Judging Freedom - Scott Horton - Ukraine Russia War Update

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, May 23rd, 2022. It's about one o'clock in the afternoon. My guest today is Scott Horton, who was one of the country's foremost authorities on the dangers and problems with war and one of the country's foremost defenders of peace. Scott returns to judging freedom, particularly in light of the controversy caused by one of our guests last week, Matthew Van Dyke, who purports to be a soldier of fortune and the head of a company training Ukrainians to fight the Russians and doing their training in Kiev in the capital of Ukraine. And Scott will comment on all of that. Scott, it's always a pleasure, my dear friend. Welcome back to Judging Freedom. Thank you very much for having me, Your Honor.

How colossal an error is it for the United States of America to be sending more than $53 billion in military aid to Ukraine? That's more than the total military budget of Russia and more than the total government budget of Ukraine. It's absolutely insane. It's playing Russian roulette with our entire civilization, with the future of all of humanity and at the hands of an absolutely senile and incompetent commander in chief. I mean, who even knows who's calling the shots up there? Is it Jake Sullivan, Hillary Clinton's guy? You know, Joe Biden today said it was asked whether America would go to war to defend Taiwan from China. And Biden said, yeah, absolutely. And then the White House had to walk that back. And someone else pointed out on Twitter four times last year, actually said in the article, a Bloomberg article, four times last year,

the White House had to correct Joe Biden on his Taiwan policy. And they did it again today. America's policy since Jimmy Carter has been ambiguity. We say it's one China. It always will be. And they will be reunited under Beijing's leadership someday. But we want to see that reuniting happen on peaceful terms. And it's always supposedly ambiguous, even since Nixon, in fact, I think. So I should have known that this would have gotten under your skin. We were going to surprise you by running the clip of the Q&A, which Biden said that in Japan, but you're already familiar with it. But before we get to that, I want you to focus on not commenting on the complete.

We have a guy who's like might as well be in his 90s for. I mean, there are some people who are in their late 70s who are just fine. He's not one of them. Agreed. You know, I'm sorry, he's just not. Agreed. So whoever is making the decisions, how bad is it for Ukraine, for Russia, and for American security that we're shipping 53 billion in military assets there or making available assets that are already there, but the numbers are staggering. Sir, honestly, it's on par with the greatest mistakes ever made by any humans ever. The greatest mistakes in all of American political

history from, you know, firing on Fort Sumter to, you know, taking the Zimmerman telegram seriously and getting us into World War I or W. Bush's absolutely unforced error in Iraq War II or any of these things. It's an absolute catastrophe. And bottom line, Judge, it's like this. Pat Buchanan has said this for years. In the Cold War against the Soviet Union, the USA drew the line at the Elbe River halfway across Germany. And we said, if the Soviet Union comes into West Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, threaten

Britain, we will go to war. We will not let them invade Western Europe. Now, we have moved that line 1,200 miles to the east, to Russia's very Western border. Now our Monroe Doctrine says we are the dominant force, not just in the Americas, but in every state on the planet, and that no other nation, no matter how powerful, is allowed to have a Monroe Doctrine of their own. And that we are now drawing the line literally at the Donbass, which if it hadn't have been for Lenin and Stalin, probably would have been inside the territory of Russia anyway. And here we are in a border dispute. It's a proxy war,

sort of like Vietnam was a proxy war with Russia. Only Vietnam was 3,000 miles away from Russia on the other side of China from there where they were not threatened in any way. And we're doing this right now on Russia's very border, just 300 miles from Moscow. Imagine your honor, if the Russians were messing around like this in Canada, just off of the, just North of New York state. We would be at war right now against them. How does our repeated distribution of military hardware prolong the inevitable? Well, that's a very good question. I mean, the fact is, these are some pretty sophisticated weapons, and our guys are, you know, they have the Ukrainian army has safe haven inside Poland to be trained up on this equipment. So assuming that they can get it all to the front, it seems to already be making a difference in the war against the Russians. You know,

Putin has been vague and has changed sort of what his overall goals and strategy in the war are, so we don't exactly know. But it does seem that they wanted to go all the way to Kiev and change their mind. Others think that was just a feint. I'm not sure about that. But they essentially control all of the Donbass now, and that means also the entire coast of Azov between Russia and the Crimean Peninsula. Now the question is whether they're going to go all the way to the Moldovan border and the breakaway province of Transnistria there, which is loyal to Russia, but that would mean they have to take the port city of Odessa, the very important city of Odessa, which would be very hard to take. It has a massive underground catacomb system and all that for resistance. So that'd be a hell of a fight.

But whether the American weapons being dumped in can stave that off, I really don't know. I think ultimately it'll make it take longer, Judge, but I think probably the Russians will ultimately have their way here. Let me show you a clip from Matthew Van Dyke, the head of Sons of Liberty International, an organization he represents as being a non-profit that engages in training foreign military in the use of sophisticated equipment. He told us he was coming from the entity's rented apartment in Kyiv and he seemed very credible. I don't agree with what he was saying but he seemed very credible. I want you to listen and comment. Sure. Say that Russia is not destined to win the war. And by that argument, that would just mean that we capitulate, just

allowing any aggressor around the world, particularly ones who have nuclear weapons, to do what they want. And us saying that we're not going to get involved because we want nations to be conquered, we want democracies to fall, because the larger ideals of people living free are less important than the body count. So I guess this is the Putin is Hitler argument. What do you make of it? Well, you know, there's a famous quote from Secretary Robert Gates when Julian Assange, the hero, put out the collateral murder video. And he said, well, you're just looking at war through a soda straw. So you're seeing something bad happen, but you don't understand the real context essentially. And of course the real context didn't make his position look any better

in that case. But that's what's going on here. And frankly, to be perfectly honest about this, I usually don't bring up family issues here, but I do have a little bit of a conflict of interest here, which is my wife has extended family in Ukraine and they're in danger. In fact, she has extended family in Russia too. And well, I shouldn't say any more about that, but this war is really bad. Like on a personal level for me, I want to cease fire yesterday. I want this war to have never happened. I think what Russia is doing in Ukraine is absolutely horrible and unreasonable. But the fact of the matter is, while Putin and his men are responsible for what they've done in launching this war, the context in which it takes place is the new Cold War between the United States and NATO on one side and Russia and China more and more on the other. And that is America's fault. And by America, I mean Bill Clinton and W. Bush and Barack Obama

and Donald Trump and especially Judge Joe Biden, who as senator and as vice president and now president has been absolutely as responsible for this policy as any of these men for the last generation and more. One more, one more, I see I'm getting you going here, which is great. One more clip. Can I say one more thing about that guy real quick? It's just, I do appreciate that he's putting his feet where his mouth is. You know, there are a lot of, a lot of tough guys talking about how we ought to fight to the last Ukrainian. Well, he's over there training them ostensibly here. I guess I read this Christian Science Monitor report there. He's training them to stay alive and to protect themselves and fight for themselves as good as he can. And within that soda straw, I admire that. But I just think the

real point is all Americans, all of us should be insisting that America's State Department negotiate with the Russians and bring this war to an end. Zelensky himself said yesterday that this war will have to end by negotiation. Okay, good. Let's do that. Let's do that right now. And then we won't have to send anybody over to train anyone anymore because we'll just bring the fighting to an end i don't see how putin can possibly accept anything less than victory if he expects to be less than a substantial victory if he expects to stay in office when this is over i mean his military is being decimated his economy is being destroyed uh two billion dollar two billion sits at the bottom ship sits at the bottom of of the ocean if he doesn't come back with huge chunks of land i don't know how he stays in office

well you know i mean his original stated goals now when he declared war he declared it pretty broadly you could interpret it to mean he was considering taking all of Ukraine. But his demands before the war were he wanted the Minsk II deal implemented that would give strong federalism and autonomy to the Donbass region in the east. And then when he declared- And neutrality, non-NATO membership, non-NATO affiliation of Ukraine. Right. And now when he, there was sort of two stages. The first stage of the war on February 22nd, he said, we're taking the Donbass to guarantee its independence. And then on the 24th, he said, actually,

we're going to go ahead and go further than that. And that was, you know, building that land bridge, as they call it, to the Crimean Peninsula across the Azov coast there and so forth. But so he's got the Don Pass. I mean, the question is whether they're going to hang on to Kharkiv or not. And that keeps changing hands back and forth. But the fact of the matter is, Judge, is that Russian sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula, that ship sailed in 2014. It's been Russian property really since 1783, since the year we made peace with the British after the Revolutionary War under the Articles of Confederation, and definitely since 2014.

And the Donbass, if we fought another, if we continue to pour arms in there for years, maybe the Ukrainians could somehow drive the Russians out of the Donbass. But frankly, they should just let it go anyway. And the previous president, Poroshenko, even said to Putin, why don't you just take it? And Putin's like, I don't want the Donbass. Isn't the Donbass decimated at this point as a result of the war? Isn't it virtually useless? Well, I'm sure, yes. Whatever industry there must have all taken a major hit during the fighting. Yes, whoever owns the Donbass now is going to have a huge expense on their hands trying to rebuild it. One more clip from Matt Van Dyke.

In a lot of ways, it's looking a lot more like World War I than World War III over here. People are digging trenches. There's a lot of artillery exchanges, even soldiers coming back with trench foot. And it's a war of attrition of equipment and personnel that will grind on perhaps for years. But in the end, really everything is pointing to a Ukrainian victory here over time. So what happens if Donald Trump is elected in 2024 or some president, I can't imagine Joe running for reelection,lection, much less being re-elected, who basically says, this is none of our business. We will have wasted $53 billion, extended a war that slaughtered tens of thousands of innocents, and accomplished nothing. Yeah, and worse than none of our business, right? America's fault for precipitating this crisis and refusing to negotiate in good faith to prevent the war from breaking out. And as you can read

in the Post and the Times and the Wall Street Journal and watch them brag about it on MSNBC, we want to bleed the Russians. We want to break them. In fact, even our Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense both have said the goal here is essentially to fight to the last Ukrainian if we have to, to weaken Russia. And people can check my footnote here. It's Washington Post on April the 5th. They literally said in the post on April the 5th, we want, or some NATO members, they said, meaning the US andS. and Eastern European states, want to see the Ukrainians continue, quote, fighting and dying, end quote, in order to make sure, Judge, quote, that the war does not end too early because they want to see Russia weakened. And unlike what your friend said, pardon me, your guest in that clip about this

is World War I, he's wrong about that. The Russians are sitting on 6,000 H-bombs. And our government admits, our director of national intelligence says, premise one, Putin would only use nukes if he feels like the existence of his state is threatened. Premise two, if he loses this war, he very well might feel like the existence of his state is threatened. Premise two, if he loses this war, he very well might feel like the existence of his state is threatened and might use nuclear weapons. And then she says, well, no, don't worry because we're pretty sure he'll give us some more warning before he actually uses nukes. They keep warning that they might use nukes. I would say premise three, he'll use nuclear weapons if he thinks his own personal, physical safety or longevity in office is seriously threatened, whether by internal forces or external forces. And I'll add one more. The globalist mentality of Tony Blinken and his buddies in Western Europe. And the president let this slip.

Remember in one of his speeches when he said, this guy's got to go. That globalist mentality could bring about the ruination of the United States because he could send his nuclear weapons the other way towards Anchorage and Alaska if he wants. That's right. I mean, again, they are picking on Russia like Russia's just Saddam Hussein or just ISIS, right? Like they have just absolutely no legitimacy whatsoever. Putin is nothing but Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi until the day the Delta force gets him. But that's just not right. I mean, this is the head of, and as Pat Buchanan, again, I'll quote Pat Buchanan said, our leaders never talked this way about the Soviet Union, at least post Stalin.

They did not personally insult Khrushchev and Brezhnev and Andropov and whoever in this fashion, the way they talk about Vladimir Putin, where they make diplomacy almost impossible by making it as personal as they make it. And it's the most negligent group, the most criminal group of men in world history. This is absolutely crazy. This is like the first Ronald Reagan administration before he saw the day after, where they're just absolutely playing with nuclear fire here. But again, at that time, the Russians had a 1,200-mile buffer zone between them and NATO. Now they have zero. Scott Horton, always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Come back again soon. Thank you, sir.

Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.