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Aug. 24, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:27
August 24, 2006, Thursday, Hour #3
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The Rush Limbaugh program on the EIB network.
Where's Rush?
Where's Rush?
Well uh unfortunately, unfortunately, uh he was uh he was accused of a disproportionate response to his enemies.
Uh so I'm the UN peacekeeping force that's uh that's been inserted instead while uh well while he pulls out.
Uh this is uh Mark Stein sitting in for Rush, uh trying in vain to be proportionate in a uh in a difficult world.
Uh Mark Stein here till uh for the rest of this hour, and then Walter Williams will be in tomorrow, and everyone loves uh Walter when he's filling in for Rush.
Uh I wanted to talk um about uh first of all I wanted to say something.
I said uh I used a word in a uh in a period context, and uh you know the way it is these days, you always have to go back and explain these things.
I dusted off a word from the Vietnam era and I referred uh to the gooks.
And the trouble is if you're a writer like uh like me and you write for the uh Chicago I write for the Chicago Sun-Times and National Review and all kinds of things.
And uh when you're typing, you you put these words in quote marks, and uh when you're on the air, you forget that sometimes uh people don't see the quote marks.
So I should say that I was uh using that word uh with period quote marks uh around it.
It's uh it's uh uh and basically these days uh uh unless you're uh John McCain and you have that special media immunity, uh then uh it's hard to get away with saying those words.
I had um I had uh I I was writing about the Second World War once, and I used the term Japs.
And uh again the uh the uh the newspaper uh that uh that piece appeared in received all these complaints and everything.
And I was I thought I was using it in a in a kind of uh archaic anachronistic context.
But you can't uh you can't be too careful uh these days.
So if anyone was offended, I apologize, and I will try to offend you in a more contemporary sense uh uh uh in the uh in the next uh in the course of the next hour.
Uh what's the other what's it uh well oh yeah, we Canadians, by the way, we get upset when people say Eskimos uh or Eskimos get upset because they like to be referred to as the inuate these days.
So whenever Americans uh talk about esquimos, then we get all upset.
And actually, uh we Canadians we get upset uh by Americans anyway, because you d you think so little of us, you don't even have a derogatory term for us.
It's uh pathetic, it's embarrassing.
Um uh even uh even Canucks is kind of benign.
It's not exactly cheese eating surrender monkeys, is it?
And we got plenty of those up in Canada too.
So I'd say uh anyway.
Doing my bit for world peace and harmony.
It's a multicultural world and we believe in insulting everybody uh in it.
It's like this survivor thing that Rush was talking about yesterday, where he was uh talking about the new racial survivor, racial survivor, where uh you're gonna have uh uh white folks and Hispanics and blacks and Asian Americans who are all going to be competing in racial teams.
It's like it's like South Africa, it's apartheid survivor.
It's amazing.
Uh but actually listening to people talking about whether we should get out of Iraq, I wonder if we shouldn't replace that with survivor instead.
We could have instead of the Jihad, let's have Jihad Survivor.
Uh let's let's all go to the Cook Islands and we'll have like uh we'll have a red state team, we'll have a blue state team, we'll have a Wahhabis team from Saudi Arabia, and we'll have a uh European team, and we can all slug it out on the uh uh on on the uh Cook Islands.
We can have the Europeans and the blue staters saying no, we need to address their uh root causes, and we can have the Wahhabists uh uh making uh improvising homemade suicide bombs with what they happen to find in the jungles.
And uh we'll see who wins uh we'll see who wins that one.
But uh unless you unless basically unless you're interested in playing Wahhabist survivor, uh the war is uh is the only way to win it uh and uh and winning it on that front is uh is gonna be tough and is gonna be hard.
Uh you know, I'm I make no bones about the fact that uh that I'm uh I'm a foreigner.
I belong to that uh very, very, very tiny, almost unmeasurable, scientifically undetectable demographic in America of legal immigrant.
Uh it's it's the uh smallest parade down Main Street these days.
You know, when they uh uh we uh when you um remember the thing when they were doing all the uh the undocumented crowd, the members, fine upstanding members of the undocumented American community were having their big demonstrations in the streets a couple of months ago, and there are millions of them in the streets of Los Angeles, and I said, we legal immigrants need to organize a counter-demonstration to this.
And so we did, and uh and there were Three of us, and uh maybe you saw it on the news.
It was uh it was a big uh it was a big thing for me.
Uh but uh but one thing you notice if you are uh if you do uh kind of watch uh look at America from a slightly external point of view from uh if you've come from elsewhere.
Uh you do notice the the the there are differences about it.
One of the things I value about this country uh is its constitution and in particular uh the first amendment and the second amendment, which I think are things that the rest of the so-called free world would benefit from.
Uh I love Australia, but there are some crazy stories down there.
There's a court case going on in the uh in Victoria in Melbourne, which is uh uh in the State of Victoria in Australia, the Court of Appeal there, in which two uh Christian pastors are trying to appeal their conviction uh uh uh under Victoria's religious hatred law, which found that they'd vilified Muslims.
And they're now appealing that case.
And uh the Muslim guys have hired this big shot QC, that means uh Queen's Council, in um in uh in Commonwealth countries.
It's a big it's the sort of equivalent of John E. Cochlin.
You know, it's as big as big a big shot as you can get.
And this big shot lawyer says uh if one vilifies Islam, his defense is uh if one vilifies Islam, one is by necessary consequence vilifying people who hold that religious belief.
In other words, you can't say anything about uh Islam, because to criticize Islam means criticizing Muslims, which is means you can be prosecuted, which is going on not just in Australia but in parts of Europe too.
Uh another uh big shot case in uh the United Kingdom, this crazy Imam was on trial for inciting murder.
And his big shot QC, Queen's Counsel, big shot lawyer, Edward Fitzgerald, his version, uh his defense was that uh it is said my client was preaching murder, but he was actually preaching from the Quran.
So if the Quran allows you to incite murder, uh then you've got to be allowed to get away with it.
It's like uh well, as great Johnny Cochran would have said, if the Quran permit, you must acquit.
And that's basically what uh these guys are arguing, that uh that the uh the that there is that Muslims, in effect now, are a protected category, not just on religious grounds, uh but also uh as uh their political project is projected too.
So I wish, you know, and I understand America is a very different superpower from previous superpowers, but I wish America did more to export its real values around the world.
You know, the uh President Bush talks in a wonderful way of spreading liberty around the world.
But I wish he could spread a bit more liberty even to parts of the world that are very nearby, like Canada and uh Australia, the United Kingdom, Western Europe, where people get prosecuted for things they could never be prosecuted for in the United States, where you don't have the First Amendment, where speech is very constrained,
and where uh governments that have absolutely no idea, no idea uh what to do about uh how to constrain their angry, alienated Muslim populations, instead find it easier to constrain the non-Muslim population uh for saying anything about them.
It is uh it is a uh distressing feature of uh of the world we live in, and I'd like to talk a bit about uh American values in this uh in this hour.
Um you know, the First Amendment is absolutely critical, I think, to America's sense of itself.
Uh we we complain, certainly on this show about the drive by media.
But the the the point about the New York Times and uh the Washington Post and all these guys is they're basically constrained and crippled by the this whole pathetic uh uh form of uh groupthink that they get into at America's useless journalism school, so that everyone in the media uh uh you know you've got diversity of gender, diversity of race, diversity of orientation, diversity, every kind of diversity except the only diversity that matters, which is diversity of thought.
Uh that's their problem.
But if they wanted to say anything, they could.
Uh so I'd like to talk uh about the importance of promoting real American values around the world, of using America's moment uh to promote uh real American values.
1-800-282-2882, uh Mark Stein sitting in on the Rush Limbaugh show, and Walter Williams uh will be uh will be here tomorrow.
Uh you know, diversity-wise, the rest of the world is uh is l really a very uh curious place.
I mean, they investigate everything.
You say anything and they investigate it.
Uh but it's interesting to me that they never want to investigate any of the really unpleasant things that are said by some of these crazy guys in their in their countries.
Uh Over in Sweden, they were investigating the Grand Mosque of Stockholm, which is like the uh the one-stop shop for all your jihad needs.
Uh you can buy uh cassettes at uh at the mosque encouraging you to become a martyr and to uh kill the brothers of pigs and apes, by which uh that's by the way, in quote marks too.
They mean Jews by that.
That's not uh please please uh Jewish listeners to the Rush Show.
That's that's in quote marks that phrase.
I don't want to uh uh I don't want to offend any uh any more uh minority groups uh today.
But uh so uh so somebody filed anyway uh uh a Swedish Jew filed a complaint about being described as a brother of pig and ape, and Sweden's Chancellor of Justice stepped in to investigate.
Uh but he decided to close down the investigation on the grounds that even though all this uh brothers of pigs and apes stuff is highly degrading, uh this kind of uh talk should be judged differently, he said, quote, and should be regarded as permissible because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that sus uh surrounds this conflict, unquote.
In other words, if you threaten to kill people often enough, uh it will be seen as your as part of your vibrant cultural tradition, and by uh definition, we're all we're all cool with that.
Celebrate diversity and so forth.
So what's happening in the rest of the world is that one side is allowed to get away uh with insulting and in fact threatening to kill and destroy the state, and the other side is having more and more, as this case in Australia shows, having more and more of its rights uh taken away.
So I would like uh this country to promote its real gift to the world, uh things like the First Amendment and also the second amendment, because it's uh it's a tragedy that the kind of intimidation that you see in Europe, uh in which people are uh people are uh basically uh uh prevented from defending themselves and from i i when they're when they're intimidated by Islamist groups in their neighborhood,
that doesn't happen in the United States because the Muslims in Europe who were celebrating on the night of September 11th, stopping cars in the streets in Yorkshire, England, and uh and demanding that people say Osama bin Laden is a great man.
If you tried to do that, even in the wimpiest state in America, even in Vermont, the guy would reach into his glove box, pull out his gun, and blow your head off.
And that that right to defense, that right to defend yourself, uh, is an important part.
So I would uh I believe America should promote real American values around the world.
Not just vague things like liberty, not just vague fluffy buzzwords, but specific things like the First Amendment and the Second Amendment.
This is Mark Stein, 1800-282-2882, sitting in for Rush at the Golden EIB microphone, and we will be back momentarily.
The Rush Limbaugh Show on the EIB network, 1-800-282-2882.
This is Mark Stein filling in for Rush, and Walter Williams uh will be here tomorrow.
Let's go to Susan in Connecticut, uh, ground zero for the uh epic struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party.
Susan, you're uh you're on the air.
Hi, Susan.
Hi.
I'm a Republican, and I find it really insulting that if you dispute the President and his Iraq war policy, whether you're a Democrat or whether you're a Republican and you are unpatriotic.
It's like so what is being said is that any citizen of any country should just follow the leader, no matter which way the leader is taking them even to self-destruction.
Isn't that that's a fascist attitude?
We live in a democratic society in the U.S. And it is underwritten by the U.S. Constitution.
We do not bow down to a king, and Congress and the Senate, which I wish they would take more power, can reign in the president if they do not feel that he's doing what's right.
And but the whole point is like when you said that there are foreign countries that suppress their people.
They can't say anything.
Well, yes, here in America, we do have freedom of speech, and I don't want to be considered unpatriotic.
My pe my family came over on a Mayflower.
My father's family came over and got off in Ellis Island, and he fought in World War II.
And he I lived in the house of a disabled World War II couple Heart War veterans.
Well, Sus Susan, Susan, let me uh let me put it to you like this.
Because you're right, I may not be getting America.
I don't uh I I you said uh you know countries where you have to bow down before a king I have to bow down before uh a queen uh which is uh that's not that's not another by the way that's not another minority I'm insulting today by the way.
Uh that's uh that's just a reference to Queen Elizabeth.
But the uh Susan Susan, let me put it to the to you like this.
What it the point is this it's not it's not the fact uh that you're uh anyone's preventing you from saying uh what you uh what you want to say.
No one is preventing anyone in America from what you're saying.
But the first amendment doesn't mean that people can just say stuff and not being called on it.
And the question is this if you don't agree with the Iraq war, what's your answer to it?
If you ask John Kerry, John Kerry campaigned in public on TV 247, uh for two years and he couldn't give a straight answer to what his policy on the Iraq war is.
Your guy, this N Ned Lamont guy in Connecticut he uh he no one g you can't get a sensible answer for him what his strategy for the Iraq war is.
So what do you want to happen in the Iraq if you disagree with the president on the Iraq war what do you want to happen in Iraq Susan?
Well first of all I think whether we're there or not we're we're still gonna have Islam extremists here in America maybe hidden in you know uh super cell maybe and we're gonna have them all over the world they're still gonna try to kill us whether we're there or not and I think that if we pulled out it's like General Eisenhower pulled out out the US from Korea.
And we didn't win that war.
No, and North Korea's now a nuclear power.
North Korea is now a nuclear power Susan.
There are consequences to not winning wars.
Oh I understand that but I don't even understand whether we're in a war or a police action anymore.
Well the uh a war becomes a police action.
You topple the government and you're then there to stabilize the country.
But let's go back to that Korean thing because the reality of the situation is that America thought it could afford to lose that war well not lose that war, but it thought it could afford to end that war inconclusively fifty years ago.
So half a century on you now have a nutty guy in what is basically a one man psychostate who uh on July the fourth celebrated July the fourth by firing a missile at Hawaii.
Now he didn't reach Hawaii his missile basically uh more or less just cleared the perimeter fence and then uh you know fell to the ground.
But that's the point.
He's a crazy guy with nuclear weapons and he's not very good at it.
Uh so next time he might aim for Hawaii uh and uh and he might hit New Delhi or he might hit Athens or he might hit San Diego.
Nobody knows he's a nuclear he's a crazy guy with nukes he's not like uh the Soviet Union he's not like China he's not like the United States not like Britain he's not like France he's a nuclear power who's not very good at it.
And that's one of the consequences from the inconclusive end uh to the Korean war.
And anyone who thinks uh that this that the issues arising from the Iraq war are going to get any easier over the decades by letting it be perceived as yet another American defeat our in for uh on for a big shock.
Thanks for your thanks for your call, Susan uh and uh good luck making sense of the ballot in uh in Connecticut this November.
I gather Joe Lieberman is way way he's on it but he's way way down in the basement.
We'll see whether enough people find him.
Uh let's go to Mark in uh Georgetown South Carolina.
Mark you're on the air.
Hello Mark hey I've long admired your uh work in National Review.
Thanks very much.
Um it's I recollect the Ottomans ruled Iraq as three states and uh that Britain had difficulty ruling Iraq as one entity when uh they were involved um I wonder if it was a mistake to uh to try the British method and I wonder if it would have been an easier thing to manage uh if we had just allowed it to separate into three entities.
Yeah that's that's right.
Iraq was basically uh ruled as three provinces by the Ottoman Empire and uh you're right I think I think there's a lot to be said for that.
But I would say that if you read the Iraqi constitution, you know we were talking earlier uh that Iraq is like a uh is like a divorce it's uh it's like a uh it's like a bad marriage and try to get out of a bad marriage.
Uh in fact if you read that Iraqi constitution the ingenious thing about it is that those guys wrote it as a kind of prenup.
In other words, they're get they're gonna try and make it work.
They're gonna try and make that constitution work.
But that if uh if it doesn't then it it provides for a kind of dissolution.
You'd have a Kurdish state in the north, a Shia state in the south, and then this sort of festering Sunni mess uh in the middle.
And who knows, it may yet come to that.
But I don't think that would necessarily be uh something that would not be in America's uh interest mark.
Well, it strikes me that uh we might be able to focus more on the troublesome Sunni area.
Uh there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of trouble in uh the north, and it appears that the Shias are well in control of the South.
Um it seems like it might we might be home if we had uh started out with that objective.
Yep, that's uh that's a good idea, uh Mark, uh and uh it may yet come to that.
This is the EIB network, the Rush Limbaugh Show, Mark Stein, more in a moment.
The Rush Limbaugh program.
This is Mark Stein at the EIB Golden Microphone.
1800-282-2882, or go to Rush Limbaugh.com.
You know, uh a couple of people have said uh I don't sound uh quite uh the way they imagine me to sound when they were reading me in print in the Chicago Sun Times or whatever.
If you go to Rush Limbaugh.com, you'll find a photograph of me and you'll see I don't look uh anything uh like I read or sound uh either.
I think actually that one uh think it's taken from a TV show.
It seems rather wider.
My face seems rather wider than than I think of it, but perhaps I'm just deluding myself there.
Uh we've been talking um talking uh uh about strategy ahead in the war on terror and the wider issues it raises.
Uh Mark from South Carolina was talking about how maybe we should just divide do what the Ottomans did and divide Iraq three ways.
Uh the uh the uh Ottomans had it in three provinces uh which they called Vilayets, and uh when I was talking to Mark, I was struggling I was trying to find the word for the what the Ottomans call their administrative units.
And I knew it and I just couldn't.
It was on the tip of my tongue, Vilayet, Vilayet.
Uh you wait twenty years to have the opportunity to bring up the word vilayet in conversation.
And then it happens and you blow it.
It's uh it was on the tip of my tongue I couldn't.
But they had they ran what is now present day Iraq as three separate provinces called Vilayets.
That's what the Ottomans come.
When it when we're living in the Islamic States of America, Connecticut will be a Vilayet and uh Delaware will be a Villayette.
So you m you might want to start practicing the uh the lingo now.
Uh let's go to another Mark.
We're only taking calls from Marx today.
It's uh it's an all-mark show uh on the Rush Limbaugh Show, because this is Mark Stein uh filling in for Rush, so we're we're just taking calls from Mark.
We had Mark from South Carolina.
Uh we've got Mark from Richmond, Virginia.
Mark, you're next on the All Mark Hour on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
And we just call everybody Mark to keep it straight.
That's uh that's well, your name is Mark.
You didn't you're not trying to fake getting on the air by pretending to be Mark, are you?
Am I speaking to the Mark that's the uh the one-man global content provider?
That's that's me.
I'm an authentic Mark, and I hope you are too, Mark.
Excellent.
Okay.
It's great speaking with you.
Yeah, I enjoyed my copy of Face of the Tiger very much.
Okay, that's a great that's a great book if I do say so myself, uh which I do mainly 'cause not many other people do.
But of course, like everybody else, I enjoy reading your your uh your writings in all the different publications and and was following you tour in Australia and your uh your interview on the uh Australian ABC.
Right.
That's that's not like the Rush Limbaugh show.
The ABC the ABC makes uh makes uh PBS look very stiff-spined, I think.
Well, I was very interested in your uh in not only the im uh the interview you did on that on one of those shows, but you were talking about uh the the whole uh the the things that the left are concerned about that are that really mean nothing at this point, like uh global warming when uh they really should be looking at the population demographics in places like Europe and uh what things are gonna look like in twenty years.
And I I'm wondering if you might want to expound on that.
Well well I I would actually, Mark, because I find the the amazing thing is that even if you believe a lot of this uh global warming thing, if you look at the so-called l level of sea water rise, uh that threatens the Maldives islands, at the present level of sea level increase, that means the Maldives will be underwater in the year twenty-five hundred.
Twenty-five hundred.
So if you come out of Al Gore's movie, anxious to save the planet, you're talking about putting in a plan for something that's gonna kick in around the year twenty-five hundred.
And uh the Moldive Islands is like a it's a fantastic tourist destination, I would recommend it to anyone.
Lovely place uh in the Indian Ocean.
It has a population of three hundred and fifty thousand people.
And if it's true that they're all gonna be underwater in the year twenty five hundred, uh then we should just really move them.
I think we should have a plan to move them in the year twenty five hundred to the south of France, because those three hundred and fifty thousand people are Sunni Muslims.
And being Sunni Muslims, by that stage they'll fit right in in the south of France, because everybody in the south of France is going to be Sunni Muslims.
And uh the left has this way of basically focusing, it would rather focus on theoretical issues uh like uh like uh global warming that offer opportunities for self-loathing, because uh much of the Western world is invested in the idea that we're the problem, we're the problem.
You know, why do people go on about global warming?
Uh in the old nobody went on about global war.
If you were living in Poland in the 1930s, you weren't bothered about global warming.
Uh you because you were living between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich.
You were living between uh you were living between serious powers that wanted to take over your country.
Uh and the reason people go on about global warming now is precisely because America is the most benign superpower in history.
It doesn't want to take over anybody.
The minute it lands in Iraq, it can't wait to devise an exit.
So no, we've been there twenty minutes, we need an exit strategy.
America is the most benign superpower in history, it doesn't want to take over anywhere.
And so they've had to, in a sense, they've had to invent this idea that because American armies aren't a threat to the planet, they've had to invent this idea that the American consumer is a threat to the planet.
That simply that simply by cons drinking too many Cokes and eating too many cheeseburgers, he's producing this great kind of cheeseburger uh uh uh CO2 emissions that are burst a hole in the ozone layer and now threaten it's it's in the old days, in the old days it was uh countries, superpowers armies that threaten the planet.
Uh but because America is such a benign superpower, we've had to invent this thing that it's just American beverages, American automobiles that are a threat to the planet.
And that in itself tells you what a lot of phony baloney rubbish uh this is.
Uh let's go to Frank in uh Tampa, Florida.
Frank, you're on the uh Rush Limbaugh program.
What do you got to say?
I want to know how we can possibly expect to win in Iraq when we have a president that does not know the difference between a strategy and an objective.
When he in his press conference the other day, he was asked what what is our strategy?
And he said a strategy is to stand up a democratic government that can defend itself.
Well, that's not a strategy, that's an objective.
The strategy going in there was was to we're at the top of the Saddam Hussein government through a uh massive Burzkrieg movement up into Baghdad.
We achieved that objective.
Now the objective is to build uh stable, peaceful government which has never existed in that in that region.
And and and our strategy has not changed in order to achieve that objective.
When we went into Kuwait, we went in with half a million troops.
And that was just to kick Saddam out of Kuwait.
Now we're occupying uh an entire nation and trying to build a government with a hundred and fifty 150,000?
Tell me how that math works.
Well, you've got to well, you to add to that math, you've got to add the the quarter million strong uh Iraqi forces that are on the ground now.
But you're right.
You're right to uh you're right to this extent uh that you have to know what your objectives are and what your and what your strategy is.
But they are related to to this degree.
Uh Gochok Tong, the Prime Minister of Singapore, he was in Washington last year, and he said that the key issue, the key issue in all this, uh, you know, the Iraq war, if you live in Iraq, the outcome of the Iraq war is a matter of concern for uh Iraqis.
It's what happens to Iraq that uh that matters.
But if you live anywhere in the rest of the world, it's what happens the the uh global interest in Iraq is what happens to America.
In other words, if you live in Iraq, Iraq's the issue.
But if you live anywhere else on the planet, America is the issue.
Does America emerge from this stronger, or does America emerge from this looking like a weakened pathetic uh effete, pampered little not a sleeping giant, but uh uh as uh Admiral Yamamoto said, but a sort of fleshy, corpulent giant that can no longer uh rouse himself.
Now I d I have no problems with Iraq.
I think the Iraqi people are doing fine.
They're doing just great given all the things they've had to endure.
And they'll be okay.
They won't be like New Hampshire.
Uh they won't be uh even uh like Vermont, but they will be in a good enough condition and better than what they were.
And uh and uh although I take your point uh about uh about the effectiveness of the strategy, and I take the criticism too that this idea of building a free society in a part of the world where no one's ever known one is uh at the very best a long shot.
But sometimes history calls upon you uh to have a go at the long shots.
You look at the map of the world, you look at the map of the world, the you the great European powers in the heyday of imperialism, the French, uh the Dutch, uh the Spanish, they sailed out all over the world.
They basically colonized Africa, they colonized the Indian subcontinent, they colonized out to the Pacific and Australia, they colonized the Americas.
And the one place those European powers avoided uh was the Middle East, because they knew then that it was a hard nut to crack, a hard nut to crack.
But sometimes you don't have any choice of the matter, because it's a dysfunctional part of the world that im that exports its dysfunctions.
And uh in in days when uh in an age when anyone with a couple of hundred dollars and a coach class air ticket, uh the dysfunctional parts of the world can be standing outside your front door in uh in in just nine hours.
And that's basically what happened on September eleventh.
So just because it's tough is uh is no reason uh is no reason not to uh not to do it.
Uh but uh I agree, uh Frank, that uh, you know, in a sense we have to be realistic about our aims.
We have to have a bottom line uh solution.
We have to say, okay, it may not work out.
May not work out building liberty, uh a free society in a part of the world that's never known it.
But even if it doesn't work out, it's still the right thing to do because it's it it is in accord with American values.
If you go in there and just say we're gonna put up another Mubarak or another house of Saud, that's not in accord uh with uh with uh American values.
And the fact of the matter is that uh America gave uh gives billions of dollars a year to uh Mubarak in Egypt, and what does it get for that?
It gets uh uh Mohammed Atta flying through your office window on a Tuesday morning.
So that wasn't such a grand strategy either.
Uh this is Mark Stein on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
More of your calls up and coming, one-eight hundred-282-2882.
Stay tuned, back for more in just a moment.
The Rush Slimbore program, Mark Stein sitting in for Rush, one-eight hundred-282-2882.
Uh I'm I mentioned at the uh top of the hour that uh Canada had such a pitiful standing in the United States that Americans hadn't even bothered to invent a derogatory term for Canadians.
Uh Mark McMahswain emailed me from Texas to say I was wrong, and in fact the derogatory term for a Canadian is a Canadian.
Well, there we are.
Uh Dawn from uh Virginia Beach is on the uh is on the line.
Don, you're on the air on the Rush Limbaugh program.
Thank you.
I wanted to respond to that last caller who accused George Bush of not knowing the difference between a strategy and an objective.
The problem here is that most Americans don't understand what the objectives are.
Most Americans don't know how to read a map, don't bother to look at a map, and they don't try to figure out for themselves what's really going on.
If you look at a map of the Middle East, Iraq and the area around it.
Iraq touches a lot of countries that we have problems with.
Now the real country we need to deal with is Iran.
But we don't want to attack Iran because there's our mountains.
And I don't see us bombing them into oblivion.
So we need to do something about Iran.
So the question is, what do you do?
Well, there's a large young population in Iran, and they are the future of that country, and they're Shia.
There's a large Shia Muslim population in Iraq.
So what we do is we set up in Iraq a government that is Muslim but also pro-Western.
And we show these people, you know, you can have movies and mullet.
You can have a and you can have all of the nice things we have in the West.
And so the Shias in Iraq realize that, you know, the Americans aren't such bad people.
They got Saddam off our neck, they made the water run and the electricity flow, and then they left.
And they're not such bad people.
And the young Iranian Shia Muslims interact with the Shia Muslims in Iraq, and eventually the Muslims, the young people in Iran get what they want, which is more freedom, more democracy, the nice things that we have in the West, but they can also keep being Muslims.
Now hopefully that will take care of the Iranian government without us having to go in there and millions of people died.
I I think you're right that that was the strategy, that the uh the the entire region was dysfunctional.
Where do you prick the bubble uh in the Middle East and make something happen?
And as you say, if you look at Iraq, it's absolutely uh it's absolutely central.
It's the great demonstration to have of what you can do to other problematic states, not just Iran as you talked about there, but also to Saudi Arabia and Syria and even Jordan, which has been uh learning from I Iraq.
Uh I would say that in a sense that is still a great strategy.
But the fact of the matter is that there has been subversion of uh of Iraq's borders by uh by the Iranians and the Syrians, and we need to return a little of that to them.
We need to.
If if uh Syria doesn't respect Iraq's borders, there's no reason why uh why uh coalition forces in Iraq should respect uh Syria's borders.
But you're absolutely right that that is the point at which you prick the Middle East bubble and make something happen.
Uh Dan from uh Orman Beach in Florida.
Dan, you're on the air on the Rush Limbaugh show.
Yes, sir.
Thank you very much for taking my call.
Uh I just wanted to maybe uh get your perspective uh regarding my opinion with the situation in Iraq.
It seems to me that uh I I wonder, I often wonder to myself how ultimately we're going to be successful in our endeavor there when we have a political system that is divided as such.
We've got a Democratic Party in the media uh that actively seeks to undermine our endeavor in any way possible.
And uh ultimately uh you know that's part of the reason I listen to Rush often is because of his optimism, and to be quite frank, you know, I I I f I feel like that uh you know it's it's hard to find things that are optimistic regarding that.
Um it goes back to the you know a house that is divided is is we are.
It seems uh hard um to ultimately be successful in our endeavor there.
I I just I think I think that's uh that's right, Dan.
I think there's a difference between previous wars, that if you there's always been an element that wants to demoralize uh and wants to talk down a nation.
The difference now is that it's amplified hugely uh throughout uh the drive-by media, uh by Hollywood, by all these pop stars, uh making essentially uh taking a defeatist position.
But I do not believe that the American people are on the side of uh of defeatism.
And I do believe that Russia's right, uh that the optimistic way is the right way.
This is this country is the most powerful country on the face of the planet.
All it needs to win is to muster a uh a kind of psychological attitude uh that is uh that that matches that power.
Uh and I I think if uh y it should be no surprise that the president's numbers are down.
Wars are always unpopular, and especially if you uh if you have the constant drumbeat that we can't do it, we can't do it, we can't do it.
America is responsible for forty percent of all military spending on the planet.
So whatever is going on in Iraq, uh it's is has less to do uh with the capabilities of the US military uh than than with than with the broader uh kind of cultural force behind it.
You have to wage total war, which it means you have to uh enlist on the informational front, uh on the media front, and fight the battles there too.
That's absolutely critical.
Uh thanks very much for your call, Dan.
We will be back with more on the Rush Limbaugh show in just a moment.
1-800-282-2882.
The Rush Limbaugh program, and this is Mark Stein at the Golden EIB microphone.
Do you see that thing uh a few months ago, this uh this fellow that stopped at the Mexican border trying to get back into America, he'd been working as a gardener at the White House, and uh they said, no, no way, there was no security risk.
He had all these photographs in his pocket of him with his arm around Dick Cheney uh holding severe sharp garden implements in one hand and around uh and around Bill Clinton holding more severe implements in his habits.
Another way it's no security risk.
And I thought that was great.
You can slip across the border and be working at the White House.
But to be able to slip across the border and uh and to find yourself hosting the Rush Limbaugh uh program.
What a terrific country.
There is nothing that America uh uh ca you can't do in America.
You know that old line, how do you get to uh Carnegie Hall practice?
I didn't even have to practice.
It's m it's amazing.
Uh been a great uh opportunity for me, great uh thrill for me.
And uh I must say I've been uh a huge fan of uh Russia's for years.
He's been the indispensable man in American conservatism uh for for uh for these last uh eighteen years now, and it's terrific uh to be here uh to be here sitting in for him.
But all good things sadly, all good things uh must come to an end, and uh evidently somebody called in a tip and the border patrol's waiting at the door, and uh and so I gotta I gotta run.
And uh and for once I uh I mean that literally.
Thanks, uh, thanks for being with us on the EID network.
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