Judging Freedom - Scott Ritter: How Foolish to Attack The Houthis.

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Scott Ritter: How Foolish to Attack The Houthis.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

you Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, March 17th, 2025, St. Patrick's Day here in the West. Scott Ritter will be with us in just a moment on just how foolish is it, how unwise is it for the Trump administration to be attacking Houthis and civilians in Yemen. But first this. Markets are at an all-time high, euphoria has set in, the economy seems unstoppable. But the last administration has buried us so deep in debt and deficits, it's going to take a lot of digging to get us out of this hole. Are you prepared?

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800-511-4620 800-511-4620 or go to learjudgenstnap.com and tell them the judge sent you. Scott Ritter, welcome here, my dear friend. Before we talk about the attack on the Houthis and Yemen civilians over the weekend perpetrated by the Trump administration, I'd like your take on the back and forth and back and forth, Witkoff, Rubio, Trump, Putin, that's been going on. As I understand it from Alistair Crook, Secretary Rubio actually had Steve Witkoff deliver to President Putin a signed copy of the so-called ceasefire agreement

signed by Marco Rubio and by Vladimir Zelensky. That does not strike me as appropriate or standard diplomacy, but this is something relatively new. What's your take on it? Well, I of course can't confirm this reporting, so I don't know. You're right to point out that that would be a departure from diplomatic norms, because the implication is that they're trying to strong arm Russia into accepting something that would be unacceptable for Russia. And I

don't believe if that tactic was used that it would work. President Trump's trying to play a very weak hand right now. And the Russians have been, I think, extraordinarily gracious in not holding the president to account for the failures of diplomatic norm, for the failures of common sense, for the failures of decency. The president on the one hand will articulate repeatedly how he understands that Russia didn't start this conflict. He understands how this conflict came about. It's about the expansion of NATO, which Russia took umbrage to, and the president said that Russia had every right. Then Marco Rubio turns around and says, rightly

so, that this is a proxy war between the United States and Russia. I'll say that one more time, a proxy war between the United States and Russia. Ukraine is simply the tool for this. If you have that kind of comprehension, then why are you playing the game as if Ukraine has a stay in anything that's going on here? Why are you paying attention to the Ukrainian positions that they must return the borders to 2014, 2022, that Russia must pay reparations. I mean, there's just an absolute inconsistency in the president's approach here. And while I don't wanna predict the future,

I will say that it will fail because this is an existential issue for Russia. And this is amateur hour in the extreme to think that presenting a document signed by Marco Rubio and Volodymyr Zelensky is going to somehow twist the arm of a Russian president who's been at war for three years, who has taken the personal responsibility of the deaths of tens of thousands of his soldiers,

who is the leader of his nation is somehow going to throw that all away because Marco Rubio signed a damn piece of paper along with Zelensky. This is insanity. I'm surprised Wyckoff went along with it because... How can the Russians as astute as Foreign Minister Lavrov and as astute and patient as President Putin is, how can the Russians look upon Rubio, Waltz and Witkoff as honest brokers? We're not honest brokers, we're co-belligerents. We're the principal belligerents

by instigating and provoking the war and paying for it. Well, I think the difference, again, this is me speaking. I can't speak on behalf of the Russians no matter how much the FBI thinks I do. When you look at the words of the senior Russians, they acknowledge that the Trump administration is seeking to move the relationship in a direction that the relationship should be in.

That is one where diplomacy is reestablished, where diplomatic norms are recognized, and therefore the Russians are able and willing to differentiate between the sins of the past and the actions of the present. And I think this is an accurate point. And no matter what we think of the Trump administration, good, bad, ugly, pretty, whatever,

we do need to acknowledge that this is a distinct departure from past practice, that this is a different administration, that this administration wasn't in power in February of 2022, that this administration did not meet the proxy conflict that's ongoing since February 2022, that this administration is not responsible for arming, for targeting, for directing the assaults undertaken by Ukraine against Russian territory that this administration seek. So the Russians are willing to overlook a lot of pick-up stumbles, foibles, mistakes, because they think that this is the better direction to be headed in. But there's going

to be only so much tolerance for incompetence. And at some point in time, if this incompetence seeks to strong arm Russia into doing something that's against Russian national interests, the Russians are going to say, yet. Very, very interesting and astute observation, Scott. Jumping to Israel, Netanyahu announced yesterday, Sunday that on Wednesday is going to fire the head of Shin Bet. Is there more here than meets the eye? Under Israeli law, according to the Israeli attorney general, he can only be fired for cause, and Netanyahu was not articulated any cause. This is like firing the head of the FBI. Yeah, the Shin Bet has several investigations underway against Netanyahu.

There is of course the years old corruption investigation that, you know, Netanyahu has been working very hard to shape the judicial system so that he would never stand trial. And then there are a series of ongoing investigations related to October 7th and Netanyahu's actions in the aftermath of the initiation of this conflict by Hamas, the failures of leadership that took place. But I think more critically is the one that hardly anybody's talking about, Seymour Hersh has written about it extensively, and that is the absolute violation of law and breach of national security used by Netanyahu in an effort to shape a very politicized argument

about the hostages. It was causing him a tremendous amount of political harm to shape that argument in a way that was favorable to him, but in absolute departure from the facts. He misrepresented a document whose secrecy was such that it was kept locked up in a way that was favorable to him, but in absolute departure from the facts. He misrepresented a document whose secrecy was such that it was kept locked up in a room. Nobody was supposed to acknowledge its existence. He not only revealed its existence, but took the contents of this document and deliberately misrepresented it to spin it as if Hamas was the one responsible for

you know, sabotaging a hostage release deal. the one responsible for you one that's investigating this. So he literally has, I believe he has brought in the Shembek guys and say, make this go away. And the Shembek guy said, no, I'm not doing that. I'm doing my job. And so Netanyahu is trying to fire him. I guess there's no way to know what the political ramifications will be to this. According to Alistair Crook, the Israeli society is deeply divided between the smoker church Ben Gaviers who believe that the Old Testament justifies their slaughter and the more modern liberal Democrats lowercase d who believe in equal protection equal rights and a true democracy. I don't know how you bridge that gap. I really don't. I don't know how this is going to end. Well, the Israeli president agrees with you and you know, Judge, this isn't a new problem. Prior to October 7th, 2023, there are

hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the streets demanding the resignation of Netanyahu as he sought to change Israeli basic law so that he could take political control of the courts so that his corruption case would never go to trial and you know even reserve pilots said we will never fly again and the Israeli president came out and said that Israel is on the cusp of a real civil war not a civil conflict not civil unrest a shooting civil war between the opponents of Netanyahu and in the supporters of Netanyahu. That was before and a whole lot's happened since then that has only further torn Israeli society apart. So Israel is literally a nation that, you know, has unbridgeable gaps and the consequences

of this will more than likely be some sort of civil conflict involving armed parties on either side, Jews killing Jews in the Holy Land. Before I ask you about the hoodies, I want to read a portion of the president's tweet. It's way too long to read the entire thing, but there you can see it's President Donald Trump's tweet about ordering the United States military. The more incendiary stuff is at the end. To all Houthi terrorists, now this is in caps, your time is up and your attacks must stop starting today. If they don't, hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before, To Iran, support for the Houthi terrorists must end immediately. Do not threaten the American people. Their president, who has received one of the largest mandates in presidential history or worldwide shipping lanes, if you do, beware because America will hold you fully accountable and we won't be nice about her.

That's very Trumpian language. Can't you argue that the United States engaged in terrorism, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth by killing Yemen's civilians over the weekend? Well, not only can you argue that, that's a cognizable action in any court that would claim jurisdiction. Give us the background and your understanding here. Well, I mean, first of all, let's... The American people need to know that the the hoodie of Yemen have been in war with the America via proxy since 2014. The Saudi Arabian Air Force using aircraft provided by the United States of America, dropping bombs provided by the United States of America, bombs targeted by the intelligence provided by the United States of America,

have been pummeling Yemen for a decade. And Yemen hasn't blinked. The United States got involved in and Yemen hasn't blinked. The United States got involved in, you know, participating in these attacks last year, or even for over a year now, we've been in a quasi war with the Houthi because the Houthi are very principle people. And they said, we will not stand by idly while genocide is taking place place The Palestinian people of Gaza must be allowed access to humanitarian goods

The the the blockade must be lifted and until which time those conditions are met We will prevent Israeli shipping from transiting through the Red Sea Into the port of a lot and they succeeded in shutting down the shipping. The port went bankrupt. The Israeli economy was devastated. Now this is a hootie action against the Israelis and America stuck its nose in it. And then America said no you can't do this. You have to cease your blockade and the hootie said stick it in your ear. And we started bombing them. Terrible bombs according to Trump. I mean my god what

because Donald Trump ordered a bomb it blows up with greater explosive force than the bomb that was dropped under Biden. Trump is an idiot. I hate to say that and my wife is going to be very mad at me for saying this but this is the kind of stupidity that a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said Mr. President stop cease and desist. The Secretary of Defense has to do an intervention say please don't do this. You are making us look stupid. You're putting us in a bad situation. And it's unbecoming of the commander in chief

to speak in this fashion about conflict when American lives are on the line. Treat the Americans with respect, at least. Use words that impart the dignity of the service they are giving you instead of treating it like a childish video game. Mr. President, shut up. And that's what he needs to do.

Shut up. If you're going to drop bombs, drop bombs. But quit pretending that because you're Donald Trump, the earth shakes greater because you dropped the damn bomb than somebody else. The bomb blows up. And you know who doesn't care? The hootie. They don't give a damn, Mr. President. They're going to kick your ass just like they kicked

everybody's ass because you can't follow through. All you can do is drop bombs and your bombs won't stop them from firing missiles. And then you want to now threaten the Iranian people the same way. It isn't going to work Mr. President and what's going to happen are one of two things. One, you're going to look foolish because you're going to work, Mr. President, and what's gonna happen are one of two things. One, you're gonna look foolish because you're gonna have to back down when your secretary of defense says, we can't escalate any further without putting 700,000 boots on the ground.

That's a major invasion that will cause the entire region to blow up. Oil prices will spin out of control and your economy will crash and you're finished, Mr. President, you're done. Everything you're trying to do, the American people will not tolerate $120 oil because they can't economically. All the changes you're making are predicated upon a foundation of economic stability, which will not be here if you throw oil security, energy

security out the window by going to war with Iran. Stop it. Or he will actually go to war thinking that somehow American bombs ordered by Donald Trump take on some sort of angelic property and blow up with greater violence and more terror than any other bomb ever made. And then the Iranians will shut down the Strait of Hormuz, blow up American installations, destroy Israel, and invite an American nuclear retaliation.

And boom, the man who thought he was gonna get the Nobel Peace Prize will go down in history as the greatest warmonger in modern history. So how foolish is it to bomb the Houthis? What conceivable military benefit is there or is the only benefit this crazy, as you call it, idiotic boasting for which he is known? Look, this could have been solved

the easiest way in the world. The president should have sent Steve Witkoff to Benjamin Netanyahu, punch Netanyahu in the nose, headbutt him in the face, put him in the chair and say, lift the blockade against Gaza right now. You're done, you're finished. Stop the blockade against Gaza right now. You're done, you're finished. Stop the blockade. Get the humanitarian goods blowing back in.

That's what should have happened. But no, we can't say no to the Israelis apparently, or the president just isn't smart enough to realize the ramifications of what Netanyahu did, not realizing that the Houthi linked. The reason why the Houthi stopped firing their missiles last time is that the ceasefire came in as they demanded and the humanitarian goods flow and the hoody were people of their word and they said we're done. But no, they allowed it to happen again. Mr. President, you can't bomb these people into submission.

There's a video of a hoody fighter going out to recover the wounded body of his friend. The man's wearing sandals. He's got his little dishdash on, not body armor. He's not dressed like an American commando and all this kind of stuff. And he's running with his body through enemy fire. You see the bullets kicking all around him. They're trying to get, and he keeps running in the desert, under fire, with a body on his shoulders, and he recovers his friend.

That's who we're fighting. We can make fun of them. We can use all the derogatory terms we want. They wear sandals, they do this, they do that, they do this. They're the toughest people in the world when it comes to fighting in that area of the world. And we are not going to beat them. Who are they?

What does Hootie mean? Is it the name of a human being or is it a geographic location? No, the Hudi, it's the name of a family that's head of a tribe that embraces an offshoot of the Shia Islamic faith. They are, you know, native to that area in the Arabian Peninsula. They actually, the territory that belongs to them crosses over into Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has been at war with the Houthi in one way or another for many, many decades.

And they always lose. Every time they come in, they lose. Now the Saudi Arabians drew an arbitrary line on the map. If they continue this fight with the Houthi, one of the reasons why they had to drew an arbitrary line on the map. If they continue this fight with the Houthi, one of the reasons why they had to have their ceasefires, the Houthi said, you keep wanting to do this, we'll just come and take our territory back, which means they're going to take the southern part of Saudi Arabia. And they were moving in that direction. They can't be beat. They can't be beat. These are the toughest people

in the world when fighting on their own territory. But they are, they're very insular. They're extreme loyalty to themselves. They're used to being treated as outsiders by the non-hoodie. But like I said, these people are very resilient. They haven't been beaten yet, and they're not going to be beaten. Here's somebody who does not understand that and he should. Cut number six. What we can't ignore and the reason why the president mentioned Iran is because the Iranians have supported the Houthis.

They provided them intelligence. They provided them guidance. They provided them weaponry. I mean, there's no way the Houthis, okay, the Houthis would have the ability to do this kind of thing unless they had support from Iran And so this was a message to Iran don't keep supporting them because then you will also be responsible for what they are doing in attacking Navy ships and attacking global shipping Well

It's curious just a little when I When I was a weapons inspector in Iraq, about halfway through, we'd always ask the Iraqis, do you have any missiles you haven't declared? And then it became apparent that they actually had an SS-21 Totshka, which is a short-range ballistic missile. But it had been provided by Yemen. And wait a minute, but I thought Yemen doesn't have any capabilities. Well, Yemen provided the missile. They were experts in the missiles. Yemen had its own ballistic missile manufacturing

capability. The Houthi, the Yemenis have scientists trained in Western universities. They've produced from scratch hypersonic missiles using their own calculations, their stuff. They may receive some assistance from the Iranians on guidance and control in terms of components that are incorporated. But no, I would say that it's a mistake to denigrate theigrate the who just like when I have people talk to me about Iraq I was in a conversation the other day with somebody said well Clearly the Iraqis got all their support support from abroad because they're not capable of doing this on their own I said you don't know anything about the Iraqis that

extremely well educated Capable engineers some of the best in the world at what they do. And that's why they were able to accomplish what they accomplished. You denigrate the hoodie at your own risk. These are very sophisticated, educated, cultured people. And Marco Rubio would do well to go get advice, maybe sit down with somebody like Alistair Crook who has experience in the region and it can set him straight on this. And the other thing is he needs to be careful about linking Iran and the Hootie together

in a way that makes Iran culpable for what the Hootie do because the United States provides a hell of a lot of weapons to a lot of people around the world who do a whole bunch of stuff with those weapons and we open ourselves up to be treated in the same fashion. So if Iran is morally and legally culpable for what the Houthis do, the United States is morally and legally culpable for what the Ukrainians do and for what the IDF does in its slaughter. Here's a Houthi spokesperson, maybe, it's an AI translation, but it's a legitimate translation.

Maybe Secretary Rubio or somebody on his staff will listen. Chris? It's an AI translation, but it's a legitimate translation. Maybe Secretary Rubio or somebody on his staff will listen. Chris? The American enemy launched a blatant aggression against our country in the past hours, with more than 74 airstrikes targeting several areas in the governorates of Sana'a, Sada, Al-Baidah, Hajjah, Dma, Marib, and Al-Jaff. The American enemy committed a number of massacres, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of dozens in a preliminary toll.

In response to this aggression, the armed forces, with the help of God Almighty, carried out a qualitative military operation. It targeted the American aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and its warships in the Northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles as well as a drone in a joint operation carried out by the missile forces, the drone air force, and the naval forces. the drone air force and the naval forces.

Did the hoodies strike back at the aircraft carrier, Harry Truman? 100%, of course they did. They didn't succeed. The defensive capabilities of the carrier battle group were sufficient to shoot down these threats, but they struck back and judge they're gonna continue to strike back. They're not going to-

Why do we pick these fights, Scott? Arrogance, ignorance, arrogance, ignorance. I mean, the two are the same. The arrogance, again, we could have prevented all of this if we'd respected the legitimacy of the hoodie position, which is we are here as Arabs as Muslims, defending the our fellow Arabs and Muslims in Gaza from genocide. So please cease fire, get the humanitarian goods in. You know, they weren't asking

for Israel to surrender. They weren't asking for anything unreasonable. They just said stop the genocide against the people of Gaza. And when the genocide stopped, the Houthi stopped. And that should have been a clear signal to the president. The easiest way to keep the Houthi out of this conflict is to keep the humanitarian goods flowing into the civilian population of Gaza. Why the president allowed Netanyahu to do this? Because now we have a carrier battle group. I mean, come on, Elon Musk and Doge, I'd like you to do a cost comparison of how much it's going to cost us to go into this military conflict with the Houthi that we're not going to win versus telling Netanyahu to simply let the humanitarian goods in.

I think you're going to find that we're going to lose billions, tens of billions, maybe even hundreds of billions of dollars over the course of this effort. And we're not going to win. And all we had to do is pick up the phone and pay whatever Ma Bell charges for a conversation between the president and Netanyahu or send Steve Witkoff over, spend a couple

thousand dollars on airfare, and tell Netanyahu to cease and desist. For a guy who believes in balancing the budget, this was really the easiest thing in the world, but the arrogance. We're America. We dictate outcomes. People must listen to us, do what we say. And now we're trying to dictate to the hoody who don't give a damn. They don't care about being bombed because they've been bombed for a decade.

If you don't think that these people know how to survive in bombing, then what are we going to do? Escalate? Let me tell you the other reality about the United States right now. We have no clue who or what we're bombing. Okay. We, these are mobile relocatable targets. We're going to hit sites that we have. We think there's something there. We're going to bomb them. But look what happened. We're killing civilians, innocent civilians, and our frustration is going to grow. This is a repeat of the desert storm all over again during the counter Scud campaign that I played a very big role in. We didn't blow up a single target because we couldn't find them. We didn't know where they were. But we blew up a lot of buses. We blew up a lot of tents. We blew up a lot of trucks. We didn't blow up a single target because we couldn't find them. We didn't know where they were, but we blew up a lot of buses.

We blew up a lot of tents. We blew up a lot of trucks. We killed a whole bunch of innocent people in our frustration trying to stop a military problem we didn't understand. We don't understand the hootie problem. And yet we're gonna continue to escalate and bomb. According to Donald Trump,

it's gonna be worse than you've ever seen. All we're going to do is kill innocent civilians by the thousands, putting us on the same page in terms of acts of genocide that the Israelis are. Did something happen recently that provoked this? Or did Trump just wake up on Saturday morning saying, let's conduct a bombing raid this afternoon. I think, no, the Houdi announced that they're gonna resume firing missiles against Israeli shipping because Israel had violated its requirement

to provide humanitarian goods to the citizens of Gaza. The Houdi said, if Israel is gonna starve the people of Gaza, then we will resume cutting off Israeli shipping through the Red Sea. Scott, thank you, my dear friend. A superb explanation of what's going on there, which I haven't heard from anybody else. I wish the White House would listen to you

and Alistair Crook and the others that have a far better grasp of what's going on there than the people around whom the president has chose to surround himself. Thank you, Scott. Just a quick, I just want to throw this in there. Until recently, I was actually in contact with a spokesperson from the Yemeni Ministry of Defense, a Houthi. And this created a dialogue and ability

to learn more about them, but also to have discussions trying to explain America to them, but because of the sanctions and the redesignation of the Houthi as a terrorist organization, that channel of communications is now closed to me. And I just want to point out to the American people that when you start shutting down lines of communication, because we need information, you're not going to get accurate information

from Marco Rubio or from the Trump administration when it comes to this issue. It's going to be highly polarized, incomplete data. I'm not saying that the hootie are always right. I'm not saying that they always tell the truth. I'm not accusing them or not, but I'm saying it's imperative that we make sure we have access to all information sources so that we the people can make the best decisions possible.

And yet we have the Trump administration shutting down any opportunity to speak with the Hootie directly and find out what their point of view is. Well said, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining us. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. Of course.

And coming up at three o'clock this afternoon on all of this, but also with an emphasis on the repression of free speech in America on college campuses and he knows of what he speaks, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Josh Napolitano for Judging Freedom. MUSIC