, dishonor the men who I was with who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It dishonors their memory. It dishonors who they are. It dishonors their family when you say they died for some kind of purpose that doesn't exist. So when these things are being shared, whether it's restaurants, hanging banners outside, whether it's sports teams, whether it's politicians, whether it's restaurants, you know, hanging banners outside, whether it's sports teams, whether it's politicians, whether it's memes, you see on the internet, you know, saying how much we have to thank veterans for their freedom, for our freedom, remembering their sacrifices. But then

when you say, well, what was it for? What were these sacrifices for? What freedoms are you talking about? What army was going to come here to, you here to enslave us, to take away those freedoms? When we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, when we invaded Vietnam, when we did all these military actions in Central America, now throughout the Middle East and throughout Africa, what is the actual purpose of those? What freedoms are we defending? Who are we protecting our people from? And then as you begin to examine that and unravel that, you see why they don't want it to be expressed because it's not about freedom. It's not about liberty. It's not about protecting the American people or national security. It's about expanding the American empire. It's about maintaining the American empire. And very often too, it's about covering up what the American empire. It's about maintaining the American empire. And very often too, it's about covering up what the American empire does. So when we're in Iraq and one of my friends is killed by what we at the time called anti-Iraqi forces, which in fact were Iraqi men who were attacking foreign invaders of their country. But when one of my friends was killed by an enemy we created in a war that was justified

and sustained by lies, well, that type of conversation is very inconvenient. It's very uncomfortable. And so in addition to suppressing the reasons for why we fight these wars, it's also very important for the American empire to suppress the reality of these wars, who we are fighting and who is fighting us. I think it's, um, public schools teaching the glorification of, uh,

American, uh, empire, uh, mandatory public education. Although now, of course you can have, thanks to a Supreme court opinion called Wisconsin versus Yoder, you can have homeschooling and private education without the

government dictating the essence of what is taught. But yet, it is so, I forget who called it patriotic gore, It is so rampant that on Memorial Day, we honor those who died. I think every one of them, with the exception of the Revolutionary War, died in vain. None of the wars that we fought since then were just. What was even the stated purpose for Vietnam? We thought that Southeast, which is now a major trading partner of the United States, we thought that Southeast Asia would fall to communism, some form of godless, heathen paganism that would crush their liberty.

They're business people now who want to be wealthy like the rest of us. And commercial freedom ultimately brings civil liberties with it. Right. I mean, in the case of Vietnam, Judge, it was simply the fact that we took over from the French Empire. So as the British empires and the French empires fell following the Second World War, the American empire took over. And that's what empires do. They have to maintain their, they have to maintain themselves at all costs, including in say the case of the war in Vietnam, which extended into Cambodia and Laos, slaughtering anywhere from three to 5 million people in the process of that, including hundreds of thousands of people who have died in the years since because of the toxic legacies of the war

and the remnants of the war. So the Agent Orange poisoning, as well as the leftover bombs and lamb mines that didn't explode. But what this is, judges, is it's cheap and easy, right? In terms of what they're selling on Memorial Day, it's jingoism. It appeals to the basest nature of people. It's the basest common denominator among us, this form of nationalism, this form of hatred towards the other. It whips up all types of not just romantic aspirations of warfare, but also fear. So it is cheap and easy to do what they do on Memorial Day, to do what they do on Veterans Day, to do what they do again on July 4th, whenever throughout the year, any type of pressure or any type of exposure on what the empire actually does and what the

empire actually is, is presented. It's this type of cheap and easy jingoism that they use to try and suppress that type of dissent and that type of examination. I wonder if any of the people involved, some of whom are now dead, like Colin Powell, with the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, who now know there were no weapons of mass destruction. I suppose Afghanistan was based on, oh, this is where the 9-11 people trained, or this is where their mentality resides, a bogus reason to kill Iraq. Well, he's got weapons of mass destruction. If we don't use ours on him, he's going to use his on us. But we now know both of those arguments were baloney. They were hogwash.

9-11 occurred because a bunch of Saudis got money from their rich benefactors and thought they could get us back for what we had done in the Middle East while George Bush and his government were asleep at the switch.

But mainly these killings that the American, that your generation engaged in, were for enemies we created in lands we invaded for politics that's no longer even relevant. Can't hear you. We don't hear you, Matt. There you go. How about now?

Okay. Were you able to? Got that chainsaw going off in the yard in front of me. I was trying to keep myself on mute. Chainsaw because of a 200-year-old tree across the street from your house that fell, but thankfully missed your house. Missed everybody's house, thank God. But anyway. You were able to hear what I was saying?

I was. I could hear you fine. I'm just afraid that you can hear the noise. But doing more harm than good in terms of trying to mute myself. But anyway, you know, that point exactly, Judge, is that the people that we went over there to kill and the people that killed us in response in defense of their land, you know, this is one of the things I realized when I was in Iraq, that of the 153 Marines and sailors that I had under my command, you know, if they were young Iraqi men, if they were young men who had grown up in Anbar province, that 51, you know, if my Marines were these young men, 51 of them

would have been fighting us, 51 of them would have been in Abu Ghraib, and 51 of them would have been dead, because they were doing nothing more than defending their land. And this is something that we knew. We knew based upon our interrogations of prisoners, based upon talking to the Iraqis, that the people who were fighting us were fighting us because we were occupying them. No other reason. And the same was true for the Taliban in Afghanistan. You'd have these outliers.

You could have a few percentage of the movement that was ideologically or religiously driven. But the bulk of the people that fought us in the wars that I took part in, in these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it spanned 20 years, that left more than 7,000 American dead, cost us trillions and trillions of dollars, killed untold hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions of people, we just don't know, that these wars were wars that were being fought for reasons that were specious, for reasons that were lies, not even specious, but they were lies. This is what the American empire does. Doesn't the victim of an invasion or an occupation have the moral authority to fight the occupier? That's exactly correct. So what we faced in both Iraq and Afghanistan was a resistance that was justified under both international law and under natural law, under moral law. I don't think anyone could argue with that. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, the American commands, the international commands as well, went through great pains, went through all these contortions to make it clear that we are not occupiers, that these puppet governments

we have installed have invited us here, that we are guests of a sovereign country, which was all complete nonsense. That was all made up. It's all make-believe. But they went through that type of exertion to try and make a point that we weren't occupiers to avoid that aspect that we were the ones who were transgressions, that we were the ones who were the outlaws, that we were the ones who were in disregard of international law, disregard of natural law, and that the people we were fighting, those we would call terrorists, who sometimes we would call insurgents, but naturally what we should have been calling was resistance, they were the ones who were in the right for fighting us. Because that's what, I think if people who are stung by what I'm saying right now, if you allow yourself to take a step back and think about this and what

would you have done if another country had come into your country and did what the Americans did in Iraq and Afghanistan, did what we did, I shouldn't excuse myself by saying the Americans as a third party like that, did what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan, then what would your response have been? What would you have done if someone had occupied you? Well, now we understand how the Palestinians have reacted. They are occupied by the Israelis. They have the moral authority to fight the occupier, to wage war against them. The Israelis can call them terrorists. They can call them subhuman.

They can call them whatever they want. But as long as Israel is going to illegally occupy their lands, they have the right to resist. This is pretty basic stuff. I know it's not popular, but it's basic. And it is. And you see too, with both the Americans and the Israelis, the lengths they go to, to not acknowledge the occupation. Both the Americans and the Israeli governments go to great lengths, and the Brits will do this as well, to make pretend that there is no occupation. And they will use all types of Orwellian language. They will just flat out deny it. They will lie to make it so that the war that has been going on against the Palestinians, this hundred year war of conquest for the land there in

Palestine by the Israelis is something other than what it is. And so what you can have then is you have this where world is turned upside down, just like in Iraq and Afghanistan, where somehow the Palestinians are the ones who are those that are the perpetrators, that they are not the victims, that they are the attackers. When you fought, was it Afghanistan or Iraq? Both. I was on both. You were at both. I know you were an officer and you had many young men that worked under you, but did your superiors attempt to dehumanize the resistance? Because we know that history teaches a couple of lessons that are so profound, they're truisms, and that is if you want to slaughter or kill people or eliminate them because of an immutable characteristic of

birth, like nationality or ethnicity, you first dehumanize them and make the argument they're not the same as us, they don't have the same rights. Did the American government attempt to dehumanize the people of Afghanistan and Iraq in the minds of the young soldiers. They made it even in terms of strategy and what was about what was able to be done there. They made it even worse than that, Judge, because what they did was we had this absolutely insane and, you know, a theory of counterinsurgency that was pushed by the likes of people like General Petraeus and General Allen and General McChrystal and others, who were basically snake oil salesmen regarding these theories of war that they had. And so what they attempted to do, the Americans and as well as to the international forces that were there, like the British and the Canadians and others,

was this idea that we were there to protect the population and that the insurgents, the resistance, was not a part of the population and that they were somehow some type of alien faction, that they were anti-Afghan forces, they were anti-Iraq forces, that they were terrorists, that they were not representative of the population that we are trying to protect. And so by doing that, it made us completely misunderstand, you know, the misinterpretation of what actually was occurring there caused our inability to be effective at all, to just greatly, you know, be even greater than it would have been if we had shown up and just accepted the situation as it really existed. So they had this, this

jumbled type of idea that we were going to go in this other country. We were going to be the guys with the white hats on. We are going to somehow separate the bad guys from the rest of the population while not acknowledging that the population recognized the people that we called the bad guys as the good guys and that we didn't have white hats on. We had black hats on. I mean, they just tread this whole theater, this whole type of, of storyline, uh, just this, uh, complete, uh, fantasy and, and, and, and, and fabulism, if you will, about our role there and about how the people wanted us there. And, uh, you know, you just, you know, with the corruption, uh, everything else, these wars

were, were, uh, unwinnable, uh, moral horror shows. We're going to, um, take a break for a commercial announcement. When we come back, we'll transition to Ukraine. And I will play for you, if you haven't seen it, an MI6 written, CIA, Hollywood produced, actor starring argument for peace talks in Ukraine. You tell me if it's credible, but first this. You all know that I am a paid spokesperson for Lear Capital, but I'm also a customer, a very satisfied customer. About a year ago, I bought gold, and it's now increased in value 23%.

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Protect your savings. 800-511-4620. Learjudgenap.com. Tell them the judge sent you. I won't even tell you who's starring in this. You'll know in a flash. It's seven minutes long, but Chris edited it down to 90 seconds.

Watch how slick it is, how dramatic it is, and tell me if this makes any sense. Cut number nine, Chris. Does Russia want a dialogue? Ukraine has the world's experience of lies from Russia during negotiations. Lies that in particular was Russian cover up for preparing this war. And that's exactly why global efforts are needed. Global peace summit of the leaders whom Russia will not be able to deceive. Summit that will show who in the world really wants to end the war

and not just claim the ceasefire, which will inevitably be broken by Russian rockets and artillery, just like as it was dozens, dozens of times before. To President Biden, the leader of the United States, and to President Xi, the leader of China, we do not want the UN Charter to be burned. Please show your leadership in advancing the peace, real peace, not just a pause between the strikes. The efforts of global majority are the best guarantee that all commitments will be fulfilled. Please support the peace summit with your personal leadership and participation. For all of us, it should be a pleasure to make peace.

So he's no longer the president of Ukraine. He is the authoritarian controller of the government. His term expired. He did not seek re-election because he canceled elections. They are on their last leg. The European leadership, at least in Britain, is talking about, and Poland, using Western-made weapons to fight inside Ukraine. even in the United States, Victoria Nuland is talking about that. How much longer can this nonsense go on? I'm not sure, Judge. I mean, how long can you keep this house of cards upright? Yes, yes. Because Putin will lose patience and Putin doesn't bluff. Right. But the Russians are pushing for negotiations.

That's what, you know, just came off of this conversation right before. Right. Where we're talking about the lies, the double speak, the Orwellian nature of the American occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And here you have the same case again. You have in this case, Volodymyr Zelensky talking about how he wants peace, how we need to have negotiations, how you need a settlement, et cetera, et cetera. And the biggest obstacle to peace and negotiations is his government. And of course, then the American government, NATO as well. The Russians have been pushing for negotiations for years now, before their invasion, immediately after their invasion, throughout 2023. And then, of course, we just saw in the last week, Reuters had a big story detailing how Russia has been

advancing a ceasefire along the current lines of contact. So along the current front, then that would allow then for, you know, settlement talks to go further than that. But what you see here is you see this this protestation that we're the ones who want peace while they deny peace. And this is something that, well, this is one of the reasons why I resigned from my post with the State Department in Afghanistan, was because in 2009, the Taliban were attempting to negotiate with us. And rather than negotiate with the Taliban, we decided the United States under Barack Obama decided we were going to win militarily in Afghanistan. And we surged and we had a 200,000 man army, essentially, when you add in or actually 250,000 man army in Afghanistan, when you add in all the American troops, the NATO troops and all

the contractors, 250,000 men, and we lost. And what happens when your enemy comes to you, offers peace? You say, no, we're going to defeat you in combat. And then you lose. What does that look like? Well, Afghanistan is what it looks like. And this is what's happening in Ukraine. The Russians are offering terms, are offering an ability to end this war through negotiations. They've been doing it for years. The Americans, the British have kept the Ukrainians from doing so. I'm not even sure how much the outcome is going to be something much worse than what they could have gotten now, and especially than what they could have gotten last year, two years ago, three years ago. How much longer do you think Ukraine can last, no matter what the Biden administration sends them? I don't know, Judge. I mean, it's a sense of how much of those men, what are they willing to do? And this is what's interesting about this manpower situation, is you hear about

this dire need for manpower on the Ukrainian front by the Ukrainian army. And it's juxtaposed against all these reports about how you go into the cities in central and western Ukraine, and there are scores and scores of young men. The Ukrainians don't draft young men into the army below the age of 25. There's also almost a million men who are of military age who left Ukraine and are outside of Ukraine and have no intention of coming back because they don't believe in the war. We've talked about this before as well, that the Ukrainian public, over half the Ukrainian public in public opinion polls have stated that they understand why people avoid the draft, why they avoid the Ukrainian army. So you got half the country saying, we don't believe this war is worth dying for. I mean, so that's, I think, what really comes down to is what is the will, the public support for this war, and how long can they keep that afloat? I think otherwise, you can continue to keep the Ukrainian army in positions where they slow the Russians, where they make it difficult for the Russians. As long as you continue to have this funding of the Ukrainian government, keep it afloat.

Funding of the Ukrainian economy, keep it afloat. You know, we just saw again this weekend, Jen Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, pushing this idea of NATO providing $20 billion a year to Ukraine. The EU is being pressured very heavily to take the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets and give that to Ukraine. The Americans, of course, I'm sure it's only a couple months from now, Judge, where we're going to start to see another proposal for another $60 or $70 billion to go to Ukraine. So, I mean, I think that's a lot of this comes down to whether or not the Ukrainian public will continue to support this war. But otherwise, if they can

maintain it, I'm afraid that the Russians are in no hurry to win this war. It's a war that I feel that they cannot lose, that they can't be beaten in. But it's also something that for the Russians, why do they want to advance forward and control the whole country or attempt to control the whole country when that wasn't their objective to begin with? So I think if the public support for this war in Ukraine is able to be maintained, that we're a year from now going to be in the same place. Maybe the front line will have moved west 50 kilometers, 100 kilometers, maybe it'll be in the same place. But what we're looking at here is an unwinnable meat grinder that the only way to make sure it ends is through negotiations. And that's also the only way to make sure it doesn't escalate. And what we're seeing is this

continued escalatory pressure. General Siersky, the head of the Ukrainian army, just said he signed documents the other day to allow for French troops to come into Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces. That's an escalation. We're waiting to see these F-16s arrive. We're waiting to see more American missiles arrive. All these types of weapons that are being provided that will allow for the Ukrainians to strike deeper into Russian territory. The Russians have warned against this. The Russians, when the British said, hey, go ahead and use our missiles, strike anywhere in Russia you want us to. The Russians said we will strike back at British military targets in Ukraine and beyond. I mean, and so the escalatory dangers of all this, plus, of course, we saw last week the Russians conducting non-strategic nuclear weapons drills.

I mean, so the only thing to end that is negotiations, is a settlement. And unfortunately, we have these political calculations in the West, primarily in Britain and the United States, that somehow this war is of better domestic political benefit for the powers to be than continuing it, than ending it. Here's Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, an American academic in Brussels who studies Russia, making the same argument you did, Chris, cut number five. If, for example, the F-16s are flying from Moldova, from Romania or from Bulgaria into Ukrainian airspace and are attacking Russian positions,

then I think it is entirely thinkable, entirely feasible, that Russia would attack a NATO country. He's right. And he's right. And here's the thing with those French troops going in, Judge. Are the French going to put those troops into Ukraine and not provide them with all the layers of defense that you would expect for your force to be provided. And that means providing air cover with French jets based out of Romania,

which is where they are now. And so those French aircraft are in the sky, the Russians shoot them down with their S-300s, their S-400s, or whatever. I mean, so you can see how this escalation builds, let alone the fact, what if those French jets carry out strikes on Russian forces? The Russian forces respond with strikes in Romania. It doesn't take much to imagine where all this goes to. And again, this idea of what does Russia want? Russia doesn't want to conquer all of Ukraine. So the idea of Russia destroying the Ukrainian army and advancing all through Ukraine, that's not what they want. What they want is the objectives that they stated, and those have expanded, of course, since 2022.

But this idea of a buffer zone in the east, they've annexed these provinces, that's what they want. They want to demilitarize Ukraine. Ultimately, they want a neutral Ukraine. That's something they can get in a settlement. But what the Russians can do is they can live with where they're at right now. I think for the next couple of years, I think that's all they probably have for their war economy. But for the next two or three years, I think the Russians are okay with slugging it out like this. You know, in the Americans and the British, the French, and some of the Ukrainians,

their calculations are, well, as long as we keep getting all this American money, as long as we keep getting all this NATO and EU money, we can keep it going as well. And so it doesn't take much imagination to imagine, to figure out where that can go as well. Matt Ho, thank you very much. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your personal, candid thoughts about the futility of war as Americans glory war this week. All the best. I think we'll see you Friday. I think you're filling in. I hope I'm not speaking out of turn.

I think you're filling in for that youngster McGovern on the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Thanks, Judge. Hard to seeing you then. Thank you, my friend. All the best Community Roundtable. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Thanks, Judge. I look forward to seeing you then. Thank you, my friend.

All the best. All right. Bye. Bye. Coming up tomorrow, three of your regulars at 2 o'clock, Connor Freeman from Antiwar.com. At 3 o'clock, Phil Giraldi. And at 4 o'clock, All Times Eastern, Aaron Matei. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom. Thank you.