Judging Freedom - Matt Hoh: Gaza, Israel and Shifting Balances of Power

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Matt Hoh: Gaza, Israel and Shifting Balances of PowerSee 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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gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Trust me, listening on Audible can help you reach the goals you set for yourself. Start listening today when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. That's audible.com slash wonderyca. Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, February 6, 2024. Matt Ho is our guest at his usual spot on Tuesday. Matt, it's always a pleasure. Thanks very much for joining us. I want to ask you a lot of questions about what's going on in the Middle East, but before we do that, to Ukraine first, where there appears to be a leadership shuffle either going on or threatened. President Zelensky, I don't know why this hasn't happened, but he says several times he plans to fire or is going to fire General Zelensky and replace him with, I forget the name, but the general who's the head of intel.

What does that tell you if Zeluzny is out and the head of intel is coming in to run the military in light of what we know about the relationship between intel and MI6, the British intel? There's, I think, a lot of different ways you can look at this, Judge. And thank you, of course, for having me back on. One, I think the broader aspect of that, the cracks, the fissures are really showing here in Ukraine. One bad policy after another, one terrible decision after another, one decision to pursue this unwinnable war has led to fractures occurring that were always going to

occur when you have this type of situation or circumstance. And so you're starting to see these real divisions in the top tiers of Ukrainian government. And you can't be, I don't think it'd be speaking exaggeratively or offensively to say, could this lead to a civil war? If you have a question where the commander in chief, the president of the nation cannot remove his general. And if you see media reports percolating and coming out where you can see various camps clearly forming and you've had a war not going on for two years, but really for 10 years in this country, you have the most corrupt nation in Europe. I mean, all these things you put together and you say, you know what, a civil war in Ukraine, something much greater than what we

saw in Eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2022 is very possible, you know, as well as to the dissolution of the government, a collapse, all these types of things. So, you know, I mean, this idea that you would, if the general is able to be replaced, Zelensky is able to be replaced by Budanov, who is the head of intelligence or head of military intelligence, actually, you know, Budanov, it would be, I see as a way of the political establishment under Zelensky asserting control over the military. So perhaps you could, again, see different camps forming here as well. But this would be an attempt by Zelensky to put someone into power over the generals. So you're putting in charge of the generals of the Ukrainian army who have been fighting for, again, not two years, but for 10 years, basically, with an intelligence officer and a young intelligence officer.

I think Budanov is only 36 or 37 years old. So you're going to put in charge of these frontline commanders who have lost tens and tens of thousands of their own. A guy who sits behind a desk and, you know, does intelligence and believes in James Bond type things. And there have been some very successful Ukrainian spy special operations, you know, some of the operation attacks that have been successful. But what have they actually produced? I mean, they're just spectacles. So you can launch a truck bomb against the Kerch Strait Bridge, and it's a spectacle. Within a day or two, it's all cleaned up, and it causes angst and anxiety

among the Russians to a degree, but it has no real strategic impact. It has very little tactical impact, actually. And it has, you know, almost no counterproductive political impact because it just those types of spectacles just reinforced the Russians that they have to keep fighting. So, you know, putting this type of person in charge of your military, it raises a lot of questions as to why you would choose an intelligence officer over all your other generals. Why would you choose someone who emphasizes special operations over actually doing things that would actually win this war for Ukraine? Otherwise, we know it's an unwinnable war. But at least you put someone who has some idea of how this war could be brought

to a close. And then I've seen other commentators say this, does this mean that by putting someone like Budanov in charge of the Ukrainian army, is this some kind of a mission that you are going to be going to insurgent warfare, that at some point you're going to cede a lot more territory, potentially with territory, say all the way up to the river, so all the way up to Kiev, and that you will be launching insurgency warfare, that you'll be doing partisan warfare against the Russians. And remember that that is what the strategy was for many in the West. You know, no less a significant person than Hillary Clinton said that, well,

this is the plan. You know, in February 2022, Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton said that, well, this is the plan. You know, in February 2022, Hillary Clinton says we're going to do in Ukraine to the Russians what we did to the Soviets in Afghanistan. Now, completely oblivious and failing to mention how catastrophic that blowback was to the United States, what we did in Afghanistan. But also this idea that being that we're going to suck the Russians into Ukraine and we're going to give them their Iraq, right? We're going to see them bleed out in Ukraine. And Budanov might be the man who would do that. Do you share the view of some of your colleagues who come on this show General Butanov, notwithstanding his youth, is a tool of MI6 and to a lesser extent CIA. And therefore, you might actually see, to the extent they can do this, Ukrainian military activity inside Russia,

which is, of course, what the CIA and MI6 would love to see? Well, I think it's not even, I don't think it's limited just to MI6 and CIA, but also to policy officials. So Victoria Nuland was just in Ukraine. Her appearance during this palace drama is no coincidence. So her role there in terms of making sure people know that at least the Newland faction of the United States government and of Washington, D.C. is behind Zelensky. And, you know, this idea, too, of, again, getting back to this prolonging the war, how do we keep this war going just in a different phase and another iteration with a different face on it? I mean, the goal is not the defeat of Russia. The goal for the Americans and the British is not the removal of Russia from Ukraine's territory.

A sane person might say, yes, that should be the goal, but it's not. The goal is the destruction of Russia itself, to bring down the Russian government, to destroy its economy. That's the goal of the American and British policy in Ukraine, and it has been for quite a long time. Don't they know that that goal is utterly impossible? They are true believers, Judge. They are true believers. They are. They are. They are. They are dogs to the bone on this. And, you know, look, look, we just have that that video. You know, Chris has shown it probably so many times that the keys on his keyboard are going to fall off of President Biden saying, yes, the strikes against the Yemenis, against the Houthis

are not working, but we're going to keep doing them. I mean, this, the strikes against the Yemenis, against the Houthis are not working, but we're going to keep doing them. I mean, this is the mindset because it's not an operational mindset. It's not a strategic mindset. It's a political mindset. And that's who these people are. They are political animals. And whether they came through campaigns like, say, Jake Sullivan, or whether they've gone through the bureaucracy like Tony Blinken or Victoria Nuland, they are political animals. And that's all they care about is seeing their worldview win, seeing their beliefs, seeing their legacy validated. And so this idea that we will destroy Russia because this is what my whole personal narrative about.

And I'm not being hyperbolic there. This are, this is how these people, these are how these people are. This is how they view themselves as, you know, important figures of history. They view themselves as the men and women that are on the vanguard of history. And it doesn't matter if they're Democrats or the Republicans, if they're labor or conservative, this is who they are. It goes back to uh 20 years or so ago and i can't remember who it was in the bush white house it might have been carl rove i think it was carl rove who had that quote about how we make history everyone else just responds to it but the people in this building we make history and so that's how they see themselves they see themselves with that type of importance with that grandeur and narrative, their personal identity is tied up with

these theories they have, with their beliefs and with their desires. And on another level too, their identity is tied to being good servants, loyal servants of the American empire. And so you can see how they will not give up on this idea of destroying Russia because Russia has been so, they're so fixated on Russia in the same way that we have others in the United States who are fixated on Iran, say, and we're also have like a burgeoning class over the last two decades who have this same fixation on China. And I mean, this type of, this is, this is almost like a Greek tale, right? About how this type of relentless pursuit of something almost like a a greek tale right about how this type of relentless pursuit of something ends up in you know devastation calamity catastrophe etc so it's you

know i shouldn't even go back to the greeks right this is this is melville story this is moby dick on on budenoff is is he is he a nazi is he one of the extreme nationalists in Zelensky's government? You know, I don't know his back history well enough. I think he's a professional, comes out of the military and the intelligence services. Never was an infantry guy, as far as I know, always special operations, special forces type, you know, and has this intelligence purview. But certainly he is aligned with those. They may not agree with each other. They may not choose to sit next to each other at the bar, but their ends are the same. And I would say that this dovetails with what we see in Israel, say, where there is that

marriage between the national security types, the nationalists, those who served in the military and the intelligence services of Israel, who believe in the iron wall of Israel and want to see a greater Israel out of nationalist concerns and their marriage with the far right, the extremists like the Ben-Gavirs and the Smotriches in Israel, you know, the settler class. Right. So you have that marriage between those two. I think you have the same thing in Ukraine, those who are more security-minded,

more believing in being part of the West, married up with those who have these ultra-naturalist, far-right, Nazi-type beliefs and views. Chris, play the montage of the Biden administration saying, Putin has lost, Putin has lost, Putin has lost. The answer is Putin's already lost the war. Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In many ways, Putin has already lost. Putin has already lost in terms of what he was trying to achieve. In many ways, Putin has already lost. Putin has already lost this war. And that is Russia has already lost this war.

In short, Russia has lost. They've lost strategically, operationally, and tactically. They can't possibly believe that. They don't have to, though. And if they did believe it, and if they went with what they believed, they wouldn't be in the positions they're in, Judge. Mark Milley would never have made it to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if he said what he actually believed, right?

And, you know, it's a question as to, and there's all types. I mean, you showed a dozen people there. And so there's different reasons probably for why each of them say that. But certainly there are those, you know, one large segment of that is that they understand that they have to say these things because it's part of the job or not. We have to call genocide self-defense, whether we believe it or not. We have to say Russia has lost the war, whether we believe or not, because that's our job. That's our team. This is our empire and we have to go along with it. We have to promote it. And then there are those who I do think we do have those who are stupid enough to really do believe it, who don't know anything more than what the intelligence put in front of them tells them. And as we know, that intelligence is so often politicized. How would

they know? And I've had this experience when I used to go into Congress and talk about the Afghan war. Members of Congress having no idea about what was happening in Afghanistan. This was in 2010, 2011, 2012, when we had 100,000 troops there, when we had 100,000 contractors, 40,000 NATO troops, we were spending $100 billion a day, $100 billion a year, sorry. And the Taliban were basically getting stronger every day. And members of Congress, including those in the intelligence committees, the armed services committees, had no idea about it because the information they were being given by the Pentagon, by the CIA, by the state departments, and most

especially the defense industry funded think tanks, which do the bulk of the informing on Capitol Hill, which is a crime in itself, were telling them what the political narrative was, what the information that best represented that was, as opposed to telling them what was actually happening. Switching to the Middle East, has the genocide in Gaza transformed the balance of power? You have Egypt, you have Iran, you have Syria, you have Lebanon, you have Turkey. Of course, you have Israel itself, the remnants of Palestine. Has the genocide transformed or changed the balance of power there? I think it has, and I think it will in many ways. I think what we're seeing is a recognition that nations have to give up on the United States, that to follow the United States, just as going to go along on the United States, that to follow the United States just as going to go along with the United States is going to eventually lead to, at a minimum, some very

real problems and potentially their demise, right? So, I mean, it's been a few weeks since we said it, Judge, right? That Kissinger line,. You know, dangerous to be America's enemy, deadly to be its ally. And I think many nations are seeing that. And so what they're looking for is alternatives to American hegemony, ways to get around this. Certainly, there are some some aspects of those in the Middle East where power is dependent upon the United States, and they are now potentially in a very difficult position. So I'm thinking of, say, the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, whose positions in those countries, the territory they hold, is dependent upon American power. And if American power leaves, they are now in a very tenuous and difficult position. So going forward, how do you bank upon American power based upon the experiences you've had where you've been let down before?

But you've certainly seen this renewed axis of resistance, certainly outside of the United States and Europe and Japan and Australia, New Zealand, you've seen support for this access to resistance because it's morally justified. And so while I think you will have nations such as Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, the leader of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, they will do everything they can to maintain their position and utilize this crisis for their own benefit, I think many nations are going to be looking forward to ways that they can escape from American hegemony, whether individually or through cooperative organizations, alternative organizations, alternative institutions, like the BRICS. And then you're also seeing things occurring where nations, even nations like Iraq, which, you know, you look at this thing, you say, you know, both the Iraqis and the Palestinians

are people whose fate is decided by others. And so, you know, but you look at the Iraqis as they attempt to try and gain some type of semblance of sovereignty, and they're dominated by the Turks, they're dominated by the Iranians, they're dominated by the Americans, they've got the Islamic State there, there's all these types of the influence of Saudi Arabia, there's all this type of control over, say, Iraq, and the Iraqis after decades trying to regain some type of sovereignty. And so what you see the Iraqis doing being put forward now, this idea of de-dollarizing,

right. Of removing our, removing the dollar as the mechanism through which Iraq sells its oil. So the right, I mean, so you're having all these different, and it's so complicated because there are so many different nations, and then there's so many different, say, balances of power within each of those nations.

Agreed, agreed. But let me stop you. Does this reach the military level? By which I mean, you have, for example, President Erdogan of Turkey riling up a million people with some of the most incendiary language that a head of state has used, calling Bibi Netanyahu a terrorist who was engaged in genocide, and then nothing happens. So question, is this realignment of the balance of power or adjusting of the realignment of power, re-examination of the alignment of power, whatever you want to call it, likely to result in any military resistance to the Israeli genocide in Gaza? No, I don't think you'll see that. We haven't seen it. I don't think we will. I think, of course, you'll see military resistance from non-state groups. So whether it be, you know, of course, Hamas, but then Hezbollah, the Islamic

resistance of Iraq, certainly Ansar Allah, the Houthis of Yemen, you're seeing it from those groups. And some of those do have basically nation state status. I mean, certainly the Houthis do, they control about 80% of Yemen's people, of Yemen's people, but the nations like Turkey, they cannot. And this is primarily because Israel has won the backing of the United States, but, you know, but it also has as well, nuclear weapons. And so the idea that if you're Erdogan and you are stymied in this, if you want to become the next Salah ad-Din and be the leader of the Muslim people, but you are stymied by the inability to use your military because you do not have nuclear parity as well as a superpower so firmly in your corner, well, does this mean you

pursue nuclear weapons then? And does this mean that you then start to embrace Russia? You start to embrace China in a manner that five years ago would have never been conceivable. I mean, so certainly the ability for nation states to utilize their military, you know, has been something that they have run up against the wall on. And what are they going to do about it? Are they just going to sit there and accept it? Or are they going to, again, a couple of what's talked about how like, look, hitching our wagon to the Americans being underneath the foot of this empire is going to cost us.

It's costing us and the costs are only going to increase. So are they going to do something about it? And one of those in Turkey's case, do you acquire a nuclear weapon? You know, do you continue to nuclear weapon? Do you continue to break your connection to the United States and start to fall into the orbit more of Russia and China? And again, we could have this conversation for each and every nation in the region. And so it's very complex, but it's very important because I do think in five or 10 years time, you're going to see a completely different balance of power in the Middle East.

And you'll be able to trace it back and say, look, of course, these things have been occurring for a very long time. History isn't, you know, unconnected segments or individual events. But this crisis, this genocide precipitated or was the proximate cause of this realignment. Here's the cut number eight, Chris, here's the UN Secretary, Under Secretary General speaking at the Security Council complaining about the United States and Great Britain and complaining about bombing too close to UN facilities. After we watch this tape, my question to you is going to be, does the U.S., does Great Britain, does Israel care about the UN?

Since 11 January, the United States and the United Kingdom, with the backing of six other member states, have launched strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. Strikes have occurred consecutively over the last three days. More than 36 targets across 13 locations were reportedly struck on 3 February, including what was described as underground storage facilities, command and control sites, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars and helicopters. An additional missile launch site was reportedly hit on 4 February. Today, sites in Hodeidah were also targeted, including some very close to United Nations

offices on the ground. Does the U.S., does the U.K., does Israel care what the U.N. thinks about these military activities? I think, you know, Israel views the United Nations as an adversary because the United Nations is morally correct, it's legally correct, and so it stands as an affront or a challenge to what Israel has been trying to accomplish for decades and is trying to accomplish now and wants to accomplish in the future. The United States sees the UN even more sinisterly or nefariously as an infringement on their rights as an empire, right? So when we hear the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, et cetera, talking about rules-based international order, that's of course the rules-based international order as set forth by the American empire. And the United Nations sets just opposed against that. The United Nations sets just opposed against that. United Nations sits as the result of the Second World War.

This is what the combined armies that won that war produced in order to make sure that we did not live as a species by might makes right, but rather by institutions of law. And so, you know, the Americans see this as an infringement on their empire, that this is a challenge. And I think what you're seeing now is that as much as we can talk about Russia being America's peer challenge, China being America's peer challenge, and those certainly are the cases in a number of different ways, but you also have to view the Americans increasingly looking at the United Nations as a peer adversary. And we've had the history of that in the United States. I mean, going back to, you know, here in North Carolina, our old Senator Jesse Helms, you know, and he famously would try and defund the United Nations quite often. But now you're having this type of view that stretches across most of the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C., not because it's the legally correct thing, the morally correct thing to do, the strategically wise thing to do, but because it's best for the empire to view the United Nations as an adversary. So they do care what they're saying, and they're

going to do everything they can to undercut it. And I think that what will happen with UNRWA, with the United Nations Relief Agency and Palestine, is just the beginning of a number of attacks on the UN by the United States, regardless of who's in the White House. Has the Israeli lobby in the U.S. been weakened at all due to the slaughter in Gaza and the general perception that Israel has lost the PR war over what the IDF is doing? Unfortunately not. I think certainly if we walk around, Judge, we talk to people, many more people understand how the Israeli lobby works and operates in this country than they did four months ago. And so probably I think overall public opinion is going to have been a negative slide for the Israeli lobby. But in their practical effects, as well as their long term effects, they've had a very successful past several months. You know, I mean, just look at in the case of the new House speaker four months in on the job. Through this in the last four months, Mike Johnson has received almost one hundred thousand dollars from the Israeli lobby. And what has Mike Johnson just done?

He's added three billion to the 14 billion dollars the White House wants to give the Israelis. And he's going to put it on the floor of the House of Representatives this week. No questions asked, no strings attached, no politics involved, straight up and down vote. You know this. How often do we see straight up and vote downs on anything in the Congress? And so although public opinion wise among folks that you and I know we talk to the general sentiment, certainly the negativity because of the real understanding what the Israel lobby does has declined. But overall, their practical hold on American politics is just as great as it was before. And it may be even more even stronger because the things I've read have shown that there have been massive infusions of cash from major corporate figures, you know, to very from very rich people to the Israeli lobby that have really increased their bank accounts so that their ability to operate this year in the elections is going to be greater than any previous year. And without a change in campaign finance law, as long as we have a, continue to have a system of legalized bribery in this country that, you know, under, you know, underwrites our political system, they are going to be able

to continue to do that. Sickening, sickening that a lobby group could give the Speaker of the House $300,000. That was not in his pocket, obviously, in the coffers of his campaign legally. And he and he alone can add three billion dollars to the amount of money we're sending over there without any strings attached, without any inspector general, without any investigation, continuing the slaughter, continuing the genocide, no questions asked. And people who say, well, $17 billion, we have almost a $900 billion defense budget in this country, $17 billion, not a big deal. Remember, Israel only has about 9 million people, right?

So if you extrapolate that, if you do the math, what's that per capita? That would be the same thing as another foreign country giving the United States $600 billion. Right. Right. I mean, the amount of money here is massive, massive. Of course, everyone is in a community someplace where you look around and you say, why can't we have this? Why is this occurring? Where is our government? Why is our society crumbling

like this along so many lines? And when you turn to your members of Congress and ask those questions, the response very often is we don't have the money for it. And there's multiple reasons why we don't have the money for it. But one of those is because we have this war machine that gobbles up money and spits it out to all the worst actors. And keeps reinforcing itself. Matt Ho, thank you very much. It is sickening what we're discussing and it's unpleasant, but the public needs to know it and our viewers and I deeply appreciate it.

Thank you very much for your time. Thanks, Josh. Of course. Coming up at three o'clock Eastern, Karen Kwiatkowski. Very interesting conversation. Thanks, Judge. Ukraine and on Israel and on the balance of power in the Middle East from Scott Ritter himself. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.