Judging Freedom - Scott Horton: Why do Americans like wars?

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Scott Horton: Why do Americans like wars?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea, we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, October 20th, 2023. Scott Horton joins us now. Scott, we've been playing that intro with President Eisenhower's famous line from his farewell address in January of 61 all day, but I thought mainly about you

when we first decided to do it because you're so steadfastly a student of war and steadfastly against it. If Ike were here, I would ask him the same question I'm now going to ask you. Why do Americans love war? Well, I'm not real sure that Americans are any different than other humans. I think the question is why do fighting-aged males love war? And you pick, we're either cast out of heaven or grown-up apes. But we got our problems, man.

Humanity on this planet has always been a mess. There's a guy named The War Nerd, who wrote some was very insightful, I thought he said, you know, most of the tribes of America of humans in the world have never been recorded, they don't exist anymore. Because somebody came over the mountain and completely obliterated and genocided and killed them all and enslaved the rest. And that this is just, you know, time immemorial. The problem now is, I think the real problem with Americans is this sense of self-righteousness.

And this really does go back to the pilgrims and the founding, really, that this is the new Israel. This is the land of Milkenani. This is the land that God wanted the people of the West to conquer. And so it's begging the question, right? It's like Osama bin Laden. When God is on your side, you can never be wrong. Right, right, right.

And you know, I thought last night listening to Joe Biden, who did I think of? George W. Bush reminded me of Bush right after 9-11, as if Biden and company, like Netanyahu and company, have not learned the lessons of overreaction. I mean, 9-11 was horrific. What we did afterwards went on for 20 years. What Hamas did was horrific. What the Israelis have been doing to innocent civilians in Gaza is horrific and is going to have substantial, significant blowback consequences. Our friend Ron Paul has argued that if Hamas's goal was A, to stabilize support in the Middle East, Arab and Muslim, for a two-state solution and b to show netanyahu at his

worst hamas succeeded what do you think yeah i think that's right listen um i learned this from william norman grigg shortly after september 11th and i thought boy if this bin laden guy thought that he was fighting the new world order, as they called it then, boy, was he wrong. He just gave Dick Cheney a ticket to ride and get away with whatever he wants to do. And which, of course, is exactly what they're going to do. But then only like a month later, judge, a month or two later, I read an article by William Norman Grigg in the New American magazine, and he quoted Saul Alinsky,

the leftist writer of Rules for Radicals. And he wasn't really talking about terrorism here, but it still applies. He said, in all asymmetric political action or activity or whatever, sorry to be too redundant, the action is in the reaction of the opposition. In other words, like take a look at Bin laden you got 400 guys versus the world superpower um when when um um i'm sorry i forgot the guy's name the abc news reporter uh john something interviewed bin laden and bin laden said i'm coming after you he laughed and or to himself at least and said yeah you and what army right but the the trick was our army bin lan was going to get us to react and in a way that would damage the united states and the world empire and he surely he surely did i mean the patriot act is still with us we lost trillions

in iraq and afghanistan i have to tell you you know this stuff better than anybody in the United States. And you've been preaching, though. People are listening. Yeah. Well, because this fellow Grieg is right. The action is in the reaction. It's the same thing that Ron Paul articulated just the other day. And thank you, by the way, for publishing my piece on antiwar.com. Not all of my regular publishers wanted it because you know what happens in this country when you give an objective view

of the Israeli government, you're often pushed aside. How do you think? you're often pushed aside. Let me say, you mentioned previously about what a horrible atrocity it was that Hamas committed here. And I want to emphasize that, you know, when I often tell the Palestinian civilians, the people of Palestine side of the story here, because I know that people, you know,

don't get a chance to hear it very much, but no one should think anymore that, you know, you see that book over my shoulder there and Colonel McGregor endorsed that. And I explained why bin Laden did what he did there. It's no apologia for Al Qaeda's point of view. It's just an explanation. And it's the same thing here where, um, you know, people should understand that. Yes, they, what they did was absolutely a horrific atrocity and some silly kid chanting at a college campus that it wasn't or something is irrelevant. It has nothing to do with it. What actually happened was horrible. But the question for grown men, Judge, instead of

flipping out and having a big panic attack and just getting mad and dropping big bombs would be to ask ourselves, like maybe over a stiff drink, what is really going on here? And if you just say, well, Mohammed made him do it because he's the devil or, you know, they're bad because they're barbarians because they're from the East or whatever, you're not getting anywhere. You're only, you're just telling yourself what you want to hear to justify fighting. But if you want to be honest about it and ask what's going on, what's going on is they're trying to get you to react. And in this case, Israel, especially to react by doing exactly what they're doing, bombing the Gaza strip to bits, killing thousands of people. Well, why would Hamas want to do that, judge? Again, it ain't just

because they're devils and because they're angry and because they're barbarians. It's because they're playing a game of chess. And as men of war often say, it's war. And that means they can get away with doing all kinds of crazy things. They can justify doing all kinds of crazy things, like deliberately bringing on a massive attack against their own people in order to create then a counter reaction against that so now the ball is in the court of nasrallah the leader of hezbollah in lebanon and now the ball is in the court of bashar al-assad in damascus and for the ruling regime the very pro-iranian sh Shiite regime that George W. Bush installed in Iraq in Iraq War II. And the Iranians and, of course, all the sock puppet Sunni kings of the Gulf who would rather

get along with America and Israel, their population is on the side of the Palestinians. So they all have to take a stand, too. Now, the Abraham Accords are in jeopardy. The new one with Saudi Arabia is probably canceled. And so in the region where people were trying to look away, oh, you want to pay attention to Ukraine now. You want to look away. You want to ignore us. You want to sign, especially to these Arab kings. You want to sign these normalization deals with Israel before we get our state. No way. We'll show you. And so that was why they did a judge, not just to provoke that first reaction by Israel, but then to provoke all those counter reactions to what Israel does in response to their initial atrocity. one of the clips of which we have many. Cut number 10, Chris. We are the United States of America. Nothing is beyond our capacity. Tonight, there are innocent people all over the world

who hope because of us, who believe in a better life because of us, who are desperate not to be forgotten by us and are waiting for us. But time is of the essence. I know we have our divisions at home. We have to get past them. We can't let petty, partisan, angry politics get in the way of our responsibilities as a great nation. We cannot and will not let terrorists like Hamas and

tyrants like Putin win. I refuse to let that happen. In moments like these, we have to remember who we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America. And there is nothing, nothing beyond our capacity if we do it together. 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 basically the same. We'll borrow $100 billion that we don't have from the Chinese, and then we'll borrow the interest money. We'll split that $100 billion amongst the Israelis and the Ukrainians, and now I'm parroting Mitt Romney, Senator Romney, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, this is money well spent because we're killing

bad people and Americans are not dying. That's the danger of Joe Biden's bellicose speech last night, which to me was, it's like he forgot the last 50 years of history. What does he mean we're the United States of America? We can do what we want. Did you forget Vietnam? Did you forget Iraq? Did you forget Afghanistan, Joe? Yeah, well, I mean it is. It's the most arrogant, like narcissistic kind of a point of view. I know

one of the other quotes that he said in the speech was he said, you know, we're the United States of America. We are the glue that holds the world together. That's just not true you know you can tell yourself that the israelis are really good at that they make up kind of these little cliches and slogans like the palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity right right right you can come up with some slogan doesn't mean it's real what do you mean america's

the glue that holds the world together if it wasn wasn't for us, Germany and France and Britain would all go back to war. I'm going to raise your blood pressure again. Cut nine, Chris. Here's old Joe saying, you ready, Scott? We are the indispensable nation. On Ukraine, I'm asking Congress to make sure we can continue to send Ukraine the weapons they need to defend themselves and their country without interruption so Ukraine can stop Putin's brutality in Ukraine.

They are succeeding, backed by U.S.-led coalition of more than 50 countries around the world, all doing its part to support Kyiv. What would happen if we walked away? We are the essential nation. Meanwhile, Putin has turned to Iran and North Korea to buy attack drones and ammunition to terrorize Ukrainian cities and people. ED HARRISON All right. I said indispensable. He said essential. It means the same thing. And the war party- PAUL JAY Yeah, the indispensable. He said essential. It means the same thing. between Israel and Ukraine. I think Israel, given American politics, goes to the head of the line, but they'll still borrow. They'll authorize Janet Yellen to borrow that $100 billion,

and it'll be on its way before you know it. I'm reminded of John McCain said in 2008, he goes, I don't really know anything about economics, but I'm reading Alan Greenspan's book. Here's just a guy who's been in politics his whole life. He doesn't really know anything about it. All he knows reading Alan Greenspan's book, right? So here's just a guy who's been in politics his whole life. He doesn't really know anything about it. All he

knows is he can do whatever he wants. He can write whatever blank check he wants for whatever. I think that goes for all of these people. They have no sense of responsibility because they truly are not responsible for the actions that they take. And so when Janet Yellen says, of course we can afford it she thinks that just like joe biden i think joe biden honestly believes that the u.s holds the world together that if it wasn't all apart but that's crazy you're wrong i think his mind his mindset listen i'm not a psychiatrist i'm a lawyer but i think his mindset is fixed uh in a different time period, maybe in the JFK era when he came of age. Why would change the subject a little bit?

Did Putin have a choice but to invade Ukraine, given NATO's proximity and what NATO was about to do? Yes. Look, my analogy here, Judge, is that I think that America basically had put his back to the wall, but I don't think they really had him all the way in the corner. You said Putin had a choice. What else could he have done? Well, you know, that's an interesting question, and it would have had to be creative. A couple of ideas. I know one or two of these. I forget which ones I got. I'm borrowing

from the journalist Aaron Matei. But I know one thing was that they had already debated in 2018, although they had different ideas, clashing ideas about how this would work. But Russia could have really done a full court press to force through and absolutely just demand in the loudest terms a peacekeeping force from a disinterested third-party nation like whatever south korea or gambia or who knows who to come in and stand on what was supposed to be the line in the demilitarized zone there um in the demarcation line under the Minsk II deal in order to force the implementation of that deal. And he could have also just threatened to completely veto

any United Nations Security Council business going forward until he got satisfaction. But you know the Victoria Nuland and company would still have made sure that there were offensive weapons in Ukraine. I mean, we've got nuclear weapons in Italy, for gosh sakes, aimed at Moscow. They certainly were going to put something in Ukraine. You know, I'm not sure it's possible. But, you know, here's the thing about that, Judge. And this is one of the real frustrating things about the war is just how avoidable it was on the American side, too, if they'd been

willing to negotiate in good faith. I actually, and I'm not the greatest expert on this, there very well could be some article in Jane's defense I'm missing, but I never actually have seen any real indication that America planned to put missiles or even quote unquote anti-missile missiles, which are fired from dual use launchers, importantly, in Ukraine. I mean, they were making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO in a way. And if we were in the national security state in Moscow, we might be concerned that they might one day. However, the point being, it should have been an absolutely reasonable concession on the part of the Americans to swear in writing,

in a treaty ratified by the Senate, we will not put missiles in Ukraine. I really don't think that they intended to, Judge. And one of the things that is an issue here is that they have anti-missile missiles, defensive missiles fired from dual use launchers in Romania and Poland. And those launchers can hold Tomahawk missiles. So from the and those can deliver H-bombs to your capital city, right? So from the Russians' point of view, all they really wanted in a treaty was for America to live up to the deal that Bill Clinton had promised them in 1997, that we would not station permanent military forces

in the new NATO states. Well, how about George H.W. Bush? NATO won't move one inch eastward, and it's moved 800 or 900 miles eastward. Even better. But the Americans are the ultimate deal-breakers, and I mean, the U.S. government are the ultimate deal breakers here. Bill Clinton even joked that, yeah, that's the promise until we wake up one morning and change our mind. so-called spring offensive, which didn't get started until June, is now universally recognized as a failure. The Ukraine military, notwithstanding what we're sending over there, appears to be on its last leg. President Putin has slowly, methodically, and measuredly

resisted the Ukraine military and begun to move uh westward how much longer can this go and and and and zielinski is now out of the almost out of the picture because american media and government is focused on israel how much longer do you think this can even go on in ukraine well like you said last night you know biden is pushing hard to get this money through to keep it going and i think that they can find the weapons their warehouse is full of artillery shells yet unemptied around the world you know somewhere so i i don't think it's it's all the way over i would defer to daniel davis and carnal mcgregor and others on what's left of ukrainian troop strength how many divisions they have how many thousand men that represents how many they need to be down to before they throw in the towel or that kind of a deal i don't know

the time scale here i really don't and i don't think the russians are really in that much of a hurry and then but then on the other side that means that the ukrainians have more and more time to train up more and more men to play they don't have them in so they're they're conscripting kids and 60 year olds which by my standards is young but still too old to fight although i think i think they're conscripting old men and younger men and even maybe kids too but i think they're still fighting age males to be drafted can can be conscripted and sent to fight if they're willing to fight to the last man and the government and its conscriptors may very well be like thing you ask how it ends if certainly this thing could have

been avoided in the first place is the terrible trouble of it all now i think what's going to happen is they're going to lose essentially all of what used to be called Novo Russia, right? They're the four eastern provinces. Right, right. Joe Biden does not have an off ramp. He wants to keep the war going until November of 2024 for his own domestic political purposes. But he has no moral, legal, political, diplomatic, economic off ramp. Yeah. I mean, this was a headline in Politico.

Biden doesn't want the war to end because it might jeopardize his reelection chances. Precisely. You see how this works? You know, never even mind the military industrial complex. Same thing for the admirals and the generals. Same thing for the president of the United States. This is all about him.

Just like it's all about, oh, what's his name? The leader of Hamas and his five best buddies who helped run the thing. What's good for them? Not what's good for the people of Palestine. What's good for Netanyahu and the Likud and their lunatic right-wing settler partners in power, rather than what's good for the people of Israel, rather than what's good for the people of Ukraine, the people of Russia. It's what's good for these particular scum who get to call the shots. And then look at what they do. And all of them just as full of self-justification as Joe Biden, too. All of them the good guy versus the bad guys,

and therefore all of them justified in doing any evil thing that they do in the name of fighting the bad. Well said, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for your eloquence and your persistence in arguing for peace. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Okay. Judge Napolitano here. One more segment today at 4.30 today, Eastern, and it's just you and me. Ask the judge. Judge Napolitano on judging freedom. Thank you.