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Nov. 30, 2006 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:11
November 30, 2006, Thursday, Hour #2
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Okay, we are back.
Broadcast Excellence resumes from the Limboy Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies.
By the way, a special welcome to all of you watching the program today on the Dittocam at rushlimbaugh.com.
Telephone number, if you'd like to join us, 800-282-2882.
And the email address is rush at EIBnet.com.
U.S. officials indeed say that they have found smoking gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq.
Now, folks, by the way, I am not going to say any more about whatever is in the Iraq Study Group report until it comes out.
I mean, my first instinct when I read this was, yeah, and we're supposed to sit down and talk to the Iranians.
And that's what the Baker Group wants us to do.
Sit down and talk to the Iranians and talk to the Syrians and so forth.
And it all fits my theory that we are refusing to recognize the enemy, who they are, what they stand for.
But I don't know.
We're so close now.
When's it supposed to come out?
Tomorrow?
The Iraq Study Group report, first week in December, December 5th, December 6th.
All right, so it's going to be next week.
The leaks are out there and they're just leaks.
Let's wait till the whole thing comes out and see what it actually says.
But beyond that, here we have Iranian weapons arming the Iraqi militia.
This is not the first time we've heard this.
The second time, or the first time was, the fact that these roadside bombs, the IEDs, as they are called, were being mass-produced in Iran.
And to me, there's been very little doubt who's fomenting all this, or at least participating in it.
And then you've got the Hezboz and their supreme leader, the glorious Hassan Nasrallah, calling for a massive, peaceful protest against the Lebanese government tomorrow.
When Hassan Nasrallah calls for any kind of a protest, peaceful is the last thing you should expect to happen.
And then you have the Syrians and all being involved.
The only problem I have with this report, and it's not that it's with ABC News, this report that Iran is smuggling weapons to Iraq comes from us.
It comes from our side.
It comes from the U.S. military.
And Iran, of course, denies this.
Can we really believe our side?
This is a tough question for moderates.
A tough question for moderates and liberals and Democrats as well.
When we hear news that the Iranians are smuggling weapons into Iraq to the Shia militias there, can we believe it?
Or is this just more U.S. propaganda?
This is the way liberals think.
This is the way Democrats think.
Oh, Bush is behind this.
Put this news out just to make Iran look bad.
But the Iranians, Mahmoud, is denying it.
And of course, Mahmoud sent this glorious letter in in which he's advocating a number of things.
What he's really advocating, I've read some analyses of this from people who have studied Islam.
One of them is Amir Tahari, and we have quoted his columns frequently on this program.
And I'm not going to read his whole piece to you, but the summation is that this letter and others that Mahmoud has written are actually official religious warnings.
And if you read between the lines of the letter, it says, get out of Iraq, abandon your support for Israel, or you die.
And that is the message in the letter from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and he's doing it because this is part of what he thinks his role is as a central player in the future coming of the 12th Imam.
And people who study this religion and have become scholars in it say, you know, people are making the mistake of laughing at this letter and looking at who does he think he is writing letters to Democrats and Republicans and President Bush and telling us to do this.
And it's easy to write the guy off as a crackpot, easy to write him off as somebody seeking PR on the world stage.
But in fact, this is a mission that he is on, and this letter is part of the mission.
This is what, as I say, scholarly analysts of this religion are pointing out.
And he's doing it, you know, not really so that he'll be taken seriously.
I don't think he thinks he will be taken seriously.
He's doing this to fulfill a role he thinks he has been given.
This letter essentially is the way he is being faithful to Allah.
And regardless, if the infidels don't get it, it's their problem.
He's not doing this to persuade anybody.
He's doing this as an article of faith, almost a commandment, if you will, according to the tenets of his religion.
So we'll see.
I just believe, folks, that people don't want to face the enemy, don't want to take it seriously, don't want to admit the threat.
We have Colin Powell.
Let me get that story rather than paraphrase this, because it really, here it is.
Here's the headline.
Where did this run?
This ran the Hindustan Times in India.
The Hindustan Times.
And the headline, U.S. should open up to Arabs and Muslims, says Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, said on Wednesday that President George W. Bush could fight terrorism better by reaching out to Arabs and Muslims.
We are conveying a bad message that America does not welcome you, particularly Arabs and Muslims.
Powell told a business forum in the United Arab Emirates.
This is where we all seem to go.
Clinton goes over there and lauds these people with praise and tells them that it's his own country's fault.
Now Colin Powell is doing it.
The greatest weapon against terrorism for America is to open up for the rest of the world.
Arabs and Muslims have criticized U.S. policies as biased towards Israel.
There was also something that happened here while I was gone.
Apparently, Newt Gingrich spoke somewhere, and the New York Sun reported that Gingrich said that, you know what we've got to do here?
We've got to cancel certain elements of free speech in fighting the war on terrorism.
He didn't actually say it that way, but it was reported that way.
And a whole big bugaboo of debate sprung up.
Oh, my God, Newt saying, suspend the First Movement.
We already have folks that call McCain Feingold.
What's anybody so upset about?
McCain Feingold was a direct swipe at the First Amendment, and the Supreme Court sanctioned it, gave a stamp of approval.
So I don't want to hear any bellyaching about, you can't trample on the First Amendment.
McCain did it.
Feingold did it.
Nobody stopped him.
So we've already got freedom of speech limited in politics, which is what the First Amendment was specifically written to refer to.
In campaigns, we are limiting what and who can say what when.
It's absurd.
Anyway, Newt didn't say it quite that way.
But the point is that what Colin Powell is essentially saying here is that if they just knew us better, if we would just open up, my God, folks, the British have opened up and people still aren't aware of what is happening there as Sharia law is being established in their court system over there.
They still don't get it.
The French have opened up.
The Spanish have opened up.
What the hell are people like Colin Powell missing?
We have opened up.
We just elected the first Muslim member of Congress from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, who, by the way, says that he's not going to take the oath of office on the Bible.
He's going to take the oath of office on the Quran.
Well, we've seen this happen in courts, the attempt, rather, for Muslim defendants to take the oath on the Koran.
We have opened up.
We've opened ourselves up wide.
People that work in radio have been fired for saying things that are offensive to Muslim groups.
But we need to open up.
It's like saying, you know, there's an old tenet, T-E-N-E-T out there.
And some people believe that the antidote to extreme speech or hateful speech or offensive speech is more speech.
Now, in a certain set of circumstances, I would totally support that.
But if you have people swearing your extermination, if you have people urging your destruction and so forth, in a way that's a call to arms, that is a direct threat, to ignore it and simply call it speech is to miss the point.
You can open up and you can oppose it all you want.
Somebody says, I target you for destruction.
Your way of life is doomed, and I'm going to see to it.
I can start responding with all the words in the world, but all the words in the world are not going to stop their bombs or their missiles or their hijacked airplanes.
And so there is certain kind of speech, and there are legal precedents.
We have limits on speech.
Can't yell fire in a crowded theater, this kind of thing.
I sense overall in the country a reluctance to accept what we face.
And I think the election, quite frankly, was just one of many indications of that.
But here's former Secretary Powell exhibiting all kinds of hubris and arrogance, acting like he hasn't had a critical role in U.S. foreign policy from Reagan to Bush 43.
He's had a central role in many positions in the United States government, and there he is over in the United Arab Emirates talking about how the U.S. has to do this or has to do that to open up in the war on terror as though he's had no role in it himself.
It's like Clinton and the boys complaining about health care.
They had eight years to fix it.
They didn't do it.
Because their way of fixing it would have made it even worse.
I don't know.
Hard for me to imagine a former Secretary of State going to an Arab country complaining about his country and the administration that he served complaining about George W. Bush.
It sounds like Bill Clinton and it sounds like Jimmy Carter.
It plays into all these false stereotypes of the administration and the American people.
And you can't escape the conclusion as far as Secretary Powell is concerned or Bill Clinton is concerned or Jimmy Carter.
It's all about themselves.
They're doing this for their legacies and they're doing this in the middle of a war.
You know, they all share the same world view that we are in decline, that we cannot win, that we have to kowtow to stop the war.
And more and more, they're sounding like they consider themselves citizens of the world rather than Americans.
I don't hear these people talking about American exceptionalism.
I don't hear Colin Powell talking about it.
I don't hear Jimmy Carter talking about it.
I don't hear Bill Clinton talk.
I don't hear Hillary Clinton talk.
I never hear Hillary Clinton talk about America.
Chuck Schumer out there saying Reaganism is dead.
Stand by, Senator.
If you think Reaganism is dead, you have got a lot to learn.
You have another thing coming because American exceptionalism is not dead.
The belief in it is not dead, nor are any of the tenets of Reagan conservatism.
And if you want to tell yourself that those things are dead, stand by because you're going to get the shock of your life down the road in future years.
But it really is disconcerting, all of these former high-level government people running around ripping their own country, ripping the American people on the soil of what many think is our enemy.
United Arab Emirates might not qualify directly, but they go over to the Middle East, is my point.
They're right in the backyard.
And then they're praised.
They're praised by the drive-by media.
The drive-by media loves them, and that's who they're playing to.
They're playing to the world media, the world moderates, world independents, world liberals, because they want to be thought of as brilliant and compassionate, and they want to join the club of elites.
They win international prizes, and they make a fortune doing all this.
And they're motivated by personal aggrandizement.
Whether they the praise they seek from these organizations and countries and the money they make as well is a sidelight, this personal aggrandizement that they want.
Look, if you are anti-Israel, the world will embrace you.
And if you put down your own country's policies in the middle of a war, the world will love you, as will the media.
And this is why this is being done.
And to me, it's reprehensible.
Quick timeout.
We'll be back.
Your phone calls next after this.
Your guiding light.
Period.
Rush Limbaugh and the EIB network to Emery, Utah, and Patrick.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush.
Great to talk to you.
Thank you, sir.
Been listening to you since 1990, and I was back in the Air Force.
Hey, I wanted to make a point about these EMOMs, what they did up in Minneapolis.
I think part of it was reconnaissance.
You know, the way they positioned themselves around the plane, but why did they ask for those seatbelt extensions?
And then they didn't use them.
They set them on the floor in front of them.
You know, these people don't do things without a reason.
They have a reason for everything, David.
Yeah, it could have been that.
Could have been recon, could have been a stunt.
But, I mean, if it was recon, what would be the purpose of the recon?
Just see how it would be reacted to by passengers to see if enough time has gone by that nobody would care anymore?
Well, what was the purpose?
Exactly.
Well, I think they learned a lesson.
And that's why the air marshals are begging people, don't kowtow to this political correctness and so forth.
You see something that looks suspicious, you have to tell us.
That's right.
And I think the American media has been criminally negligent in informing the American people what these people are about and what they're going to do because they'll tell you.
And that's financially.
Yeah, journalistic malpractice is happening all over the place.
It's rampant.
These people are so obsessed.
It's gotten to the point now where it's almost laughable to watch them every day try to secure.
They're in an argument now.
They actually are in an argument over whether or not Iraq is in a civil war.
And of course, NBC News has the guts to go first and claim Iraq is a civil war.
Yip, yip, yip, yip, yahoo!
Who gives?
Censorship, censorship.
Who cares?
And now the other networks, well, we don't think it is a civil war yet.
We haven't put that up there because of X, Y.
It's just pettically absurd.
They're trying to do everything they can to destroy and secure defeat for this country.
Nothing would be happier.
They're doing it for a number of reasons.
One, to show themselves they still have the power of Walter Cronkite to do it.
And number two, they're doing it on the merits.
We are a guilty nation, folks.
We need our comeuppance.
Mike in Kansas City, you're next on the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rush.
Regarding the fear factor, they don't fear us anymore.
If you're China and North Korea, why wouldn't you just go back and take Formosa and South Korea?
Because the dust will settle.
And I just don't believe we would do anything about it.
I wouldn't want to be in Taiwan's shoes depending on us.
You wouldn't want to be in Taiwan.
Well, you know, he's bouncing off something I said earlier that the enemy needs to fear us and that they are laughing at us.
I think when you talk about China and Taiwan, these nations are sitting around and assessing what is necessary to do.
They don't right now have to launch military incursions to get what they want.
The North Koreans are fledgling around with their nuke situation.
We haven't made any effort to stop anybody from doing anything other than in Iraq and the war on terror.
And as far as Formosa, you know, it's going to be interesting.
We have a treaty that says if the Chinese make a move to recapture Formosa, that we will defend the island.
I do think, however, that with George W. Bush in the White House, there is reservation in all of these capitals.
I think there is fear.
He is the one guy that doesn't back down from them, the one guy that doesn't reduce the temperature of his language, doesn't moderate his tone.
Why do you think the Al-Qaeda people and Ahmedinejad were ecstatic that the Democrats won Congress and won the Senate?
And why are they hopeful a Democrat will win the White House in 08?
I mean, they know clearly the difference between the two parties, and they clearly know the difference between Bush and the current crop of Democrats out there.
So I think there's still some lingering fear.
We do have the means to project power all over the world.
We haven't used it.
We've been fighting the smallest footprint war possible in Iraq.
We've been doing everything we can not to do what you have to do to win wars.
Because we have strived here to establish a democracy and a functioning government prior to winning the war.
People are arguing now over which should have come first.
But there's always going to be a lingering doubt in these leaders, these world capitals, over if they go too far, what hell will they unleash upon themselves?
Because they do know that the American people will respond to leadership, and they do know that if they go too far, that at some point we are going to stand up and defend ourselves, and that's when they know that they're going to be in trouble.
So they're trying to get as much done without having to go that route as possible.
Back in just a sec.
Stay with us.
Making the complex understandable with talent on lawn from God.
And back to the phones.
People have been patiently waiting, and I want to reward that patience.
This is Sean in Orlando.
Nice to have you with us.
Rush, your hope has given me hope.
How so, sir?
Well, if embryonic stem cells can grow back the little ears, the little hairs in your ears, then maybe they can grow back the hairs on my head.
And to me, that is worth the death of a thousand bases.
See, there is no evidence yet that any of that is possible.
But to me, that's irrelevant.
Harry Reid says that the Democrats in the Senate are going to have their three big agenda items, ethics reform, minimum wage being raised, and stem cell research, embryonic stem cell research.
And I was just, you know, I've been trying to secure a meeting with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, and they've refused my entreaties.
I want to talk to them about the future of the country, the future of conservatism, the future of talk radio now that they're in charge, get their thoughts, get their ideas, so we can all work together.
And I have learned about all this.
It's not that your hair may grow back.
And it's not that my hearing might return.
It's about hope.
It's about hope.
And embryonic stem cell research is not about results.
It's about hope.
People have hope, and we can't trample on that hope.
Even if it means killing babies in the womb, it is worth it so that people don't lose hope, ladies and gentlemen.
I have seen the light on this.
Look at the right to hear is a guaranteed right.
It is right there in the Constitution.
If you read the Constitution as a living, breathing document, it is right there in the First Amendment, the right to free expression.
I can't fully enjoy somebody else's right to free speech if I can't hear them.
I therefore have a right in the Constitution and the First Amendment to hear.
And that right has been infringed upon.
And I have hope that that right will be restored to me.
And the Democrats are the ones that are standing by and promoting my hope.
And I just want to acknowledge this.
The right to hear is a universal human right, recognized by the United Nations even.
I have looked this up.
I have even international law on my side.
So if I have civil rights, constitutional rights, and human rights to hear, how can they be denied so that those who don't have rights, the unborn, are protected?
There's something out of whack here.
And I'm simply trying to say that I support Dingy Harry in making sure that people and their hope is not destroyed.
It's not that complicated, folks.
Jim in Toronto, in Canada, welcome to the EIB network.
Hello.
Hi, Rasha.
It's a great honor.
Just a comment regarding the leader of Iraq.
Wasn't he, he escaped the death penalty under Saddam Hussein, and didn't Iran and Syria give him refuge?
And what I don't understand, why would his loyalties be to the United States?
I mean, if these countries, in fact, gave him protection, wouldn't it tell you that his loyalties would go there?
What are you referring to?
You're talking about Maliki, I know, but what specifically are you referring to?
Well, apparently he escaped the death penalty under Saddam Hussein, and apparently Iran and Syria had gave him protection.
He lived there for quite a while.
And so now he's the leader of Iraq.
So wouldn't he, you know, wouldn't his loyalties sort of still sway towards Syria and Iran, not the United States, even though he's not.
Oh, I see.
Why are we trusting a guy whose life was saved by Iran and Syria?
Exactly.
Well, that's a great question.
I addressed this at the beginning of the program in the form of discussing this Stephen Hadley memo to President Bush that somehow ended up in the New York Times.
I read that memo, and I think that that memo was leaked on, it was written to be leaked.
And I, for whatever reason, and I just, I go back to what I said Monday on this program after listening to King Abdullah of Jordan talk about how there are three civil wars on the verge of breaking out over there.
I said, fine.
Let them.
These are natural forces over there, and they can't be stopped.
You can artificially squelch them for a time, but for only so much time, the pressure of these natural forces is going to outdo diplomacy each and every time.
It's been proven throughout human history.
So just let this place blow itself up and let the cookies crumble, let the ashes settle where they do.
I don't think George W. Bush is as stupid as the libs make him out to be.
I think that there's a by the way, Maliki was elected, was he not?
That's another answer to your question.
He was elected, and of course, we put our faith in a democratic process, and so we've got to stand by him on that basis alone.
But the situation over there is chaotic.
But don't forget that large deposit of oil over there.
Jim, I mean, that's a crucial player in all of this.
And as you know, Bush has had trouble securing that oil for himself and Cheney because of all of the chaos that's there.
I think the chaos has to come and it has to totally break down and let the ashes rise or fall or what have you.
And then it'll make the real objective of this a little bit simpler to achieve.
Jerry in Alton, Illinois, you're next, sir.
Welcome to the EIB Network.
Yeah, hey, Rush, mega hearing impaired dittos.
Hey, I wanted to make a comment about Colin Powell's comment.
I thought that opening ourselves to the Arabs is what Bush was trying to do when he wanted the Arabs to run some of our ports.
You know, we don't really have a problem with Arabs who do not support terror.
Our problem is with those Arabs that do.
You know, that's an interesting point.
That is actually a good point.
That I'm going to add to what I said because here you have Colin Powell over to the United Arab Emirates and ripping his own president for whom he worked, ripping his own government, ripping his own policy, saying, We're not going to get this terrorism problem solved unless we open up to Arabs, unless we open up to the terrorists and talk to them.
We've got to talk to our enemies and so forth.
I don't know anybody who said this about Hitler, by the way.
And I don't know anybody who said this about Imperial Japan.
And I don't know, did Lincoln say, get me Robert E. Lee on the wireless?
Bring him to me so we can is that what happened?
Or did Sherman march to Atlanta?
This is patently absurd, but in fact, we have tried to open up to the Arabs, as I mentioned in any number of different ways, as have other nations around the world.
All it does is portray those who do it as suckers because we refuse to recognize who the enemy is.
Here's a decorated military veteran in Colin Powell as well, not understanding who the enemy is.
It's all done for personal aggrandizement.
You cannot open yourself up any more than to ask Dubai Ports World to run six terminals in this country.
If that's not opening up to the Arabs, General Powell, I don't know what is.
And the guy you're criticizing, your former boss, who named you Secretary of State, is the guy who tried exactly what you suggested.
Now, I don't remember what Colin Powell said during the Dubai Ports Deal scandal.
I don't remember if he was in favor of it.
I don't remember if he was opposed to it.
I don't know if he said anything about it, but that is an excellent example.
This is John in Wilmar, Minnesota.
You're next on the EIB network.
Hi.
Hi, Rush.
Just a great honor to talk to you.
Thank you.
Appreciate you very much.
And I was just thinking, first of all, I want to say I'm sorry for your hearing loss.
You've done a great job with that, but I feel your pain, and I want to share in your hope.
And I was thinking that you'd be just a great spokesman for the stem cell, the embryonic stem cell research thing.
And I think Harry Reid ought to get you in front of a congressional or Senate hearing.
And, you know, you could do a good job in front of the hearing, but you've got to leave your cochlear implant at home.
And I think it'd be great.
They could pan on the senators, you know, looking so serious and talking and taking their glasses off and asking you a question.
And then it pans on you and you're just kind of smiling and looking at them.
And I mean, I just think, boy, what better?
What greater illustration?
Exactly.
What greater illustration of my plight to be called to testify before a Senate committee on embryonic stem cell research and the deaf to not take my cochlear implant so as to illustrate my disability.
Exactly.
Kind of do what Michael J. Fox did.
And in fact, I think maybe when you were gone, you were probably making a commercial for the whole topic.
Well, no, hasn't got that.
No, no, no.
That would not be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Okay.
Because I've made commercials before.
But, you know, if they ever did ask you to do that, just keep your cochlear implant at home.
And I don't know.
Yeah, I unmedicate myself, essentially.
Just, you know, don't take my medicine that day when my medicine's putting on the cochlear implant.
So go up to Congress, go up to the Senate, testify.
These guys asking all these serious questions, and I'm having to lip reason.
So, Senator, I'm not quite sure I heard what you said.
If you're asking me about the minimum wage, I think you're crazy.
That's right, exactly.
And have them marvel at my attempt to participate, even though I can't hear what they're saying, to show the urgency here in embryonic stem cell research so that I and others like me can hear, because we must have hope.
Well, you're such an effective communicator.
I mean, before last hour, I was pretty much against embryonic stem cell research.
I didn't think, you know, killing embryo like that is a good idea.
But after listening to you, I don't know.
I think I'm kind of on board on that.
Well, good, because it's just unconstitutional to deny people hope.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you, John, very much.
Back here, folks, in just a second.
On the cutting edge of societal evolution, I am Rush Limboy, your guiding light, period.
Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
And Sherry, nice to have you on the program.
Hi, Rush.
Hi.
From Katrina Country.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
I called you because you made an analogy comparing people humanizing their pets to liberals humanizing terrorists.
Yeah.
And I think that's a poor analogy.
I think you're doing a great disservice to our pets.
And number two, I think you lost a lot of people with that remark.
No, no, no, no.
I never lose people here.
After 18 and a half years, you have to learn.
We never lose audience on this program.
Anyway, what was the great disservice to animals?
Well, because they do have emotions.
I'm not saying they don't.
Rush, I gave Marta information about her cats once.
Well, let me tell you something about it.
Let me take the opportunity here to further expand on this.
I am the biggest animal lover on the planet.
I'm a softie.
In fact, I'm going to post.
We took some pictures over Thanksgiving, and we got some pictures of pumpkin head-butting me.
And it was my cat.
And as he was doing it, everybody in the room went, oh, how cute.
I am a softie for these animals.
But I think some of them don't even have an awareness of their own existence.
They've done tests.
You know, some animals can see themselves in a mirror and know they're looking at themselves.
Elephants are one.
Other animals haven't the slightest idea they're looking at themselves.
And people say, it's not their eyes.
I mean, they can see better than we can.
It's just they don't have a concept of self.
Now, when it comes, when I mean humanizing animals, animals are animals.
But look what we do.
We make movies and cartoons, and we give them voices.
And I'm sorry, your animal can't talk.
I know some of you might think your animal can, but it can't.
It just can't.
Not even birds.
Birds imitate and mimic, but they have no clue what they're saying.
I'm not putting them down.
It's just not.
African grays are the best mimickers.
African gray pairs, but they don't know what they're saying.
If they knew what they were saying, they could expand a vocabulary beyond what they hear.
And they can't.
Look at time is dwindling here, and obviously I've upset some people.
My cat, here's how you can get fooled.
My cat comes to me when she wants to be fed.
I have learned this.
I accept it for what it is.
Many people in my position would think my cat's coming to me because she loves me.
Well, she likes me, and she is attached, but she comes to me when she wants to be fed.
And after I feed her, guess what?
She's off to wherever she wants to be in the house until the next time she gets hungry.
She's smart enough to know she can't feed herself.
She's actually a very smart cat.
She gets loved.
She gets adoration.
She gets petted.
She gets fed, and she doesn't have to do anything for it.
Which is why I say this cat's taught me more about women than anything my whole life.
But we put voices in their mouths.
Look at the, I can't find them off the top of my head.
You know what I'm talking about.
Whales talk.
Look at the movie, Finding Nemo.
We humanize them.
That's all I mean by human.
We give them human characteristics for our own entertainment.
And we want to believe that they're that way.
We want to believe we can jump in a lion's den and treat them as a pet.
We want to believe that if we just treat alligators right, that we can get along with them.
We want to believe this.
We want to believe we can tame all of these wild creatures, animals that aren't domesticated.
The analogy to terrorists is that we also want to think that they are like us in the sense that they have the same values and the same principles, but that they have a misunderstanding about who we are.
We believe, we've been made to believe that they think that we want to murder them, that we want to wipe them out, that we want to kill them when it's just the exact opposite.
And if we can only send really smart people like Jimmy Carter or Colin Powell to talk to the terrorists, then the terrorists would understand that we have nothing against them and they would then love us.
I'm sorry, this is sophistry, it is naivete, and it is dangerous.
And it is the best way I can explain this analogy.
Rather than deal with the truth of who the enemy is, we find it more comfortable and pleasing and dare I say, hopeful to believe that they're just like us.
To believe that they too would love a McDonald's in the middle of Hasran Nasrallah's neighborhood.
And they're only upset because they don't have one.
Because we're denying them.
We want to assume that everybody is good people, like we think that we are good people.
And recognizing evil, recognizing that people are not who we want them to be is something a lot of people don't have the guts to do because then you have to admit what you face.
And it's easy to do the other.
It's easier to deny it and to think that, well, there's just a lack of understanding.
They're human beings.
Why, they're just like us.
We have pulled this off with animals because the animals can't come back and kill us for making fun of them in movies and cartoons that we draw about them.
Well, some of them can, but not because of that, because they don't even know that they are appearing in cartoons as caricatures because they can't watch television.
This is silly.
What am I?
Remind me to tell the story in the next break about my little niece, Caitlin, and a little baby lizard, one of the baby geckos that she caught on Sunday.
Back here in just a second, folks.
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