Judging Freedom - Scott Horton: Are Congress and Biden Complicit in War Crimes?

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

The assertion of complicity in war crimes raises profound concerns about the ethical dimensions of U.S. foreign policy and military engagements. Scott Horton, with his extensive knowledge and incisive analysis, joins us to navigate through the complex terrain of international law, Congressional decision-making, and the actions of the Biden administration.This conversation aims to shed light on the allegations, exploring the legal frameworks and ethical considerations that underpin the accusations of complicity. As we delve into this discussion, we seek to understand the role of Congress and the Biden administration in shaping U.S. military involvement abroad, and whether these actions may be perceived as straying beyond the boundaries of international law.#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.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, December 14th, 2023. My good friend and good friend of the show, Scott Horton, joins us now. Scott, a pleasure, my friend, no matter what we're talking about. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Judge, for having me again. How dangerous is it for the United States to do what it did today, which is for the United States Congress to authorize the expenditure of $886 billion for the Defense

Department next year, more than the next 12 nations, which includes Russia, China, and Great Britain combined. Well, as anyone could tell you, it's national suicide. They've got to be completely crazy. And 800 and something billion, of course, is a massive low ball because that doesn't include all of the care and feeding of the nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons industrial complex and all that which is mostly under the energy department the cost of the va caring for all these guys remember when it's the most important thing in the world we absolutely

had to invade iraq we got all these guys legs blown off their faces blown off now a lot of them are you know living the rest of their lives in Walter Reed Hospital and other places like that around the country. All of that costs hundreds of billions of dollars, you know, infrastructure for all of that. conservative and liberal economists and public interest groups and so forth who calculated back a decade ago or more that the national defense budget including go ahead throw in the cia and the national uh intelligence agencies and the rest they were spent a trillion dollars a year on that and of course most that's borrowed money they can only tax us so much. They borrow from other sovereign nations and wealthy corporations and banks and individuals. And then, you know, most of us, we spend our lives paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in income taxes. And that just goes to pay the your family has had to pay in income taxes over the years. That money is literally just pissed away by our government. The contempt that they have for the American people as revealed by their foreign policy and the amount of money that they have to spend to maintain this corrupt and completely ineffectual, ridiculous and blood-soaked, hypocritical world empire. It is just unbelievable that it could

even be true or that the American people would tolerate this for one minute longer. You know, Scott, I've been asking this question all day and most people that I talk to are answering similar to you, but not with your depth reminding us that there are hundreds of billions of other defense-related expenditures like CIA and Veterans Administration and nuclear weapons, which in order to trick us, the government puts in other budgets. There were libertarian Republicans and I would call them liberal progressives in the Congress who voted against this budget. But of course, it passes overwhelmingly because they say things like, well, how are we going to fund all our troops overseas? They're in 900 different military installations. Well, what the hell are they doing there? Why are we fighting wars in Africa and in Syria and in Iraq? Does the public even know this? And Scotty, Scott, this doesn't even include the money that old Joe wants for Israel and for Ukraine. Those are separate expenditures that the Congress hasn't gotten to yet.

In the case of Israel, as you know, they bypassed the Congress because the Secretary of State lied under oath by saying this is a national emergency, an American national emergency that affects American national security. I defy anybody to explain that. In the case of Ukraine, there are conservative Republicans in the House. Usually they want war. They are blocking this. Yeah. Well, and look at where we are, as we discussed on the show last week and is being widely discussed in the media now that, ah, geez, it turns out the Ukraine war didn't work after all. And we could have negotiated more and more people confirming, could have negotiated negotiated and prevented. Putin apparently was willing to withdraw even from the Donbass back in April of 22. And oops, push that.

Shouldn't have done that. And meanwhile, the American people, many of whom are living in their cars in Walmart parking lots, are, you know, can at least see on their phone. They can't watch on their TV that the government has an emergency session to send tens or hundreds of billions of dollars more to the war zones in Ukraine and in Israel and elsewhere around the world for this global policing mission. And, you know, this is one of the real comparative advantages, if I may say so, that libertarians bring to the discussion about all of American politics and policy is, and I'm not an Austrian economist, I just know some and know about it, but it's the real insight that they bring about the insidious nature of inflation.

Because it's not just that it's a hidden tax where prices are going up, but people don't really understand why. They blame the shopkeeper and this kind of thing. They don't understand that the government is really the same reason that you would go to jail for counterfeiting. I remember when somebody explained to you when you were a kid,

why counterfeiting is a crime is because you would devalue everyone else's money. You'd be essentially stealing the value out of their money by introducing the fake currency into the circulation. It's the same thing when the government does it. And it drives up, obviously, on the bottom of the margin or the economic ladder, as they call it. It means that the poorest people can't afford to live indoors anymore. And not only that, but it causes this massive boom and bust cycle as a, you know, I learned in seventh grade judge that FDR and the New Deal created the Fed, which is not true,

of course, in order to smooth out the boom bust cycle that was caused by the free market, when in fact, it's inflationary money caused by the central bank and the government's intervention, their artificially low interest rates and their government mandated low reserve ratios that essentially mandate that banks expand the money supply along in concert with the government. And this causes and I'm not the scientist. People can go to the Libertarian Institute or to Mises.org and learn about the Austrian business cycle theory. But it's just correct. Like gravity's a theory. This is what happens. They cause a big fake boom and then a very real bust.

And then they do it over and over and over again. And a huge part of it, Judge, is to make the empire seem free. Imagine if George W. Bush had said, we're raising all your taxes so we can go knock the Middle East over. The American people would have said no. What did he do instead? Remember, Judge, 20 years ago, he sent everybody a three or a four hundred dollar extra rebate check in the mail like it was your dividend of the profit from the war in Iraq when really it was all costing us ten trillion dollars. We're getting nothing out of it at all. And they do a tax cut and they give you a rebate and make it seem like this is in puts zeros in Chase Manhattan Bank's account at the Fed.

And that, just like counterfeiting, devalues the value of everything we have. The government's inflationary policies are a stealth tax, which, of course, is what George W. Bush did. Here's a line from Voltaire. It is a crime to kill and murderers are punished except when they do so to the sound of the government's trumpets blaring. The government exists by committing the crimes that it prohibits the rest of us to do. I'm not saying we should be able to do these crimes, but the government actors that commit these crimes should be prosecuted as well. How much longer do you think Ukraine can last without the $68 billion that it looks like the House may hold up? I happen to think the House will cut a deal

because this new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is suddenly part of the establishment. He wants to please the establishment he's part of. But if they don't, if the House doesn't go along with the 68 billion, if Zelensky's tin cup that he took around Washington the past two days is not filled. How much longer can the Ukraine war last? I really don't know, Judge. Honestly, I think, you know, with American and Western help, their effort has been greatly propped up. But I really am so far behind, especially because of everything that's been going on in the Middle East on keeping up with how many divisions and how many you know I never really that good on that stuff in the first place I rely on other experts as far as you know how broken is a military I mean there are plenty of political indications

coming in leaks and trial balloons and news stories that everybody is kind of, you know, coming to the realization that negotiation is the only way out. In fact, they've been saying that for a long time, but they're recognizing now that we're not getting Ukraine into a position of greater strength to deal. They're in fact getting in a weaker and weaker position all the time. So I know your field of expertise is not divisions and troops, but you know and can articulate better than anybody that I know the harm that came about by the Americans and the British saying to President Zelensky, don't you dare cut that deal that your people have just negotiated with Putin because we have your back.

We have your back. That cash is going to dry up and we won't have their back. And a half a million young Ukrainian boys are either dead or so injured they can't go back in the military. Right. Yeah. Ask the Hmong tribesmen of the Laotian Highlands have got their back still. And look, and any Ukrainian who knows the map of the world and the map of world politics should have known America cannot help you win this war. For America to help you win this war, America would have to invade Ukraine and go to war with Russia in eastern Ukraine. And that still might not work. But and obviously would run the immediate risk of thermonuclear war that no president is willing to go. And Biden said and did mean from the beginning, we're not putting troops on the ground there.

And they have had CIA and some special operations forces here and there. But they're not putting the infantry on the ground. They're not flying our Air Force or our Navy into there, sailing our Navy or flying our naval air power into there. So that's what it would have taken. So just backing them with money and longer range missiles and this kind of thing was never going to make the difference. Now, also, Judge, you know, I don't know that the Russians are planning. I don't know what their plan is. They may or may not strike out and try to completely decimate what's left of the Ukrainian military. I mean, at this point,

they are dug in and daring the Ukrainians to just continue to attack them and try to drive them out. They've had their big failed offensive. Maybe they'll have another one. The Russians don't seem to really be in a hurry to, you know, reach out and smash every last Ukrainian base and every last Ukrainian soldier in the west of the country. They're basically fighting a defensive war at this point. I say basically. There may very well be exceptions at different places along the front lines there. But overall, they've essentially dug in. I believe they control virtually all of Luhansk and then more than half of Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson.

Those are pretty rough estimates, but they're in a pretty good spot in all four provinces that they have claimed to annex at this point. So time is on their side, frankly, Judge, just because they're the bigger and wealthier and more equipped country, and they have the time. Here's President Putin today. You know, he every year in the middle of December, he gives about a three to four hour press conference. Oh, he did that today? He did that today, preceded by a 20 or 25 minute talk. No notes on the talk, no notes on the presser. But we have a clip for you in which he is demonstrating, as Colonel McGregor calls him, the only adult in the room. There will be peace when we achieve our goals. Now, let's get back to these goals. They don't change. Let me remind you of what we talked about, about the denazification of Ukraine,

about demilitarization, about its neutral status. We will agree on demilitarization and agree on certain parameters. During the negotiations in Istanbul we agreed on them, but then they simply threw these agreements into the oven. There are other possibilities, either to reach an agreement or to resolve it by force. This is what we will strive for. Steady, constant, focused on the goal and unchanging.

Look, Judge, I got to say, we should all be grateful for what a sociopath that guy is. He doesn't apparently have feelings, thank God. Can you imagine if you really made him upset? Instead, he's like, look, this is all just business. We're going to do this and we're going to do this. You know, we could have worse Russian leaders by far. We certainly could. And look, we know what happened here, Judge. There's no secret about this. Anyone who wants to know the history of this can read it in the Washington Post. What happened was everybody thought the Russians were going to smash the Ukrainian military to pieces when they first invaded. And because the Ukrainians were able to push back in a few places better than anticipated, the Americans especially got really excited and they changed the policy

from helping them somewhat resist an initial invasion and then see what happens and probably back an insurgency to, wow, let's really take it to them. We're going to issue a strategic defeat on to the Russians. We're going to bog them down, which they were saying this before the war, that they invoked the Afghanistan model or the Syrian model, which is unbelievable, for bogging the Russians down. But they essentially said in April of, and quite openly, in April of 22, that we really see a huge advantage here if we pour in a bunch of weapons and money to the Ukrainians to take this fight to the Russians. We think that we can even drive them all the way out of there and maybe even all the way out of Crimea. This is just crazy. And, you know, McGregor said the Russians are going to win the day after tomorrow. And that turned out not to be right. But he certainly was right that they're the juggernaut,

that there's essentially nothing that the West can do in terms of money. And again, you know, missile batteries that are going to turn this tide if the Russians are determined. They have a much bigger army. They've started out with a 400,000 man army and that essentially they're not going to lose this thing. So if America really cared for their friend, they would have said, hey, hey, hey, listen, you guys lost Crimea. You don't want to lose the Donbass. Let's go ahead, do what we can to implement the Minsk 2 deal, figure out some kind of compromise to move forward. And that doesn't mean that the Russians always act in the best of faith. But you know what? And I interviewed experts at the time, right in January and February of 22, before the war broke out. I interviewed Chas Freeman,

for example, who had gone to China with Nixon and had been the ambassador to Saudi and was supposed to be the national intelligence director and all these things. Pardon me, the chair of the National Intelligence Council. He was going to be and I talked to him and he said the Russians proposed treaty was not perfect. We're not going to sign on the dotted line, but absolutely it was a reasonable basis for negotiation if the Americans had been willing to negotiate in good faith. And they just weren't. They wanted to test it and see. And the idea was the Russians can't afford to fight. And by the way, Judge, as long as I'm ranting about this, there's just a story the other day about, well, the Russians have had 300,000 casualties and they try to make it sound like they're all deaths and they try to make it sound

like their their military has essentially been decimated but i know you and i uh had spoken about this before i always forget the the man's name he's got an italian last name was the general from the supreme i believe the supreme allied commander of nato forces in europe chris uh cavallini i think cavallini that's right who testified last spring that geez the r Russian military is bigger than ever before or bigger than it's been since, pardon me, since the Soviet Union, the new Russia. It's the biggest it's ever been. So, yeah, they've had 300,000 casualties. Fine. They've also called up 300,000 reserves and recruited and conscripted.

Lord knows how many hundreds of thousands of men and plus, you know, increase their industrial capacity in every way. So we're dealing with what now for out of the mouth under oath of an army professional before the Congress? We have a bigger and more powerful Russian military now than we had before. So who's really zooming who here? McGregor says it's the it's the best fighting force on the planet by size and by experience. Keep in mind what we just saw of Vladimir Putin and compare it to what we're about to see. Joe Biden saying we will support Ukraine for as long as it takes. Joe Biden saying we will support Ukraine for as long as we can.

Joe Biden saying Putin has lost. Joe Biden saying if Putin wins. Watch all this. On commitments to Ukraine, long-term security, long-term security to deter future aggression after this war ends is the goal. And we're advancing this goal by providing them the support Ukraine needs now on the battlefield and helping them strengthen their military over the long term. The fact of the matter is that I believe we'll have the funding necessary to support Ukraine as long as it takes. Putin has failed, failed in his effort to subjugate Ukraine. The brave people of Ukraine have defied Putin's will at every turn, backed by the strong and unwavering support of the United States and our allies and partners of more than 50 nations

– 50 nations in Europe and the Indo-Pacific. And Ukraine will emerge from this war proud, free, and firmly rooted in the West unless we walk away. The American people can be and should be incredibly proud of the part they played in supporting Ukraine's success. We'll continue to supply Ukraine with critical weapons and equipment as long as we can. Russian loyalists in Moscow celebrated when Republicans voted to block Ukraine's aid last week. The host of a... Extreme Republicans are playing chicken with our national security, holding Ukraine's funding hostage of their extreme partisan border policies. If Putin takes Ukraine, he won't stop there. It's important to see the long run here. He's going to keep going.

He's made that pretty clear. If Putin attacks a NATO ally, then we'll have something that we don't seek and that we don't have today. American troops fighting Russian troops. American troops fighting Russian troops if he moves into other parts of NATO. PAUL JAY How dangerous to make that threat, but how absurd for him to say, as long as it takes, as long as we can, Putin's already lost. Oh, but if he wins and takes Ukraine, he's going to go into NATO. How discredited is that argument?

How ancient is that argument? How ancient is that argument? Well, I mean, it's just not to focus too much on Biden's character, but this is Joe Biden talking and we're talking ancient, senile, just completely ridiculous and uncredible Joe Biden talking up there. Everyone who's an honest analyst of this, including some hawks, at least, will acknowledge that it didn't have to be this way. That in fact, the Russians did have legitimate security interests, such as keeping Ukraine out of America's military alliance right on their border. Right. And especially in the situation where the Russians had taken Crimea in the aftermath of the American sponsored coup d'etat and fake revolution, essentially right wing putsch in the street of 2014. And the Ukrainians

with American support claimed that, no, it still belongs to us. It's still sovereign Ukrainian territory and hell or high water, we're going to take it back. And Putin said over and over again, now you keep saying you're going to bring Ukraine into NATO while we have a dispute in the middle of having a dispute over who owns Crimea. That could lead directly to war. And so we just you're forcing us into this situation. That was right. The idea that, oh yeah, no, now he's coming next into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia and Finland. And then from there, he's going to go to Poland and Germany. And the next thing you know, he's going to be in Paris and Madrid. I mean, this is all just make-believe. They know good and well that they provoked this

war. They wanted it to happen, or at least they thought, eh, plan B as it happens, and we don't mind. We see a great strategic advantage in letting it happen, so why not? As Zbigniew Brzezinski said about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 1979 we knowingly increased the probability that they would how about that for provoked get it that's how they play the game and so um you know and and honestly judge i don't know how many nazis are left because a lot of them have been killed in the war but america has set up and betrayed a bunch of Hitler loving Nazis over there, promised them the world and now are delivering them a humiliating defeat. And, you know, if if it's their analogy is Afghanistan and we got Egyptian Islamic jihad

and al-Qaeda as the result of the war in Afghanistan turned against the United States. What can we expect to happen when they build up these massive Nazi military forces there? These are not comparable to the Aryan nation in the woods in Alabama somewhere or something. These are real armed, highly trained and combat experienced militia forces, highly ideological along the lines of the banderists who fought with the Nazis during World War II. Here's the principal spokesperson and fundraiser for those Nazis, President Zelensky, yesterday. oh, I'll let you listen to what he has to say about World War II and about how Putin hasn't won. Fifteen. Defending freedom. For nearly two years, we have been in a full-scale war.

The biggest since World War II, fighting for freedom. We stand firm. No matter what Putin tries, he hasn't won any victories. Thanks to Ukraine's success in defense, other European nations are safe from the Russian aggression, unlike in the past. Now, you're standing next to the President of the United States, who, of course, has been all over the place on how long we'll back you up and has Putin won and if Putin loses and when Putin takes Ukraine.

But Zelensky is apparently still under the delusion or illusion that he can continue to fight and ultimately triumph in this war? Well, you know, I don't disdain Zelensky as bad as some do. I know he's corrupt as virtually any politician or connected businessman in that country is. He's not a great guy, but he's in a very difficult position. And I know that there are a lot of Ukrainians who would rather keep fighting. On the other hand, he's got conscription that is slavery, the threat of imprisonment for those who refuse to fight. And there are a lot of people who have fled to avoid the fighting there. But, you know, it makes sense that he would want support. The question is whether this is good for the United States of America to give him that support

based on the potential consequences for us. And again, and look, I'm a Texan. I'm from here. I don't care about Russia or their point of view about anything. I just hate Barack Obama, okay? And George W. Bush. And they're the ones who did this.

George W. Bush knew that if he invited Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, the Russians are going to flip out and maybe start a war. And it was really Shokashvili's fault. But still, war broke out four monthssch in 2014 that put in a ruthless bunch of Nazis in power who immediately launched a war against the people of the East who refused to accept the new junta. And that's how all this started. An American coup against a democratically elected government that voted wrong. And yes, Putin played hardball with the government of Ukraine to try to force them to turn down the EU deal and take his deal instead. So what? It doesn't give the Americans

the right. In fact, we're signatories to the UN Charter that forbids us from intervening in other countries' internal affairs in that way. We would never accept. In fact, think about how angry people are, never mind Russiagate. But the real Russiagate was actual Ukrainian intervention with the Ukrainian embassy working with the Democratic operative, Andrea Chalupa, to frame Mike, pardon me, Paul Manafort and in his fake little black book and all that to try to make him look like he was a Russian agent. That was an actual Ukrainian collusion in our election. We're right to completely resent it. And Americans go so far as to help the most illiberal forces in that country outright overthrow the government. And I think that John Mearsheimer is right. I'm sure he must

have said this to you on your show. I know he's a regular on your great show here, Judge, that it was only after the, I'll skip a couple of steps, but it was clearly in the direct aftermath of the 2014 coup that led to the Russian annexation, you know, seizure and annexation of Crimea. And it was only after that, that they came up with this narrative that, oh, Putin is evil. This is not the same guy whose soul W. Bush looked into and said, hey, this guy's okay. We can deal with him. This isn't the same guy we've been dealing with for 20 years. As Connolly's right says, oh, now he's a psycho. Now he's crazy. Now he woke up on the wrong bed, wrong side of the bed this morning. And it's going to take over all of

Europe if we don't stop him. But he's, in fact, the same guy that Bill Clinton helped put in power back in 2000. And in fact, what had happened was America overthrew a government that was friendly to him in in his most important bordering neighboring state and replaced him with sock puppets who immediately went to war against people and against the territory that used to belong to Russia and be part of Russia before the Reds gave it over to Ukraine after the revolution 100 years ago. So in any case, as Mearsheimer says, the Americans know that they picked this fight. They made all this stuff up about what a psycho Putin is and how determined he is to be a czar, to be Joseph Stalin, all this stuff, just so they don't have to admit that this is their fault.

Just the same way that George Bush blamed freedom for 9-11 when everybody knew it was because his father and Bill Clinton kept the basis in Saudi Arabia to bomb and blockade Iraq for 10 years. And that was what motivated his own father's former mercenaries to turn against the United States. Well, he couldn't tell you that, could he? So he had to make up a lie. Same thing here. Great, great, great monologue there. One last subject for you. Zelensky still has the pipeline of NATO membership. And earlier today was in Brussels. And earlier today, another adult in the room, President Viktor Orban of Hungary, had the following to say about whether or not the EU would give money to Ukraine.

Some of it's already in the pipeline. It's already voted on. There's nothing you can do about it. But would NATO even consider Ukraine's membership? Listen to this. Why we are here is not to make business. It's not about bargain. It's not about deal.

We represent approaches and principles. So to give money to Ukraine is easy to do because in short term the money for Ukraine is already in the budget. So there is no any extra decision to give it in short term. In long term and the bigger sum of money, my position is that we should give it outside. But we are not under the pressure of the time because the bridging solution is already in the budget. Enlargement is not a theoretical issue. Enlargement is a merit-based, legally detailed process which has preconditions. We have set up seven preconditions and even by the evaluation of the commission three out of the seven is not fulfilled so there is no reason to negotiate

membership of ukraine now even not to negotiate viva preconditions correct yeah i mean the pre they set the preconditions ukraine hasn't met them you zielinski shows up and says we want to join if any lesson is to be derived from the past 18 months in ukraine it is that ukraine is not going to be in nato seriously i don't think anyone would they're obviously just pretending at this point no one honestly honestly believes that the Ukrainians are now in a position of strength to dictate whatever terms they want to the Russians and that all of the things that were the reasons for the war before are all the things that are going to stay exactly the way they want them now. It's just crazy. I mean, the question is whether the Russians, I don't even know if it's a question, Judge,

whether they're going to keep all four provinces that they've annexed or whether maybe they'll only keep part of them. Well, they're ethnic Russians. They speak Russian. They identify with Russia. They voted into the 90th percentile to join Russia. I think they're happy either in some sort of a neutral capacity or as an actual part of Russia, but not as a part of Ukraine. That we know. Well, look, I mean, when it comes to NATO preconditions, the biggest one is you have to have settled borders.

And, you know, this is going to be a so-called frozen conflict if we could ever get a reasonable ceasefire. It's doubtful we'll have some great grand final peace treaty here. More likely we'll have some disastrous Korean War type armistice and some kind of, you know, worse situation going forward that silver lining would preclude the idea that the rump of what's left of Ukraine could then join NATO. And, you know, I really don't know. I mean, obviously the Americans rule over the Germans and the French with an iron fist as best they can. But, you know, I'd like to believe that if it really, really came down to it, somebody in NATO would just say no.

And they have to, you know, anyone could veto. Anyone's state could veto membership for Ukraine. I think we just looked at the face of the man who will persist in saying no. Scotty, you're on a roll. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time. All the best. Come back with us again before Christmas sometime next week. Happy to.

Thank you, Judge. Thank you. All the best. Wow. Another tour de force. Coming up at 4 o'clock today. One of the smartest people that joins us, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, right here. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thank you.