Hello, my name is David Olds and I'm your cohost for the Mississippi Happenings podcast.
Joining me each week is my friend and cohost, Jim Newman.
Jim, how are you buddy?
I'm doing fine, how are you doing?
Man, I'm good.
ah Yes, yes, we are very fortunate to have two very distinguished guests with us, and very happy with that.
Each week, we talk about the kitchen table issues facing Mississippians.
But we cannot ignore the fact that what happens around the world affects us in Mississippi.
Since September the second, the US military has struck at least three boats off the coast of Venezuela, killing at least 17 people.
President Donald Trump said that the boats were carrying drugs and they're out to the United States.
Seven warships, a nuclear powered submarine, and F-35 self fighters have been deployed to international waters off Venezuela's coast.
This is the biggest US naval deployment in the Caribbean.
Today we have two very distinguished individuals with firsthand experience and knowledge of military affairs and international laws and diplomacy.
I want to first welcome retired Rear Navy Admiral Jamie Barnett.
Jamie is a professor at the Ole Miss Center for Intelligence and Security Studies teaching national security and cyber security policy courses.
He uh served 32 years in the US Navy Reserve, rising to the rank of rear admiral and serving as deputy commander.
Jamie also could be found on substacks opinionated by facts.
Jamie, we want to thank you for your service to our country and it's great to have you with us again.
David, thanks.
Thank you, Jim, for having me back.
Also joining us is Major General Andy Turley.
ah Major Turley is a retired Air Force Major General and a retired senior executive with the Department of Defense.
He served more than 27 years in a wide variety of active duty and reserve, judge, advocate,
positions in the wing, major command, and at the Pentagon levels.
His highest military award is the Distinguished Service Medal.
He is currently counsel to the law firm of Flauette in McLean, Virginia.
ah Major, thank you so much for your service, and thank you for joining us today.
Thank you, Dave.
It's my honor to join you today.
Fantastic.
oh
that's major general.
Yes.
You can easily pick out the civilian in the group.
My apologies, Major General.
Jim, you want to get us started?
uh
ah Sure, I guess I can get us started.
When I was in the Air Force, the same is true of all the military groups, there's a chain of command.
And I've been wondering if I am the captain of one of the ships ah that fires whatever artillery they're using.
to destroy these ships.
Where does he get the command from?
It has to be, ah I don't think he can take that on his own.
And I assume that there's a chain of command where he gets the authority to do it.
Because as far as I know, I don't think it's part of...
the United States.
military to
blow up ships in international waters.
So if I'm the ship's commander, I certainly want to be on solid footing so that I know that that command is legitimate.
So for either one of you to take it on, how does he get his orders?
take the Navy answer since I think they're involved.
Then I'm going let General Turley speak to the legalities of just how firm a ground they were on.
first, I would say you're exactly right that that has to be authorized.
And while this probably was approved somewhere in the Pentagon or White House and Pentagon, we do have a command structure around the world called the COCOM, the Combatant
Command.
and they answer really directly to the President of United States through the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, as it might be.
And in this particular case, it's U.S.
Southern Command, which has the area of assigned responsibility.
The base, it covers Central America and South America, and the Southern Command
is all of our forces.
It's a joint and unified command.
So Army, Navy, Air Force, all of the various services, although very often it is a Navy Admiral that has it.
And then under that is the Navy component command, which is fourth fleet.
And when you were mentioning, when David was mentioning the various types of ships and submarines and things like that, these would all fall under fourth fleet.
And fourth fleet,
uh It's a little bit, and the US Southern Command mission is a little bit different from other places in the world.
We're not really too worried about being attacked by any of those countries, but the missions we have is to actually work with other militaries, gain uh influence with those
communities.
We also want to do humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and counter drug operations.
And those drug operations are very typical.
We do them all the time.
As matter of fact, as you see in the slide right there, we work with the Coast Guard, which is, while not under the Department of Defense, works very closely with it.
Often you'll have Navy ships that have a Coast Guard uh unit on board because the Navy will provide the platform, the sensors, the intelligence, and then the Coast Guard will
come in for a non-
defense or war function, but rather a law enforcement function.
So let me turn it over to General Turley at this point.
The situation that we're dealing with with Venezuela right now, first of all, to answer your question, Jim, about how these orders flow, every uh COCOM has an operation center.
They will develop the particular war plan from there, identify the target, and then flow it down to the operator to have that operator act on that order.
So this is something that's vetted uh through the command of the
The Navy captain out there is not on his or her own by any stretch.
He's really tied into a big operation.
And these orders flow down uh from Southcom to the particular asset that they're using, be it a ship, be it a drone, ah be it an F-35.
It would go down to Southcom, flow to each of the component commands, uh
representatives and let's say they wanted to use a predator.
They would they would flow that to the Air Force and then the Air Force would execute the order.
So that's kind of how that how that flows uh with regard to uh what is going on currently in the Caribbean.
uh Jamie makes the excellent point that the Coast Guard has taken has taken a major role around the world with regard to drug interdiction.
Why?
because it's a law enforcement mission.
they are always getting thousands of tons of cocaine and other drugs and intercepting them before it gets to US shores.
The importance of that fact is that these particular uh activities that are taking place off of the shores of Venezuela
are nowhere near the continental United States.
And the issue is with regard to blowing up these boats, it is using the military for a law enforcement purpose.
And that is the fundamental issue.
And by conflating the two, you introduce a lot of confusion with regard to what the authorities are to use the force and what force can be applied.
When you have somebody driving a drug boat, they are not a combatant.
They are civilian, whether they're armed or not.
And everything is fact specific in terms of making a determination of when you can fire and who you can fire upon.
The secretary Rubio made the point that, in the in the case of blowing up, at least in response to questions about blowing up the first boat.
Well, we could have intercepted.
We just decided to go.
and and and basically blow them out of the water.
uh That's really problematic on a couple of levels.
First of all, under US law and under international law, the key to all of this is the fact that force is a last resort, not a first resort.
um It's if a policeman in in Jackson, Mississippi, were defending herself against a threat.
The threat would have to be imminent and she would only be have to use deadly force if she was in immediate danger.
The same concept holds true with regard to dealing with uh threats against the United States.
And when you talk about the international law of armed conflict, when you talk about the US law of armed conflict, you're talking about the rules that exist.
in dealing with opposing nations and opposing armed forces.
you exercise, you take a defensive posture on that based upon the fact that whether you are fired upon or whether you're in imminent danger of being fired upon.
doesn't, the argument with regard to the drug interdiction here is the fact that uh
In my view, based upon my experiences as a military lawyer, there was no imminent threat to the United States.
The argument has been made that, well, importing drugs is an imminent threat to the United States.
But when you're dealing with a small drug boat off the shore of Venezuela that wasn't even destined for the United States, as far as we can tell, uh
To my mind, that is an improper use of military force.
And as the secretary says, what we could have done, what we usually do is use the Coast Guard, a law enforcement agency, to go ahead and do the interdiction.
um There was even um some discussion.
read some and it is the fact that the first boat, at least, turned around when it realized it was in
It was in uh danger.
Now, just the mere appearance or whatever the whatever the weapon system was that they were using, turn them around that if there was ever an argument about imminent danger,
that certainly turned that around.
So that's why that's why I say that it was an improper use of military force.
uh Even a even you're the policeman in Jackson, Mississippi, the policewoman.
If a felon is fleeing,
She can't shoot him in the back, ah which is essentially what happened in this particular circumstance.
um don't consider these the now the argument has been made that while drugs present a real danger to the United States and to our to our country, I absolutely agree with that.
But I but it's not the same as a military threat.
It's not the same as an armed force threat like Al Qaeda, like
ISIS like um Iraq and Afghanistan.
um It is a far different threat and it is not a threat that can be met in my view under both domestic international law um by use of military force.
Let's put it in terms of land.
What if there's a suspected drug lord that's driving, uh say, 500 kilos of cocaine across Dallas?
You can't shoot him with a shoulder-mounted, a shoulder-launch weapon and just blow up his car.
uh We have to have some kind of evidence that can lead to probable cause.
They said we had intelligence on this and as Major General Turley knows, anytime an intelligence breed is being delivered, they give it with a level of confidence.
And the reason that they do that is that you're putting together lots of pieces of information that may not always turn out to be the case.
And so they hedge it.
So, you know, an intelligence report's a whole lot more like a weather report than it is like an indictment.
It is actually based on testimony, sworn testimony.
So yeah, so they said there are drugs in that boat.
They said these are drug people.
They say it's headed toward the United States.
Maybe it is, but you know, in that first boat with 11 people, that's a whole lot of people to be delivering drugs.
And it's a thousand nautical miles from the continental United States.
Why do they need that many people?
They could have taken some of those people out and actually had more drugs.
on board.
So there's a real question.
Well, maybe they were actually human trafficking in some ways or something like that.
So you just killed a bunch of innocent people.
So, you know, the thing that concerns me, and I think the thing that the general attorney was alluding to is somebody said, this is what we're going to do.
It came down through Southern command.
And at some point there was a situation where he said, shoot that boat.
And somebody had to issue an order.
And the question always is, is that a lawful order?
Because we have a duty to obey lawful orders.
And we also have a duty to disobey unlawful orders.
I don't know that this will ever be adjudicated because the people that would be judging this would be the people who are probably issuing the orders or issuing the operation on
this.
But it is a major departure.
from the way that the United States, and I'll have to tell you other allies of the United States conduct business.
And it's alarming to me, nobody is suggesting that we should allow these drugs to come out of Venezuela or to go anywhere else at all.
But we have a program for that.
That's what we've been doing is interdicting these things.
And uh it's far from going to war with Venezuela, although some of these actions may.
uh result in some kind of reaction from Venezuela.
Uh.
We know that, or let me ask you this, with Donald Trump, don't know really what is going on in his mind or why he does certain things.
But what do you think could be maybe the real reason or real reasons for the attack?
My sense is that it's intended to be a deterrent, which is fine, ah but that's not how we do business.
The problem is you can have a deterrent, but when a deterrent becomes an illegal activity, that's a horse of a different color.
And I consider this an illegal activity because of the misuse of military force in this context.
So that's really kind of my sense of what's going on.
And I, you know, the administration, Secretary Reveal, have not really come up with any legal basis for the action other than drugs are bad for America, drugs are dangerous to
America.
I do think that one of the things, and I made the observation before, that the Trump administration, if you try to analyze the totality of their uh policy, is well, what would
uh a reality TV show be if you put it into the White House.
And so it's always very performative.
And in this particular case, who out there is for drugs and drug runners?
Well, nobody is.
So you can kind of say, well, this is an enemy that we can all be against together.
The problem is, is that there are lot of different ways to do that.
And it doesn't have to involve killing people without due process.
They could have stopped that boat and actually prosecuted them and they'd still be alive.
And we would have found out, were there drugs on there?
Were they all drug runners?
Were they actually somebody who was captured, didn't want to be on there?
So um the illegality of this is the thing, as General Turley says, that is most concerning about it.
And if I can add to that, the Congress authorizes the military to uh take actions.
Under Article 1 of the Constitution, Congress has the right to declare war.
uh Congress issued, when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, they issued what's known as an authorization for the use of military force.
And that identified
use of military force against Al-Qaeda, against ISIS, and against those armed opponents that we have.
The administration and no military has a blank check for the use of military force.
uh And in this case, there is no authorization for the use of military force that has come from Congress uh to engage in this kind of activities.
I have some colleagues of mine who published a uh
an op-ed in the Hill yesterday addressing this particular issue and saying Congress should really look into this because of the misuse, in my view, of military force for a law
enforcement purpose.
By the way, I'm not sure, they haven't identified the units that were involved in this.
I would think that they would have fallen under Southern Command, maybe 4th Fleet, there may be some Air Forces that were viewed.
You're seeing, were seeing a picture of the MQ-9 Reaper, oh as General Turley mentioned, the Predator.
If it was one of these types of assets that were shooting these boats, it's probably shooting a hellfire missile or something like that.
It's $130,000, $150,000 missile to take out a pretty decrepit looking boat when all you really had to do was pull in front of them and stop them.
That's another aspect of it that makes me think it's more performative in nature.
They actually want the drama.
of killing these people.
And I'm sure it does send a message to Venezuela, but it is a medieval message in a lot of ways.
It's not the way that nations in a situation where we believe in and support international laws who behave.
Jamie, you probably know.
Do you think it's cheaper to send that Hellfire missile or send a Coast Guard ship?
The Coast Guard ships can be out there anyway because we can't patrol it with just hellfire missiles, right?
So we have the Coast Guard cutters out there.
We have the Coast Guard units that are aboard our Navy destroyers.
Dezron 40 is, know, deploy ships to this area for this very purpose.
We're gonna have them out there anyway and they're gonna be more effective.
It's like
asking for the Coast Guard picking up, you know, 75,000 pounds of cocaine.
uh That was done without a Hellfire missile.
And we actually probably got the people, which means we also get to interrogate them.
We get more intelligence, more information.
So there are just a lot of reasons why I don't think it was uh good judgment and it was bad law that allowed these strikes to occur.
And if I may add, uh whether it's it is probably cheaper to go ahead and use a Hellfire missile, but it's not legal.
That's my concern.
And the United States should stand by the legality of its actions.
And the United States has always done the right thing.
And doing the right thing is conducting itself in accordance with domestic law.
and international law.
Well, that's why I asked the question because one of the first things that I was introduced to ah when I joined the Air Force was the Uniform Military Code of Justice.
ah one of the items was that you had to follow legal orders, but if it was an illegal order, ah
If you wanted to take your chances and you were convinced it was an illegal order, ah you needed to stand up and not do it.
And I couldn't find anything to justify blowing up these ships.
I want to say that somewhere there was the intelligence ah and maybe it was intelligence from on the ground.
that the ship, this little boat had left.
You know, I'm just a civilian and I don't have access to uh all that information.
I did have clearance at one time, but that was years ago.
But it just really bothered me that we were killing people and it didn't seem that there was any justification.
for why we were doing it.
Jim, let me me throw an additional element in that the administration has used to justify this.
ah They designated this Trende Aragua, this this uh gang as they've struck.
They've said, well, they're a foreign terrorist organization.
They've designated it, named it as a foreign terrorist organization and that it's being controlled by Venezuela.
Well, I've not seen very much
evidence that convinces me of that.
the but the important point here is that designating somebody a foreign terrorist organization does not in and of itself justify the use of lethal force.
um That is exactly right.
And we're not a war with Trende Aragua.
um What we are we we want to prevent drugs from coming into this country.
We have the legal means by which we do it.
the means we finance through appropriations to do this kind of thing.
And that does not include sending sending reapers and predators over the Caribbean Sea to take out uh take out stray drug boats.
Yeah, wasn't there a time, I don't know, 20 years back when we went into Columbia with some boots on the ground to help Columbia get rid of their cartel.
right.
We had troops on the ground there in a joint task force.
uh That was a supporting task force.
We were letting the Colombians actually do the hard work.
We were providing support for that surveillance and things like that.
And that was the situation.
And Andy may remember, can add some color to this as well.
It was pretty successful because Colombia was a hard nut to crack for a long time.
And uh through
encouragement to the nation and to working with their forces, the good forces, they actually had some good results in stemming that flow of uh drugs to the United States.
Do either one of you think or feel like that maybe this is Donald Trump's attempt to force out President Maduro?
Well, if it is, it is not working because if anything, is strengthening uh his hold on that and making Maduro look like he's under attack by this bully, the United States,
probably he's helping him gain support uh in Venezuela as opposed to loosening or forcing him out.
I have to tell you, Venezuela has one of the, you know,
most significant oil reserves in the world.
It's incredible.
And yet some of the poorest people.
So Madura and his government are thieves and, uh you know, kleptomaniacs.
They are not worthy to be in power.
And they're a real problem in the Western hemisphere and really in some ways the world.
uh you know, shooting an open boat in open water really
does not do it.
even if you're claiming that it's a warning, uh you're warning him by killing people and you're not really sure.
There's no due process, no probable cause.
If they have intelligence on it, if I were them and they'd done this, I would be bringing that intelligence out and proving to the public that these people were actually who they
say they were.
The problem is that all the evidence is destroyed now.
uh
No, I don't know that that can ever happen.
Kinda like the Epstein.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Now go ahead, General.
Picking up on an important theme that Jamie has hit upon, uh the whole purpose of international law is an international law of war and law of armed conflict is to ensure
that we can return to a state of peace as quickly as possible.
First of all, there is no ongoing active war.
going on with regard to Venezuela and we're not, I don't know that we're looking to start one or not.
That's way above my pay grade.
But the important thing is we conduct our...
much, there's not much above your pay grade.
Well, but the important thing is the reason we follow the law, the reason we follow the laws of armed conflict and the laws of war um is because A, that's what America does.
But B, when we violate it, what Admiral Barnett says is absolutely true.
It hardens the resolve against the United States.
When we prosecute our and I know uh
the current Secretary of Defense uh was involved with a couple of the Special Forces uh criminal actions in Afghanistan.
um And he was just outraged because people were being prosecuted for shooting civilians, for murdering civilians.
Well, you know what?
That is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
And that um those uh
courts martial went forward not just because a court martial convening authority said so, but because the unit itself was outraged because that's not the way America operates.
We operate within the boundaries of the law.
We don't operate outside of the boundaries of the law.
What my concern about the Venezuela situation is we're operating outside the boundaries of the law.
And you think that these attacks are a violation of human rights laws, correct?
Okay.
And the key thing about human rights law is you don't kill, the military does not kill civilians.
And these people are civilians.
They may be bad civilians.
We may not like them, but we don't kill civilians.
Kind of like free speech, isn't it?
Yes it is.
Ugh.
do know that in August, oh the State Adjustment Department increased the reward for Maduro's arrest to $50 million.
So we know that he has, uh the Venezuelan president has a $50 million bounty on his head.
oh I could give him some advice.
Don't get in a little boat and head out.
Right.
Exactly, ah
How far ah down does South Come, does it cover all of South America?
It covers all of South America and basically, Andy will have to remind me on this.
think it's everything really south of Mexico, the Caribbean and all of central and South America.
Mexico, I think is considered part of NorthCOM, Northern Command.
Where is it headquartered?
Uh, Southcom is in Mayport, Florida.
Yeah, it's in it's in, I've been to the Southcom headquarters.
It's maybe, it's in, no, Centcom is in Tampa.
um you know what?
Well, I think it's down in the.
that fourth fleet is in Mayport or Jacksonville, Florida.
I'm not sure about
this I think Southcom is based down in the Miami area.
Yes.
Right.
Okay, great.
Well, I am certainly in awe of both of you and the knowledge that you've imparted on this particular subject.
ah
I'm also interested in.
the South China Sea and China's ah claim to that territory and every once in a while, more frequently lately.
they fly some of their jets pretty close to ours or they'll have one of their ships cross ah diagonally in front of one of our ships and come close to a naval accident.
But fortunately, it's not.
ah
Are they violating international law?
Oh, absolutely.
So I've likened what the Chinese are doing in the South China Sea.
We don't have a map or a chart of that, but I encourage people to look at the South China Sea.
does say China, but it borders on a lot of Southeastern Asia and the Philippines.
And China has been claiming it based on an old British chart that they did a little dashed line for some reason on it called the non-dashed line.
Or some people now call it the
10- line and that is the sole legal basis for which they claim the entire area and It's there's not as much death.
I don't know if I've heard any deaths going on there But it is a grab the same way that Putin is grabbing Ukraine there We don't get this much in the United States, but on a
daily basis there are incidents at sea between the Chinese
and the Filipinos, the Vietnamese, they'll hit, they'll shoot water cannons, they'll collide with fishing boats, with uh mineral excavation boats, uh numerous things like
that.
Of course, we know that they built islands, they've improved islands out there in contravention of uh international law.
And they've been ruled against on this.
This has been brought up in international courts and they've been...
They've lost, the Chinese have lost.
uh Andy, what would you say?
uh I would say that it's probably the single most important shipping lane in the world.
uh It is key to commerce in the United States, commerce in Europe, as well as commerce in China.
And the problem is that China has uh just put its elbows up and said uh they've relied upon the nine dash line.
They've also relied upon these, uh they've put bases on these
uh islands that they've that they've constructed so that they can exert influence and control over the South China Sea.
I'm surprised we haven't had more uh upsets than we have that we have had.
uh They seem to be a little quiet right now, but there is, I think, as as Jamie indicated, there is probably a lot of activity going on over there.
That's a fairly low level.
It is definitely
an area that could serve as a flashpoint for armed conflict between us and China.
You mentioned it.
II analysts and aficionados out there, I when you look at where the Japanese went uh in the run up to the American entry into World War II, that's where they had it.
They went right down the South China Sea and tried to grab all of the straits, all the way through to Indonesia to grab this because of the importance of those sea lines, those sea
lines of communication.
Uh.
I had a question ah for the that the Major General mentioned, and I can't think of it right now.
Is it?
Oh, I know what it is.
Is it?
What what do you think the reason that they want Taiwan?
Is it because of the ah technology?
Or is it just they want to take back Taiwan?
My answer is yes to both.
I think there's a real historical element there.
um And there's also the whole whole technology.
And Taiwan is a very, very it's a small country, but it's a very, very productive one.
um And it has thrived for so many years ever since the um it really was was established right after World War Two.
um So I think they want both.
And I'm afraid it'll go the way, if they ever get Taiwan back, it'll go the same way as Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was just a jewel of the East oh and uh they've effectively ruined it now.
was nowhere near as productive as it was 20 years ago.
And going to General Turley's point about kind of the history of it, they do see this as historically theirs.
And I think that's very akin to another dictator, Putin, wanting to get Ukraine back.
And really the heart of Russian culture actually started in the area around Kiev.
And so he feels like he wants that back uh as part of the ancestral Russian empire.
Yeah, that's a...
is why what goes what happens in Ukraine and United States posture with regard to Ukraine is so important and has so many ramifications for what goes on in the South China Sea with
respect to Taiwan.
It all ties together.
And Jamie, since you brought up uh President Putin, what do you think his, how do you think he fits into this equation with Venezuela?
Well, so there's an interesting book that has been written by one of the great authors that I think are out there and an Apple bomb and it's called Autocracy Inc.
And, you know, she talks in the book about how we have this kind of cartoon image in our minds about what a dictator is, you know, he's, he's got a uh uniform and he stretched
around like he'll do change stuff like that.
said, that's not the way it is anymore.
These are.
corporate giants who are all working together.
And we see a lot of that going on.
So uh Putin and uh Xi Jinping, but also to the degree that uh Nindra Modi in India is now more of a, it's an electoral democracy, mean, an electoral dictatorship, but kind of
acting with dictatorial policies.
They're trying to come together.
They're all interoperating with each other.
so Venezuela is one of those that's kind of aligned that way.
um And we see the American rule-based order that's existed for over 80 years now starting to break apart.
And I don't think that that's gonna be really good for America.
It's not gonna be good for a lot of what we used to call the free world.
Mm-hmm.
What do you, this question for both of you, what do you think the world's opinion of America is today?
Well, uh Andy, uh you need to ask before you answer that, ask him this before or after President Trump's speech to the UN this week.
He
was gonna ask about that, but go ahead ahead.
I think we are far from, you know, making friends around the world.
We are alienating people with our tariffs and also our on-again, off-again tariffs and our denigration of other countries and various institutions, our flouting of international
law.
oh I don't think we're making friends.
I think we're losing.
Unfortunately, I think that that's true.
I'll tell you, one of the biggest things that I think we're losing is the trust of our allies.
After World War Two, the United States worked with our allies in Europe to form NATO, um and that was to be opposed to a further Russian.
um
influence, the spread of Russian influence in Europe.
Since that time, we've engaged with a number of other oh partnerships and alliances.
And again, what has been the basis of all of this is that we are the United States.
We will do the right thing.
We will follow the law and you can trust us.
What really concerns me now is we're losing the trust of our allies um and we're losing the trust of our allies because of
tariff policy, because of uh support policy.
How many times have we gone back and forth in terms of support for NATO, support for uh Ukraine?
uh And America, I think in the eyes of many now, cannot be trusted to be looking out for the interests of each of those nations as well as its own.
Does that make sense?
Yes, absolutely.
too that President Trump has denigrated international uh institutions such as NATO and UN.
And I don't know, and General Charlie may know, if he can unilaterally pull the United States out of the UN.
I hope that's not true.
But as we've seen with his actions on various agencies in the United States government, he could effectively do it.
which would nearly cause the collapse of one of the great institutions.
It's not perfect.
It needs reform.
It's not as effective as it can be in every place.
And there've been some abuses, but it is one shining uh area where the nations can come together and reason.
And I think that is the key to the benefit of the UN.
It's not that they're going to send blue helmets in as peacekeepers or anything like that.
Blue helmets, by the way, refer to UN sponsored forces that often will go in and participate in ceasefires and those type of things.
It's the fact that it's a forum where the nations of the world can come together and that they can talk.
And it may not.
It may not be perfect, as Admiral Barnett says, but the important thing is it's there.
Where the United States is undermining it is we've withdrawn from the World Health Organization.
We have withdrawn from four or five other key United Nations organizations.
And that, to my mind, causes me great concern because we need to be at the table.
It's important.
And it's not important for us to be at the table because we're good guys.
It's important for us to be the table for the protection of United States interests here and around the world.
What is going to be the effect of maybe, I guess, the rest of the world recognizing a Palestinian state and President Trump denying that?
kind of leaves us alone is what it seems to me.
I think we're increasingly isolated on that score.
The whole Middle East issue, the Gaza issue is heartbreaking.
I blame Hamas.
They're a vicious, vile organization who don't give a damn about Palestinians.
All they care about is amassing their own partner.
And they are to be blamed for all of the misery that's been vested upon Gaza.
And this goes way back to 1948 when they partitioned that whole particular area.
um We had an opportunity to create a two-state solution at that time.
Unfortunately, we couldn't.
And I think we're paying the price for it in the end.
The United States position, it backs Israel, which is a strong ally of ours.
There's no doubt about that.
uh But I think that
It's important for us to exercise our influence over Israel to see how we can ameliorate the situation, because I think there are lots of positive things that can be done.
um But it's difficult.
quite honestly, I think our allies are kind of saying that they will recognize a Palestinian state mainly to make the point that we've got to move forward.
We can't.
sit with what we have now.
Admiral Barnett, would you agree?
I would agree.
you know, here's, here's the difficult thing for America.
America has always supported Israel, but when we equate supporting Israel was supporting, uh, prime minister Netanyahu, it starts to get a little more difficult because he is, you
know, you know, waging a war, uh, in a way that is very troubling, very destructive.
And it's not clear what the end purpose is at first.
He said he wasn't going to occupy Gaza.
Now he is going to occupy Gaza.
Israel had signed on to the concept of a two state solution.
Netanyahu, over the time that he's been in office, I can't remember how long it is, but it seems like it's two decades now, has in essence been doing everything to keep and make a
two state solution impossible.
So the sad thing about it is I don't see a good solution on the horizon.
Just like Putin doesn't want peace in Ukraine, he's just not really interested in that.
I don't think Netanyahu is interested in peace right now.
He's got purposes in Gaza, which include occupation.
And I think that's just going to prolong the misery to Gaza.
And so, as General Turley said, the actions of our allies in recognizing the Palestinian state, I think is to goad them, say, look,
We need to come to some kind, we need to have some kind of recognition of the humanity of the Palestinians, even as we say, the evil of Hamas.
But doesn't Netanyahu, it seems to me that Netanyahu has been continuing this more for his political gain because he, ah if the war was ended today, it's my understanding that he
would probably be indicted for ah what he did back to the justices.
the justice courts or whatever ah years back.
And he was under, I think he was under indictment.
Yeah, he was under indictment.
I think, I don't know about ending the war, but I think it's clear that he lost his coalition and was out of office.
He could be prosecuted again and his coalition seems to want the obliteration of the Palestinians in Gaza.
I don't want to get too far off the subjects, everything, but I'm always, I try to ask this question with as many experts and leaders as I can.
And the question for both of you is, is the United States becoming a authoritarian government?
Do you want to that one?
General work.
I know that's a loaded question, but...
It is a loaded question.
It depends on how you define authoritarian.
The foundation for uh the United States of America is the US Constitution.
Embedded in that is the concept of an equal, three equal branches of government.
The Congress, which is under Article 1,
president under Article 2 and the judiciary under Article 3.
founders were very specific in terms of responsibilities between those three to make sure that one didn't predominate.
um Unfortunately, and it depends on how you define authoritarianism, if you define authoritarianism as the executive is preeminent over the other two branches, then I think
I get very concerned that we're heading in that direction and
uh and Applebaum's book is very clear on how that kind of thing can happen.
What worries me is that Congress has ceded its power, a lot of its power, to, in many different areas, to the executive.
uh What worries me is that every time that there's a decision against uh the current administration in court, what they, you know, the judge involved seems to be, uh
characterizes a wide-eyed radical, leftist radical.
When that is not the truth at all, we're a country of laws.
We're not a country of men.
And I think that the whole concept of a preeminent or what they call the unitary executive theory for the presidency, um that concept undermines the whole
genius of the Constitution which is balancing each one of our uh branches of government.
And I would agree entirely.
And if you look at some of the books uh like Tim Snyder's On Tyranny and Ann Applebaum's works, Twilight of Democracies and Autocracy, Inc., you can almost have a bingo card of
what's happening.
So suppression of uh democratic institutions such as the courts, suppression of the free press, prosecution of journalists.
using the courts against your enemies, disobeying various laws and morays.
So the concept that, I remember all the other previous administrations, was this, since Nixon at least, there was this limitation on the communications between the White House
and the attorney general, the White House and the Department of Justice.
That's broken down.
As a matter of fact, I mean, he tweets instructions to the attorney general now on who to prosecute.
As all of those start to break down, you can start looking at where else this has happened.
So whether it's India, whether it's uh Germany and things like that, you start, you don't go directly to dictatorship.
You can go to kind of to an electoral dictatorship.
That's the way it was with Hitler.
Hitler
was actually asked, they gained shares in the Bundestag, they got a certain number people and he was asked to form a government.
And he immediately started undermining all of the democratic institutions, including the courts.
so, are we autocrat?
Well, we're certainly more autocratic than we were a year ago.
That kind of brought us all the way back around to why I had my question about the legality of blowing up these Venezuela boats.
ah
It just comes back to me every time I think about it.
ah Last week, the week before, in a press conference, the president said, I am the president.
I can do anything I want.
Which.
for him, that is not true.
But the question is, how do you effectively counter that?
And that's where the courts have had the courage to stand up and do it, despite being publicly chastised for doing it.
There's another important element that's going on that I think ties in with the authoritarian theme.
The Department of Justice, they
have rules and regulations about how they conduct their business.
You find out about a crime, and then you find out about the criminal that's being turned on its head in that you identify a quote criminal and then try to find a crime associated
with that person.
That's what worries me a great deal uh about things going on.
uh Also,
When I worked at the Department of Justice, one of the things that they always told me was the fact that you always need to be completely truthful with the court because the courts
rely upon the Department of Justice being open, honest, and above board.
And unfortunately, that whole presumption of regularity
due to the conduct of the current Department of Justice is now gone.
And that breaks my heart.
It really does.
It breaks the heart, I'm sure, of an awful lot of Americans.
Let me ask each of you, if you were to recommend a for everybody to read, what book would you recommend at this point?
So the two, the two that I've mentioned, there are lot of great ones out there right now, uh but uh Professor Timothy Snyder wrote a book on tyranny.
And the thing that I like about it is that it goes by point by point, you know, what the tyrant does, what the would be autocrat would be, and then what we can do.
So it kind of is an action to that.
And Apple bombs.
Autocracy Inc.
it gives us a much clearer view, kind of updates our view on that we're not just dealing with one autocrat, we're dealing with a worldwide network of autocrats.
I don't want to sound like the old James Bond chaos or uh any of other type of criminal organizations, but there's a parallel to it.
uh
you know, that's very concerning because it means they're more organized and more uh interdependent and self-supportive.
So those will be the two books that I would recommend to you.
Great.
And in general?
one.
uh Ruth Ben-Guyatt is a history professor at New York University.
She is the author of uh a book that I think came out within the past year called Strongmen,
It's from uh Mussolini to the present.
uh She does an excellent job with uh highlighting ah how this has developed over the years.
I've got.
was the name of it, just to reemphasize, was Strong Men, right?
Yes, strong men from Mussolini to the present.
General, I've got one last question and it's yours.
ah
listening to you and Jamie, ah the blowing up of these boats in the Caribbean appears or at least sounds to me like it's not a legal action.
who can file a lawsuit or who would have standing to challenge that in a lawsuit because somebody had to approve this.
I just can't imagine that it did not get run by some JAG officer somewhere ah that either ignored it.
or signed off on it or something.
ah So who would have standing to challenge this?
That's a very good question.
think the first people who would have standing would be the families of the people killed in the boats.
ah But that's filing an action against the United States is a long, costly process, and it's not very practical.
um In terms of other people, see, the thing is, to have standing, really have to show a harm.
Right.
it's going to be difficult.
This is why I think Congress really needs to look at it.
And this is why my colleagues in their op-ed that they filed yesterday on the Hill have said, Congress, please take a look at this.
uh Because it's really an issue of authorities between Congress and the executive.
uh So unfortunately, I'm not sure there's a judicial remedy involved here.
It certainly wouldn't be a good one.
mean, like I said, it's just the burden on some poor family in Venezuela.
And then the fact that they would, you know, might run into the thing, well, was your family member actually running drugs?
But I suppose that you could follow wrongful death action in Venezuela, get a judgment, but then I don't know how you'd be able to enforce that judgment in Venezuela.
Or whether you'd want to even try.
Because you might not come back.
and Jim, you've hit on one of the things that concerns me is, what is the accountability for this?
This seems unlawful.
The administration is not coming forth with evidence or a legal basis for the action.
uh And there doesn't, unless the Congress investigates it and has some kind of oversight,
to bring out accountability.
uh think it just not only remains unaccounted for, but it also can be repeated.
I'm sure it'll be repeated.
just, I don't, I don't trust what's going on.
This is why it's important for Congress to step in and examine this.
Because that's the counterbalance.
That may be a place for us to end on that too, is that that's what really needs to happen next.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
ah Major General Turley, thank you so much.
ah Jamie Barnett, ah thank you so much again.
It's good to see you.
ah But this has been great.
And we do want to maybe in a few months, maybe follow up again with you guys.
ah Jim, what do you got to close us out with?
ah The only thing I've got to close us out with is to those uh who viewing this and have enjoyed it, I hope that you've learned something.
That's the purpose of what we're doing is to try to educate people.
And when we're doing this, it costs money.
So if you've got a few extra bucks in your pocket, David can tell you.
where you can send them.
And David and I would be very appreciative because at this point, it's kind of David and I and a couple of other people that are sponsoring this.
So David, your, do your sick and tell them where to send the money.
Absolutely.
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