Empire Abroad, Autocracy at Home: Col. Wilkerson on the U.S.-Israel Attack on Iran

Former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, joins Paul Jay and condemns the Israeli attack on Iran as an unprovoked violation of international law—and a dangerous step toward full-scale regional war. Wilkerson argues that the U.S. is complicit, acting through Israel as a proxy.  Wilkerson analyzes the use of the military in L.A. and doesn’t mince words: the Empire is collapsing into autocracy and militarism, and the consequences could be catastrophic. TranscriptListenDonateSubscribeGuestMusic Paul JayHi, welcome to theAnalysis.news. I'm Paul Jay. In just a few seconds, we'll be back with Colonel Larry Wilkerson to discuss the Israeli attack on Iran.Prime Minister of Israel, Netanyahu, who says this is not an attack on the Iranian people. It's an attack on the Iranian regime. But in fact, it's exactly that, an attack on the Iranian people. The sovereignty of a country is not the sovereignty of a government. It's the sovereignty of the people, and it's the sovereignty of Iran that has been illegally attacked by every piece of the UN charter and international law, an unprovoked attack on the people's sovereignty.Now, I've been very critical over the years of the Iranian government. I'm not going to call it a regime. I don't know why it's more of a regime than most of the other governments or states that call themselves governments. My guest and I, Larry Wilkerson, who will be here in just a few seconds, we've both been very critical of the Iranian government and its repression of people and opposition movements in Iran. That has nothing to do with what's going on here. This is an out-and-out, unprovoked attack on Iran. We're going to talk about the reasons for that, but let me just add one other small thing, which we'll talk about. It's maybe not that small.Critiquing this Israeli attack is not anti-Semitism. In fact, this is just like the Cold War. When people condemned the Vietnam War, they were called communists. They're being soft on communists. Well, now, if you critique the crimes of the Israeli government, and now this unprovoked war, and of course, the genocide in Gaza, the bombings in Lebanon, now you're an anti-Semite. It's being thrown around just the way it was, the anti-communist rhetoric of the Cold War.Now, joining us to talk about this current conflict is Larry Wilkerson. Thanks for joining us, Larry.Col. Lawrence WilkersonGood to be with you, Paul. Long time.Paul JayFor people who don't know, Larry was the Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, both at the Joint Chiefs and at the State Department. So, let me start by asking you, Larry, what do you make of the way the media is covering this? I was a little surprised over the last year that there were at least some reports on how Gaza was being devastated. You saw quite a few pictures of the killing of children, and there was a glimmer of legitimate reporting for a while. Now, this is so one-sided. I watch CNN, and guest after guest is essentially from the Israeli government or the Israeli ambassador, and the fact that this is a complete violation of international law is not even mentioned.Col. Lawrence WilkersonWell, this is truly a disgusting display of the Empire's degradation and profound slippage from world leadership. There's no question about that. Not only have we violated international law, consistently, we have ignored even those or punished even those who didn't want to ignore it or were trying to do something about it, like South Africa and their application to the court with regard to the genocide in Gaza. I think it's appalling that we did a Yamamoto. We did a Pearl Harbor. We did a Saddam Hussein on Kuwait attack on Iran. We, not Israel, the United States of America, using Israel as its foremost in the frontline proxy, if you will, just like we're doing with Ukraine. We said, diplomacy was going to continue. We achieved tactical surprise, an enormous advantage for an Air Force attacking,