Judging Freedom - Matthew Hoh: What Have We Learned From Ukraine and Israel?

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

From strategic considerations to the human impact of conflicts, our conversation seeks to unravel the nuanced lessons that these geopolitical hotspots offer to policymakers, analysts, and concerned citizens alike.#Russia #ukraine #USMilitaryHistory #Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostages #Israel #Gaza #ceasefire #hostages #Ukraine #zelenskyy #Biden #china #IsraelPalestine #MiddleEastConflict #PeaceInTheMiddleEast #GazaUnderAttack #Ceasefire #Jerusalem #prayforpeace #hostagesSee 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, December 19th, 2023. Matt Ho joins us now. Matt, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much for coming on. I know we're within seven days of Christmas, but I appreciate we'd try and see if we can draw some lessons from our observations. The people watching us now know that we say what

we believe is true. We don't work for the government. We don't hesitate to criticize the government. In fact, we have been harshly critical of the government, believing as we do that it causes more harm, more death, more destruction by the manner in which it addresses both of these. Having said that, is the war in Ukraine, Matt Ho, effectively over? I think it is, Judge, and thanks for having me back on, and thank you for what you and all the other folks on this channel have done over the last couple of years, particularly with regards to talking about the realities of the war in Ukraine. And I think it is effectively over. You're looking at

a Russia that has achieved many of its objectives. I don't believe that it can advance further or wants to advance further. Maybe it can advance up to fully to the Dnipro River. But its objectives in terms of what was stated by Russia at the beginning of their campaign now nearly two years ago have been achieved in terms of limited territorial objectives as as well, you know, creating a buffer zone, but also to demilitarizing Ukraine, weakening Ukraine. There are larger objectives, though, that have not been met by Russia, I think, in terms of their desire to see NATO weakened. I think this ultimately will strengthen NATO because the NATO countries, the US and NATO countries are putting so much money into their militaries. And you just saw,

say in the last day, the US is going into 15 bases in Finland. So while the short-term goals of the Russian campaign, I believe have been met, these longer-term goals of the Russian campaign, I believe, have been met. These longer-term goals of stability in the region, I always come back to this in terms of the Russian calculations here. How does this get the US nuclear missiles out of Romania and Poland? So while the war may be over or coming to an end in the sense of a Russian victory in Eastern Ukraine, the long-term instability that has been brought on by NATO expansion is still present and is incredibly, and will remain so, and will remain dangerous until we have some type of rational, reasonable, historical perspective in the US and NATO that says, look, we are the source

of this instability. We are prompting, we are provoking the Russians into these actions, and we need to take a step back in order to prevent this conflict widening, expanding, escalating, so forth. I keep thinking of the line you gave us all from Henry Kissinger, it's dangerous to be America's enemy. It's fatal to be America's friend. I mean, what lesson is there for President Zelensky, however much longer he's going to be on the scene? What lesson is there for Ukrainian leadership? I mean, they have lost a generation of young men, a generation of young men, half a million either dead or so disabled that they can't have normal lives, all because they trusted the United States and the

United Kingdom, which told them, don't sign that handshake agreement, or it was more than a handshake, it was words on paper, don't sign that agreement negotiated with the Russians. We have your back. So money can't buy everything. And at some point, money runs out. Right. I think the lesson for them is that history has meaning and it has purpose. This is the scorpion and the frog story. This is the adage that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. And so if you look and you saw how the United States treated the Afghans, how the United States dealt with, say, the Kurds, how the United States handled the catastrophe in Libya, you go back, see how the United States handled Vietnam, what it did in Central America. I mean, all of this was predictable that the Ukrainians would be put into this position.

And now President Zelensky provides presides over a country that has effectively lost the war. But also, you know, more importantly, it's a country that has been depopulated. They've lost 10 million people, roughly. The casualties are just absolutely horrendous. I don't think we really have a good grasp. I mean, the reports are that 70 to 80% of Ukrainians have a close friend or family member who've been killed or wounded in a conflict. I mean, that is just, that seems almost statistically impossible, but that's the reality for millions of Ukrainian families. And then two, the infrastructure is destroyed. The industry is ruined. The Ukrainian economy needs four and a half million people to come back into Ukraine who fled as refugees just to sustain the economy as it was before Russia's invasion. And in the environment, it's a catastrophe. You have a land that is just now where the infrastructure and the people have left has been populated with landmines,

unexploded ordinance, depleted uranium. I mean, so just the scale of this, what the Ukrainians have to reckon with, if judge, we have a magic wand and make everything go back to normal, go to a peacetime world, you know, I mean, still what they have to endure, what they have to get through, what they have to rebuild is just unimaginable to us here in the United States. So I think that's the lesson for Zelensky and his people. Now, there are those within the Ukrainian government who have prospered from this, particularly those in the far right, the ultra-nationalists, the neo-Nazis, because I believe their position is strengthened to a degree. But the catastrophe that has been dealt to the Ukrainian people because they were

the pawns of American foreign policy, of the American empire, is really staggering. And it's really only, you know, I mean, in terms of as the United States stomps across the world, destroying entire peoples, At this moment, it actually is bested by the Gazans, but that is just an order of magnitude that is similarly as unbelievable as what has occurred to the Ukrainians. So there was a time in the old USSR days where Ukraine was referred to as the breadbasket of the USSR. What did that mean? It produced the wheat for bakeries in the old Soviet Union, and it was the chief and principal producer, or is this some larger metaphor here? I think it was just exactly as stated. It was a prime

agriculture producer. You hear these talks of people who've been there about the rich, dark, black earth of Ukraine, you know, and then it's access to the Black Sea, the major ports that it had, whether in Crimea or Odessa, you know, so it was such an important agricultural point or part of the Soviet Union. And it also had a pretty large industrial base as well in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass region, which has been occupied by Russia, is controlled by Russia, is being annexed by Russia. And so what hasn't been destroyed has been taken over by Russia. So what you're dealing with here is you're dealing with a country that has been just incredibly weakened in all in all manners, physical capital, human capital, its access to the Black Sea. It has angered and frustrated and made hostile its neighbors to the West. We saw this with the blockades by, say, the Polish truckers on the Ukrainian border. You've seen this with

the anger of, say, the Polish farmers and other European farmers because of the flood of Ukrainian grains and wheats and rices into those markets, effectively causing great economic harm to, you know, Central and Western European farmers. I mean, so this has just been, again, I keep coming back to the world catastrophe, but I'm not sure what else to describe it in terms of when you look at the point we're at two years from now, two years ago, when the Russians approached the West with the possibility of a diplomatic deal and where that could have gone, what they were asking for. And what the Russians were asking for at the time was something that was entirely doable. It's something that Zelensky himself said was doable in the weeks after Russia's invasion, you know, a neutral Ukraine, basically.

But now that seems, that is a distant memory because what that refusal of diplomacy means is that Ukraine has lost 20% of its land. Again, it's deindustrialized. Its population has been just dealt such a blow. I mean, the grief, the horror, the nightmare that so many families in Ukraine are going through because the Ukrainian government, with either a gun to their head or with all these things whispered into their ears by both ultra nationalists in Ukraine and by American and British and NATO officials promising Zelensky that he would be a hero of history. This is your chance to stand up against the great Russian hordes and Vladimir Putin, so forth. You look at how they are now compared to where it was two years ago and what could have occurred, and that is such a tragedy. Last question on Ukraine before we transfer to Israel and Gaza. What is the

significance of Odessa? Is this a city that Putin craves? Is this a neutral city? Is this a city that they'll continue to fight for? Or are the Russians more or less satisfied with what they have and where they are? We will see. There are many within the Russian government, this Russian establishment, Russian society who want Odessa. I mean, it has a prime historical meaning and sense of importance to them. It has a strategic importance. It would effectively make the Russian annexation or capture or absorption of Odessa would effectively make Ukraine a landlocked nation. It more or less is now, of course, but it would make it kind of a permanent situation. I mean, so it's important both strategically as well as economically, but then also too culturally.

So we will see the Russians are in, it is entirely in Vladimir Putin, his people's hands, how this goes forward. The White House just again yesterday or today, maybe it was said we only have enough money for one more arms shipment to Ukraine. And judge, as we know, that's only because the Pentagon did these accounting tricks to allow them to continue to have billions of dollars they probably shouldn't have had to provide to Ukraine. So, I mean, it is, if you are a Ukrainian who is involved in this because you saw your country invaded, because maybe you have some type of historical perspective on this, I mean, all kinds of things I think most people can sympathize with and understand. The position those people have been put in by both their government,

but by even more the American empire, by NATO, is just really something that we talked about just a couple weeks ago, borders on the term or maybe encompasses the term evil. Yes. We're going to take a break. When we come back, is the Netanyahu government capable of defeating Hamas? Or is its goal just to keep Bibi Netanyahu in office?

And what are the lessons to be learned from initially unbridled American support for the type of slaughter going on in Gaza. But first this. Justin Faltano here. I love being a spokesperson for causes that I believe in, and one of them is the soundness of money.

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Find out how diversifying your portfolio from stocks and bonds into gold and silver can give you peace of mind, the peace of mind you deserve. 800-511-4620. learjudgenap.com. And when you speak to these good folks, tell them the judge sent you. So, Matt, has the president effectively painted himself in a corner over Israel where he wants to be today the way he's been consistently throughout his 50-year political public life as one of Israel's best friends. But he knows that the PR war has been lost by Israel, and he knows that the American public is being sickened by what they see on the news every night. Well, I can't imagine any American president would have done anything differently. Maybe perhaps if we had someone from, not a Republican or a Democrat there, but certainly

the way that the United States and Israel have intertwined themselves in a host of different ways, but especially within American domestic politics through the Israeli lobby and its influence, its mass influence on American elections made it so that this was as inevitable. So as inevitable as the October 7th attack by Hamas on the Israeli military and Israeli civilians was as inevitable as then Israel's response was going to be. This complicity, this support by the United States for the ethnic cleansing and genocide was just as inevitable because of this is the government we have made. This is the choices that they have decided upon that have put them in this place where they have no other option but to support Israel this way because their political throats would be cut. And I mean, so I think that is a lesson that we as Americans should be taking because this is writ large an example of our entire system, our entire system captured by money. And then,

of course, the choices that our legislatures decide to make based upon that money. And we see that certainly here where, again, I don't think any other president would have done anything differently than Biden, but now he is paying the consequences for it. And, you know, Judge, I've never been so proud not to be in the American government watching Tony Blinken, watching Lloyd Austin, watching Ambassador Greenfield. I have never been so proud not to have left that behind, to no longer be associated with it and to not be a part of of what is being done i mean it's just really staggering the decisions that are being made here and the lies and the willingness to go along with something that is uh uh just so brutally hideous that it's it's incredibly hard to watch even for those of us who have spent our adult lives our whole lives watching these kinds of things, living these kinds of things. Do people who engage in war crimes end up paying a price for it?

That's a broad question because the answer is some do and some don't, and most don't, at least not on Earth. But my question really, and I didn't frame it properly, Matt, is Netanyahu's goal to defeat Hamas? Because Hamas is an idea. You can't defeat an idea. Was Netanyahu's goal to carry out the war for as long as possible? Because once the war is over, he's Mr. Netanyahu and maybe prisoner Netanyahu. Right. And so very likely, if you get to a point in gaza where things have violence has been reduced the gazans have been subjugated uh there is not daily violence daily killing the need to

drop uh bombs on 200 or 300 houses a day you get to that point where things are relatively calmer, then I think Israel expands the war into Lebanon or makes the West Bank look like Gaza, even though the West Bank is a horror show right now, 300 Palestinians being shot dead by Israeli security forces and settlers since October 7th in the West Bank. I think the ability to make the West Bank look like Gaza may be the next avenue to ensure this government stays in power. Because as you said, Judge, Netanyahu is, I mean, his approval numbers, his approval numbers make Biden and Trump look like Taylor Swift and Beyonce. You know, I mean, like he was just, I mean, the level of distrust for him, hatred towards him. But I think the Israeli government is doing everything it can to utilize this for its own purposes. And I think there are many in the Israeli government within the Likud party, within the far right parties, including

Netanyahu, who don't want to see Hamas go away. They don't want to take any political consequences for Hamas attacks or for the Palestinians fighting back. But what they want is they want some type of adversary. They want some kind of enemy that they can focus the Israeli people on, right, so that their own personal corruption, their own ineptitude, their own, you know, incompetence is not being judged. But that's a standard, that goes back, as long as we've had the opportunities, it goes back to Greece, the Greeks going overseas to keep the people of Athens interested in something other than what their own government was doing to them. I want you to take a look at this brief clip from an interview that the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom had with a reporter from the BBC.

It's a little difficult to watch because they keep cutting each other off. But it is very, very clear the message that she wants to articulate. And she speaks in doomsday terms. She speaks in absolutes. So I'd like your thoughts on it. Sonia, this is cut number eight. Two-state solution? Is there still a chance for a two-state solution? I think it's about time for the world to realize the Oslo paradigm failed on the 7th of October and we need to build a new one and in order to build a new one does that new one include the Palestinians living in a state of their own I think that what I think the biggest question is what type of

Palestinians are on the other side this is what Israel realized the answer is absolutely no and I'll tell you why well then how can there be peace? The reason there is no peace is because the Palestinians... Without offering a state to Palestine, how can there be peace in Israel? Israel knows today, and the world should know now. The reason the Oslo Accords failed is because the Palestinians never wanted to have a state next to Israel. They want to have a state from the river to the sea. So the two-state solution is dead. Why are you obsessed with a formula that never worked, that created this radical people in the other side?

Why are you obsessed with that? That's the mouthpiece, and I don't mean that in a negative way, for the Netanyahu government, who has one of the most prestigious ambassadorships that the prime minister can give out, that in Great Britain. Yeah, I think you see that. I think you see that with American officials when we sit and we say, this is who we have, this is who represents us. But when you have something that is morally and intellectually corrupt, such as the American empire, such as our militarized foreign policy, such as our military industrial complex, such as

the way Israel has occupied the Palestinians for 75 years, refused them any opportunities for statehood, all this nonsense, all these lies, all these distortions about these Palestinians have rejected deals. Those are the worst deals in the world. Anyone with any brain in their head would reject those deals. You have someone coming to your house basically and saying, you give me your house, you live out in the shed, and that's the deal. I mean, these are terrible, terrible deals, but the narrative keeps running. And Judge, one of the things, earlier we were talking about the lessons of Ukraine and Israel and Gaza, and to put these all together, one of the lessons is that people fight back. And that's not a surprise to you or to me or to anyone watching, but to

the entitled, smug, arrogant, ahistorical crowd that runs American foreign policy, that runs British foreign policy, to the religious zealots that run Israel. That is something that they cannot accept, that people will fight back. But we are seeing this. We are seeing this over and over again, whether it was Russia fighting back against NATO expansion, whether it's been the Palestinians fighting back for 100 years now against being colonized, against being subjugated, against being expelled from their homes, and whether it was the United States losing in Afghanistan. I mean, like the examples we could have go on and on. And now we see the Houthis fighting back or fighting on behalf of the Palestinians in the Red Sea.

And people are outraged by this. They're surprised by this. And what do you expect? People will fight back. And the days of an empire that can quash such things are over. And this refusal to understand that people will fight back is isolating the United States. You know, as we're sitting here, the United Nations Security Council is getting ready to vote on a resolution on a ceasefire in Gaza. Again, we will see what the United States does. My money, of course, is on that they're going to,

you know, block it like they always do. But we look at this as refusal to understand why people fight back. You know, this attacking that type of sentiment that, look, people are going to resist. What would you do if you were them? And you see that in that Israeli ambassador's response, the umbrage, the offense she is taking at the idea that somehow someone would resist her and her government and her ideology. And so, I mean, that's one of the lessons here is that we as a people have a government that is arrogant, it is entitled, it is smug, and it is so ahistorical,

so ignorant of the realities of human history that is propelling us into not just these situations that are increasingly unstable, not just these positions where we're isolated, but also into inherently dangerous, potentially apocalyptic positions. Because the big threat, of course, is when does China start fighting back? When does China say, enough, we are tired of you running your aircraft carriers, your cruisers, your destroyers, your fighter planes up to our coastline. We've had enough of this. We're going to fight back.

All right, you talk about apocalyptic statements. Here's Secretary Austin speaking to troops in Qatar just yesterday. This is cut number seven, Sonia. So this is a critical hinge in history where a lot of things are going on. A lot of things are coming together. And you know, people often ask me how the United States of America can manage to do what we do. Well, we can manage to do what we do because of you. You are the best in the world.

There's no question in my mind. And when given a mission, when given a challenge, you always rise to meet that challenge, and you're always focused on accomplishing the mission. So we're doing – we're supporting Ukraine in its time of need. We're supporting Israel in its time of need. We're supporting Israel in its time of need. And again, you're supporting all your troops that you have downrange here in Iraq and Syria. And recently, we see challenges in the Red Sea and in the Strait of Bab al-Mandib. And you are making sure that you're providing support to that effort as well.

So it's about as busy as it gets in the region here, but this tells you that this is a critical region. And again, you are at the tip of the spear at a very important time in history here. We could not do this without you. We could not do this without your commitment. We could not do this without you. We could not do this without your commitment. We could not do this without the support of your families, the sacrifices that your families are making on a daily basis. I guess we are getting ready for World War III, Matt. You know, it sounds like to me, listening to him.

Right. By the way, It wasn't yesterday. That was today. That was today in Qatar. You know, he was with the prime minister Netanyahu over the weekend. Now he's he's making the rounds there for what? Well, what he's trying to do is trying to get these these Arab and Gulf nations involved in their in their Red Sea flotilla that's going to fight the Houthis. And none of them are going along except for the Bahrainis, who are about as corrupt as you can get in any ruling class.

And also because we have our massive naval base there. They don't want to lose that grift. But, you know, you listen to him, Judge, and you think, what is he talking about? And, of course, he's giving a pep talk to the troops. He's giving a pep talk to young men and young women. So it's going to be there's going to be hyperbole. There's going to be exaggeration. It's going to be positive. But I think he really believes these kinds of things. And you hear him talk about what we have accomplished and what have we accomplished? What has the American empire accomplished in these last decades. It has lit entire parts of the world

aflame. It has killed millions of people, made tens of millions more homeless. It has isolated the United States and Europe. It has made it so that we have a hollowed out economy. I mean, all these different things, what have we actually accomplished? But again, this is the man whose credentials, Secretary Austin, whose credentials are the occupations of Iraq, the occupation of Syria, the occupation of Afghanistan, the war in Libya, the spreading of the global war on terror, all the commando and drone bases throughout Africa. So these are people who see this as that they are on some type of righteous path. There's a book, it's written years ago by a guy named T.R. Ferenbach. It's called This Kind of War. It's about the Korean War. And it is a book that is almost like gospel within elements of the

American military, particularly among the Jim Mattis crowd, the Mad Dog Mattis crowd, these men who see themselves as modern day legionaries. And they view these parts of the world as borderlands, as places that we have to be permanently stationed in to keep the savages down, to keep the barbarians down. And so they really embrace, they enjoy this aspect of their role in the empire. And then, of course, for people like Secretary of Austin, there's also that very lucrative benefit of that. If you're good enough at it, if you hang on long enough, if you get those stars, well, then you're going to be sitting on the board of directors someplace like Secretary Austin was. So what we see here is something that human element

that dominates so much of American empire, of our military's foreign policy. And it's these, their own egos, their own perceptions of themselves, again, as modern day legionaries. And again, two words I keep using, Judge, catastrophe and dangerous. And I wish, you know, particularly during this holiday season, I had something else to say. But, you know, this is where we're at. Matt, you've given us a lot. You have a lot to say, and it's profound. And it's not always happy, but it's intellectually honest. Thank you very much for all you've done for us during the year.

We have a short week next week, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I hope we can find some time for you and you can find some time for us. Thank you, Joe. Absolutely. And Merry Christmas to you and your family. And Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone watching and listening. Thank you, Joe. Absolutely. And Merry Christmas to you and your family and Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone watching and listening. Thank you. Back at you. Our full schedule coming up Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the remainder of this week. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. I'm out.