Judging Freedom - Ukraine Headed Into a Dark and Scary Place - Daniel Davis

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

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Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 9, 2023. It's about 2.30 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States.

Our guest for this segment is Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. Colonel Davis is career United States military, a heroic whistleblower in the Afghan war who told General Petraeus and the government administration in Washington that they were going to lose the war. Once we lost it, the people we were fighting against would take over the country again. That was true. And of course, Colonel Davis is a critic of the American involvement in Ukraine war. Colonel, you and I are new to each other. What a pleasure it has been to chat with you before we came on air. And it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much, Judge. My honor. How unwise is it for the United States to be involved both with the cash and armaments and in a limited but undisclosed way manpower in the war between Russia and Ukraine today? You know, the big problem, Judge, is that there's no strategy. We don't have any desired outcome that it can be achievable. And if you don't know what you're shooting for, then literally anything you is you could just be wasted and right now because as i've argued from the outset actually before this there is no viable military path that ukraine

could ever win this war and if that being the case then you have to say what is the value to the united states to to give literally thousands of our armored vehicles, millions of our shells and other missiles, tens of thousands of anti-aircraft, anti-armor missiles, and then, of course, tens of millions of ammunition. And so I don't see any reason why we should continue to go down a path that can't be attained militarily by diminishing our own military capacity. And of course, in the process, basically enable Ukraine to continue fighting. But because they can't win, all they can do is keep dying in large numbers and have their country destroyed. And I really have a problem with that. Were you surprised, Colonel, when the classified military documents came out. The government says they came out at the hands of a 21-year-old part-time National Guard sergeant in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. A lot of the folks

that come on this show believe he was just a tool for higher-ups, but whatever. The government has not denied the accuracy or the authenticity of the documents. Were you surprised when those documents, which had been prepared for review by the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military we have in the country, highest ranking, were you surprised when those documents revealed that the government's military experts, military planners, high-ranking military, expect Ukraine to lose, believe that its air defenses have been degraded, and don't think much of the so-called coming spring offensive? Yeah, I mean, it certainly didn't surprise me in the least. And unfortunately, there's a lot of correlation between that and the Afghanistan papers that the Washington Post came out with in

2019, which categorically was very similar, that we had all the leaders that knew that this was, that war was, it was unwinnable and that we weren't succeeding, that we were lying to the American people. And yet it didn't seem to make any difference in the end. And even after those came out, there was no change in anything. This, I think, is kind of in the same vein with that, in that what I see and what I've talked about, and what so many others on your show talk about who have direct knowledge of these events, it's self-evident that those things in there are accurate, that they don't have the capacity to win, that we don't have the capacity to help them. And yet then you wonder, why do we keep saying publicly, yes, we're going to help

them as long as it takes. We're going to help them retain their territory when you know that that's militarily almost impossible. The Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, she of the coup in 2014, she of the first Trump impeachment over Ukraine, has argued that the Russians should invade Crimea, Crimea, not talking about Kyrgyzstan, we're talking about Crimea, and that we, the Americans, should support that invasion. I mean, this is neocons to the extreme. Do the neocons really foresee something like this, or is this just an argument by allegory? Man, I hope that it is. I mean, that would be bad if they didn't really believe it, but they were saying it for, I don't know, to keep the gravy train rolling. I don't know. But there are two big problems with this.

The first one is that Ukraine doesn't have the capacity to. I've seen all these recommendations as to where the Ukrainian spring or summer offensive may go and they have these big arrows pointing in one direction, and Melita pulled her down to try to cut off the land bridge to Crimea. Look, Ukraine doesn't have any capacity to have any kind of a serious thrust down there because the Russians are so prepared, first of all. But the bigger issue is that even if they did succeed, let's say that we gave them like several hundred M1 tanks and every kind of long range missile they need. The idea that Vladimir Putin would allow the Crimea to be taken from him and not escalate

to nuclear weapons is just absurd. Of course he would. And so we would be actually precipitating the one thing we claim to want to prevent, which is nuclear escalation. And so it is absurd for that to be a policy of the United States. Do you sense a bit of an estrangement on the part of Western Europe from following, I'll use President Macron's phrase after he departed from Beijing, the American rhythm of war. A, the French president said that, and he said it on his plane from Beijing to Paris in front of international press. B, there hasn't been a peep out of the Germans, either German industry or German government, about the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline.

The CIA would have us believe it was a couple of guys in Gilligan, Thailand, that this was a sophisticated attack that only a state actor with a sophisticated military and intelligence capabilities could have pulled off. So my question is too long. When I first started at Fox, Roger Ailes used to say, Judge, the best questions have five words. This is not your courtroom anymore. He was right. Okay. So I'll reduce my question down. Is Western Europe getting wise to America's forever wars? Well, they definitely are are or at least they're getting tired of it because they are the ones that are paying a lot of price well look europe

was lucky in this past winter that it was very very mild and so we didn't have a lot of the risk that we thought we were going to have with the the gas issue and heating and electricity all that it was a lot of expense and it caused some damage to their economy, but it was manageable. But that's not going to continue on. You see, there's already protests, tens of thousands of people in multiple different countries throughout Europe where people are tired of this. And they're saying, hey, why do we pay any price for something that we don't believe is actually a military threat to us? And of course, Viktor Orban there is the biggest critic of that. You have Erdogan, who's a critic in some regards here, but there's nothing like unanimity among the NATO members. And I think that that's only going to continue to grow. And especially if this offensive is inconsequential or inconclusive, I think that people are going to say, OK, look, we gave it a shot.

They couldn't do it. We need to get this wrapped up. And I think there's a lot of European countries that are coming to that conclusion. I want to show you two videos of the drone strikes on the roof of a building in the Kremlin, and then ask your opinion about who does this help? Who does this hurt? Who could have done it? Does it matter who did it? Does it unite? Does it galvanize the Russians behind Putin and Ukrainians behind Zelensky if the Ukrainians believe Zelensky can get to within a couple of yards of where Putin occasionally sleeps? So let's take a look at these. Gary, if you want to post them. This is from outside the wall.

You'll see the drone. There it is. Now you'll see it explode. You'll see another vision of the same from the same angle. This is the same drone, Colonel. There's that same explosion. One more. Now you'll see a different view, Colonel.

This is from inside the Kremlin. So we're looking at the back of that same dome as the drone approaches and explodes. You'll see this again. You'll see the fire on the roof of that same dome in the Kremlin. Now you'll see the fire close up. I don't know if that fire is the building on fire, the remnants of the drone or any fuel that was in it. But what is your best understanding, Colonel, either from your own observations and ability to reason or from your own intelligence uh contacts uh as to who did yeah i i think it's

actually plausible that either one of them could have done it it could have been ukraine because look they've been doing quite a number of drone strikes throughout russia they've been doing lots of sabotage operations they have actually uh these groups that operate within Russian territory. And even the Russians said, I think almost immediately that this was probably launched from not far away from the Kremlin. So it didn't have to go very far. So that's why it wasn't intercepted. It didn't come from Ukraine, most likely. And so it could have been Ukraine because they certainly would like to tell their people that, look, nothing is beyond our reach. We can even get into the Kremlin. And on the other side of that coin, it could actually

have been a false flag operation by the Kremlin, because they can use that potentially to justify expanding their target list, because they have genuinely been limited in the targets that they strike in Ukraine. And they could have hit a lot more. And so far that they haven't, especially within Kiev, they have not hit any of the power ministries, the presidential palace, lots of things they could have done, but they haven't. And in the aftermath of this, regardless of who did it, you saw both of them exploiting it for their own purposes and their own uses. So on the Ukraine side, they're saying hey look this is you know this is basically the primitive preliminary to the uh offensive we're doing and you know to give their people uh encouragement to give their troops some bolstering uh and then the russian side has said hey look we've we've kept our finger off zelinski all this time but now then there could be no negotiations

they're attacking in here we're going to now potentially put him on the target list. And now then we're just going to go and win. So they could escalate their target list in the coming days and they could use this as a justification. I want to go back to where we were before we started talking about the drones. Can you explain the American mindset in the State Department or in the Defense Department that thinks nothing of war after war after war? To what end? Well, this is one of my personal pet peeves, something I write about often, is that in the United States today, and especially this administration for some reason, using the military or threatening the use of the military is now the primary force and the primary tool of international relations. Instead of military being the last resort, if it's absolutely

necessary, and elevating diplomacy where you actually have a chance to attain something positive for the United States, we have just almost forfeited all that and say, all we're going to do is use threats of military force, deploying troops up next to it, flying jets near to it, anything to try to coerce someone into doing what we want, as opposed to ever trying to reason with someone. And it's cost us tremendously. We have lost lots of credibility. We've lost so much flexibility because now that our opponents or potential opponents have no motivation to work with us because they see they gain nothing. They have no potential to gain. So all they're going to do is continue to try to push as far as they can to get whatever they can with no concern about anything that may be beneficial to us. And the biggest danger, Judge, is that this could one day get us to stumble into a war that we should never have fought and that we may not be able to win. And that is my biggest concern. But when you became the famous whistleblower that you are today, a whistleblower of history, it was because, as I understand it, you confronted

General Petraeus and basically said the American public needs to know we're not going to win this war. Is somebody telling Joe Biden or Lloyd Austin or Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan where the Ukrainians are not going to win this war and you guys need an off ramp? off-ramp? Well, I have a fear that they know that, but that they're not concerned about that, because there is a lot of evidence to suggest that their primary intent is to harm Russia. I mean, Austin said it directly, and I think that there's just no concern about the cost in human lives at the diminishing of our own national security capabilities is the price to pay for that. So I think that they're content, many of them, to let this go on as long as possible. I don't think anybody is confused that the Ukraine can't win it, but they think the longer it goes, the more they believe that Russia will be harmed,

though I'm not completely sure that that's a good plan. But again, that's getting lots of Ukraine people unnecessarily killed, cities destroyed, and our defense capabilities getting weakened. I mean, do they really think they can drive Vladimir Putin from office? And if they do, is there not the risk that he'll be replaced by someone who will be less restrained than he is? President, after Putin's terms, Dmitry Medvedev said right after he saw those videos that we just saw to rid Zelensky of his cabal. President Putin is a lot more restrained. But Putin could be replaced. Imagine if Victoria Nuland gets her dream and pushes Putin out of office and he gets replaced by a

Joe Stalin type. That's exactly what I was going to say. I mean, how'd that work out in 1917? They got rid of the Russian leader through that revolution, but how'd that work out for the Russian people or for all of Western Europe? Because they got somebody much, much harder and worse. And I assure you, Judge, there are plenty of options in Russia that are much worse and much less restrained than Putin, who has shown, I think, significant restraint in what he could have done here. And we need to be very careful before we push any buttons that could change that. Let me show you one of those options now. This is Yevgeny Progozhin, the head of the Wagner group. Not very happy about

what he says are needless deaths of his guys. He points to them over his shoulder. You can't see them. They're dead bodies, so they're blurred in this video. And the absence of ammunition to which he seems to feel that he, running a private mercenary group,

is entitled from the Russian government. If you give a norm of ammunition, there are five times less of them. They came here as volunteers and are dying for you to eat in your offices with red wood. Take note of this. This is one of the monarchs that wants to replace President Putin. Now, before we get into the substance of what he's arguing about, is this what Victoria Nuland wants to bring us? Yeah, I hope that she recognizes that that's one of the risks. And, you know, he's probably not the worst one because he's kind kind of a I think more of a tactical leader there, at least so far. But, man, you wouldn't want somebody with that kind of anger to have the in charge of the nuclear button. I assure you that's not something that would be an American.

When you when you called out the American strategy in Afghanistan, I don't know if we had iPhones then, but you did not make a video of yourself attacking Petraeus Rumsfeld by name. I did not. It's remarkable that he's called, yeah, Shoigu and Gerisimov by name and very virulently angry. It's shocking. All right. We have one more video to share with you. Very, very stylized in in a Ukrainian but America and so they should be who you think is aimed at and where this

we fight now so that no one ever again enslaves other nations and destroys other countries and all those old evils that modern Russia is bringing back will be defeated just as Nazism was defeated. We will not lose what we have gained. We will return everything captured by the enemy. We will rebuild what was destroyed. And together we will protect it all. We do not yet know the date of our victory,

but we know that it will be a holiday for all of Ukraine, for all of Europe, for all of the entire free world. More Hollywood than Kiev or an effective way of communicating with his people? Well, look, this is just a continuation of what he's almost done from the outset, you know, claiming that they're going to win, that they're going to drive Russia out of every bit of their territory, that they're fighting for democracy, they're fighting for all of Western Europe.

That's a common theme I hear a lot, that basically you need to give me everything I'm asking because I'm doing your dirty work and so you need to help us help you. But look, there's just no truth to that. I mean, as you talked about earlier in this episode here, the Europeans are coming to that same conclusion. So it's kind of falling on deaf ears, whatever its intent is. And look, if they go ahead with this offensive that there's reported to be started literally any day now,

these aren't going to play very well much longer because they're going to see that there's no substance behind it. And in any case, we already know, especially people who have military experience and combat experience, know that there's no truth to the possibility that they're going to drive Russia out of anywhere. I mean, I could spend this whole episode telling you detailed why that's the case, but I assure you it is. And so I think this is just going to fall on deaf ears. So when the American administration, whether it's Mrs. Newland or whether it's Secretary Blinken or whether it's Secretary Austin or whether it's National Security Advisor Sullivan or whether it's the president himself, talks about the spring offensive, they know it's not going to succeed. I think they do. I mean, I can't imagine how they couldn't know that. So the real question is, what's the play then?

What's our next move? What are they going to do? Now, perhaps they're using this as, okay, we gave it a shot. We did everything. Now you're going to have to make the best negotiated settlements that you can get. I don't know. I mean, I almost hope that's the case. But, of course, if that's the case, then why wouldn't you do it now before they launch this?

Because no matter what, if they launch this thing, it's much more expensive on bodies and casualties to attack into a defensive position that's already prepared against an opponent that has an air power, air defense, rockets, missiles, all the stuff, and they're ready for the attack. They're prepared for it. So there's going to be really high casualties. If you're going to have a negotiated settlement after that, then don't waste those people's lives. Make that decision now and encourage Zelensky to have a negotiated settlement before that happens, and don't kill so many unnecessary people. I think that the biggest obstacle to a negotiated settlement is the Biden administration. Look, Judge, we had a chance in March, March 29th to be specific, of 2022, in 2022, where in Istanbul, there was the outlines of a deal that both sides left in agreement with, that they had something close to it. And then Zelensky undercut it.

And I don't know, maybe he did that because it's something we encouraged him to do as well. I know that Boris Johnson wanted to deep six it. But there could have been a deal then. And just think of how many scores of cities would still be fully developed today and how many tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and military people would still be alive. And yet the likely scenario is that we're still going to end up with a negotiated settlement, something like what we could have had last March. Wow. Colonel, give us a few seconds on your book. Yeah, it's called 11th Hour in 2020 America. It was written probably before the last presidential election and said, look, our foreign policy was completely jacked up.

Here's how it's jacked up and here's how we can fix it. We haven't done too well since then, but I think all the fundamentals are still pretty valid. Well, good luck on the sale of the book, Colonel. We hope you'll come and thank you very much for your time here. We hope you'll come back and visit us again. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Judge. Thank you, Colonel Davis. More as we get it.

Still waiting for a verdict on the Trump rape trial. You'll hear it first here or you'll hear it very soon here as soon as it comes down. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.