Judging Freedom - Putin, Ukraine and the Biden administration - What does history teach us?

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Putin, Ukraine and Biden administration - What does history teach us?#Putin #Ukraine #BidenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here with Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, February 21st, 2022, and my guest is my longtime friend and ideological colleague, Jacob Hornberger. Jake is the founder, president, and chair of the Future of Freedom Foundation and writes on a several times a week basis essays that are stimulating and captivating. And one of them caught my attention over the weekend at lewrockwell.com, where of course my articles appear on Thursdays. Jake, welcome back to Judging Freedom. It's always a pleasure, my dear friend. Oh, thank you so much.

Honor and a pleasure as always, Jed. Thank you. So the essence of your article lauds the U.S. military command and the Pentagon for putting Vladimir Putin in a box. But what you're really lauding is how malevolence and evil can also be brilliant. So before we talk about Vladimir Putin, which is as relevant as anything can be, not only these days, but today and at this very moment, tell us how FDR was malevolent and evil, but brilliant in manipulating public opinion to maneuver us into World War II.

Yeah, well, there's obviously a tone of sarcasm in my piece because I point out, as you say, that it's an evil and malevolent scheme, and it was an evil and malevolent scheme by Roosevelt. But you can have an evil and malevolent scheme by Roosevelt. But you can have an evil and malevolent scheme that is ingeniously conceived and carried out. And so if we go back to what was happening with Roosevelt, when Roosevelt was running for re-election in the 1940 campaign, he told the American people that he was with them in their opposition to getting involved again in the European war in World War II. And he knew that there was overwhelming opposition to entry into World War II based on the fiasco that World War I had turned out to be. But he was lying. The fact is that he wanted into that European conflict, but he knew that he couldn't get a declaration of war from

Congress. And this was a time when presidents were still complying with that particular part of the constitution. So he figured, well, if I figure out a way to get Germany to attack us, then that'll give me my declaration of war. And so he went into the Atlantic, tried to provoke German warships into attacking U.S. vessels, but the Germans knew what he was up to, and they refused to take his bait. So what Roosevelt did at that point is he says, well, I'll look at the Pacific as a possible backdoor to getting involved in a European conflict, and that's when he started focusing on Japan. Now, Japan had invaded China, as you know. They had a massive war machine, massive war effort there that necessarily depended on oil.

Roosevelt figured that if he placed a very effective oil embargo on Japan, it would squeeze them, where they would be forced into making a very bad choice from their perspective, either withdraw their war machine from China or invade the Dutch East Indies in order to get a permanent supply of oil. Well, they obviously chose the second alternative, but they knew that in order to achieve this continuous flow of oil, they would have to knock out part of the U.S. fleet or do as much damage to the U.S. fleet because they figured the U.S. Navy was going to interfere with them as soon as they invaded. So that's what they did when they started targeting Pearl Harbor. And to facilitate them, Roosevelt comes up with this scheme of leaving warships, battleships there at Pearl Harbor as

bait. And we all know what happened. Battleships, but 2,700 human beings called American sailors. Absolutely. But he was willing to sacrifice them. We also have the thousands of troops in the Philippines that he was willing to sacrifice to do what he felt was the greater good, and that was to get involved in World War II, specifically on the European front. And he achieved it. I mean, like I say, it was a brilliant scheme in a very malevolent way, but it was absolutely ingenious. Because of the outcome of World War II, and because the Nazis were so horrific, and because of our happy liberation of the survivors of the Holocaust, you rarely hear this history of the origins of World War II.

It's as sound a history as there is. It's not taught in the public schools, and it's not even discussed in common parlance. But now there are even documents, telegrams from Stimson, the Secretary of State, showing that they were expecting the Japanese attack and did nothing to repel it. Fast forward us to today. What is the Pentagon, the American military, doing to plan for or manipulate Putin's invasion or threatened invasion of the Ukraine. Well, again, it's another ingenious political move in a malevolent way that when the Cold War ostensibly ended in 1989, you know, we all thought that this was it, that we're going to have peaceful and friendly relations with Russia, China, the communist world, but it was not to be. From the standpoint of the Pentagon and the CIA,

the national security establishment, the Cold War never ended. And what they did was instead of dismantle NATO, which is what they should have done. I mean, NATO's ostensible purpose was to protect Western Europe from an attack by the Soviet Union. Once the Cold War was over and the Soviet troops withdrew to Russia and the Soviet Union dismantled, NATO should have been dismantled. Instead, what they did, they used NATO to start absorbing Warsaw Pact countries, moving inexorably eastward toward Russia's borders. And they know the paranoia that Russia would have with the idea of U.S. troops, missiles, tanks on their borders or near

their borders. Now, why did the American government under both Republicans and Democrats move eastward, move NATO and NATO troops, some of whom are Americans, eastward? Why do we need troops in Warsaw? We don't, but you see what the national security establishment needs is official enemies. And they went in there in the Middle East and provoked that hornet's nest there that produced terrorist blowbacks, which gave them the war on terrorism. But they knew that the war on terrorism was likely to dissipate. And so they need official enemies. And Russia has always served that purpose, either as an independent country or as part of the Soviet Union. That was what the whole Cold

War was about. Keep Americans afraid, keep them terrified. The Russians are coming to get us. Godless communism is going to take over. The Cubans are going to invade. In other words, any national security state needs enemies and crises to keep people riled up and afraid and it also keeps people pliant allows their uh budgets to increase it's it's one step short of the benefits of war to the war making machine war is the health of the state the cold war is one step short of it oh it, it's the greatest racket in U.S. history. What are they doing? What is the Pentagon doing now? What do they expect Putin to do? How can the Pentagon win, in your view, no matter what Putin does? And he may do something within

24 hours of this conversation that you and I are having today. Oh, they've put him in a corner. I mean, they have boxed him in. Although Americans had a chance to establish friendly relations with Russia, they have effectively upended that idea and have put him in a box. Who's they? The US officials, the US government, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department. He has two choices at this point, and they have put him in this corner where they give him two choices. One is let Ukraine go right into NATO, which means U.S. missiles, troops, tanks, bases right on Russia's border. Well, they're not going to allow that to happen. But the only other option he has is invade and take over Ukraine before it becomes a member of NATO. And that's most likely the alternative he's going to take because the US

and the NATO people are not bending at all. They're saying, oh, Ukraine's got the right to do this. And so now we have this crisis with a nuclear power, which is very dangerous. How does Pentagon gain if Putin successfully invades Ukraine? Well, it's like what happened with Afghanistan. You'll recall that when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, that was another way that the U.S. sucked them into that. And Brzezinski at that time, they asked him, why was this important to you? And he says, oh, we've given them their own Vietnam now. We're going to break them this way. We're going to get a lot of their soldiers killed. And so by doing, by manipulating Russia into attacking and invading Russia, they now impose this harsh, brutal system of sanctions,

which creates this crisis environment. It keeps the budgets flowing. As you as you pointed out, the defense defense industry gets tax funded largesse continuously, permanently. And then they portray Russia as the bad guy. It's the aggressor. We've got to protect now Eastern Europe and Western Europe because the Russians are coming back and trying to form the Soviet Union and so forth. So that keeps the Pentagon, the CIA, the NSA's control and power in largesse dominant within our American society, along with all of the infringements on liberty that they do. Should President Biden meet President Putin in Paris next week? There's no point in it. You only have a summit if something is to be expected that will come out of it. Unless the U.S. signals to Putin that they're willing to bend and not permit Ukraine into NATO, there's no point for a summit.

What would it accomplish? Just two people talking. And I think Putin's going to figure that out. What's the point of a summit if there's no point to it? I think they know that they've got Putin in this corner and they're just watching him squirm. And they're willing to sacrifice all these Ukrainians in order to accomplish this goal of creating this massive crisis and chaos, portraying Russia as an enemy aggressor. And then, of course, the Congress continues to fund the national security establishment to the full extent, if not more. How is Putin viewed in Europe if he's occupying Ukraine? Oh, they're going to portray him as a great aggressor and now a threat to Western

Europe again. In other words, the old communist threat that the Soviets are going to invade West Germany and France and Britain and so forth. It's going to be that all it's Cold War redux, you know, Cold War number two all over again. What will it take for the cold? I don't want this to happen either to you, but what will it take for that cold war to get hot? Yeah, that's the problem here, is that, you know, I read an account in the paper a couple of days ago where two planes, a Soviet Russian plane and an American plane came really close to hitting each other. And that's the thing about playing these manipulative games. This is where Americans need to wake up and realize the role that their own government has played in bringing about this thing. Because you never know when things can get out of control, Judge, you know, an Iran missile or whatever. And all of a sudden nuclear weapons are flying. Let's go back to 2014 when there was a coup in the Ukraine. And we know who manipulated that coup. And the coup

overthrew a popularly elected government, but one that the CIA wasn't very happy with. That's where it started. I mean, you've got one of these patented regime change operations that the CIA is famous for. We can go back in history, you know, 53, Mossadegh in Iran and 54, Arbenz in Guatemala and 73, Allende in Chile. I mean, this is just patented regime change operations. And that's really the root of the problem here is that coup that took place. But clearly their objective was not just to put their man into power there their ultimate objective was let's get u.s bases missiles troops tanks on russia's border now keep in mind here's the hypocrite hypocrisy here that if russia threatened to put you uh russian missiles and

tanks and troops in cuba 90 miles away from shores, or on the Mexican border, or even in Venezuela, U.S. officials would go ballistic and say, no, you can't do that. Right, right. All right, your prediction, will there be war in Ukraine in a week? Well, I say yes. I think Putin's going to invade. I don't see, if he backs down, then that means that Ukraine is automatically going to join NATO. I mean, they're going to call his bluff. In other words, they're going to show that Putin was bluffing with all these troops. I don't see that he has a choice. Seems to me that he's going to invade.

I think he'll have a very serious problem with his generals and with his security state. If after the investment of producing 190,000 troops and hospitals and all kinds of support personnel on the border, he backs down. I don't see him backing down. And I agree with you. I don't know what Joe Biden could possibly say to him in Paris or wherever they have this summit that would produce a peaceful outcome. Right. And the delay also, you know, when troops are ready to invade, they can't be battle ready on a perpetual basis. So a summit like this delays that readiness. So if they're ready and primed and ready to go, Putin's taking a chance by delaying that. Jay Kornberger, no matter what we talk about, it's always a pleasure. It's so clear and so grounded in history, as always. Thanks for

joining us. Thank you, Judge. Judge Napolitano, judging freedom.