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Dec. 1, 2009 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:41
December 1, 2009, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
Okay, so we got the big speech tonight up at West Point.
You know, normally these speeches take 15 minutes in the Oval Office, and there's no applause because there's nobody there to applause.
We got probably 30 minutes tonight, maybe longer, in front of a bunch of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.
I don't know if they're going to be given applause lines or whatever, but I don't know, folks.
It's Rush Limbaugh.
Let's get that out of the way, although you know it.
Telephone number 800-282-2882.
Great to have you here.
The email address, El Rushbaugh at EIBNet.com.
Another American tradition is being trashed tonight.
The president, in his selfishness, is causing the Charlie Brown Christmas special to be preempted.
ABC's airing of the Charlie Brown Christmas tonight is being preempted.
And what is it with this president and school children?
He's infiltrated classrooms out there.
He's got his NEA menions brainwashing kids with chants of praise for dear leader.
And now he's preempting their favorite Christmas special.
It's not going to sit well with the kids.
The only thing on the plus side, folks, is that Obama's ears are about as big as Snoopy's, so maybe the kids won't notice.
Maybe they'll think they are watching a cartoon.
Many of us do.
Here's the headline of the day, by the way.
Cleveland bodies.
Let me do this again.
Cleveland bodies case hard on nearby sausage shop.
Do you know what this story is about?
The owners of a Cleveland meat company say it was difficult being blamed for a neighborhood stench that police ultimately determined was coming from the home of an alleged serial killer.
Cleveland bodies case hard on nearby sausage shop.
We cover it all here on the EIB network.
Ladies and gentlemen, the AP has an interesting story about the speech tonight.
The initial infusion is a recognition by the administration that something tangible needs to happen quickly.
100 days later, 100 days later, they say something tangible needs to happen quickly.
This whole thing is a, it's, it's just, it's a sad joke.
And I, I, for one, will have to watch this, but because these might go up, man.
If we have a little preview, in fact, the Obama administration is leaking a bunch of stuff, and we have a preview of a rehearsal before the teleprompter.
My fellow Americans, as you know, General McChrystal has asked for an additional 40,000 troops to win the war in Afghanistan.
After three months of careful thought, insight, and deliberation, I've decided to send less troops than he asked for.
After concluding, victory was not necessarily an option.
Over the next several months, we will also carefully, diligently decide if we should send more food, boots, ammunition, and winter clothing for these additional troops.
Meanwhile, we will hurry as fast as we can to pass universal health care before Christmas.
I don't know if that's the real thing.
It was part of the rehearsal.
They're leaking it at the White House exclusively to us here at the EIB network.
Not good news for the Democrats today.
Rasmussen has an announcement, well, a release coming up at 1 o'clock this afternoon.
In November, 36% of American adults considered themselves Democrats.
That's down from 37.8% a month ago, the lowest number of Democrats in nearly four years since December 2005.
This is to be released by Rasmussen Reports at 1 o'clock Eastern today.
Number of Democrats in America falls to a four-year low.
And I'll tell you, this Afghanistan speech tonight is not going to help him with the left.
And the Washington Post is doing their best, nevertheless, to buck him up.
Oh, the mantra of the day, by the way, is how inappropriate it is for Dick Cheney to speak out on the eve of Obama's big speech.
I mean, that's just hilarious.
How outrageous that Cheney stepped on Obama's coming speech.
How many times during a Bush speech on Iraq did we get a prequel from Democrats going out and making their own version of a speech or criticizing what they thought Bush was going to say?
But now, since it's the man-child, since it is the one Messiah, it's just how inappropriate for the vice president to do so.
He's only speaking out on behalf of his country, and he claims that Obama is just projecting weakness.
They see that the Afghanistan leaders see a president of the United States concerned with exiting, not winning.
That the strategy is just political, that this is a political calculation, which it is.
Cheney is exactly right about this.
Now, the Washington Post today, the perils of being commander-in-chief.
The perils of being commander-in-chief.
It's by Dana Milbank.
First, the good news, President Obama will not be wearing a flight suit when he addresses the cadets at West Point on Tuesday night.
Nor will he wear a bomber jacket with the presidential seal on the chest, or even the White House promises a windbreaker with the word army in big letters.
You can count on no military garb, said a White House communications director.
Mission accomplished?
Not entirely.
One of the common complaints of George W. Bush's presidency was his tendency to politicize the military and turn troops into props.
So they take what Bush did not do and take what Obama is doing and turn it around and say that Bush did it.
You know, I may have to start adding a little kahlua to my coffee in the mornings in order to read some of the crap that's coming out of the state-controlled media.
Bush loved the military.
Obama doesn't like the military.
Obama, it's a nagging annoyance to him.
The military is an inconvenience to him.
He doesn't want to be doing this speech tonight.
He doesn't want to even have to deal with this.
He's probably shocked that it hasn't solved itself on its own because he was elected.
He's probably shocked that Iran hasn't solved itself on its own because he was elected.
George W. Bush loved the military.
He revered it.
It is simple as that.
And I might add this, the military loved Bush.
And we've had calls on this program from current and retired military people.
And if they are any indication, this military disdains President Obama.
This whole Washington Post story is nothing but Bush bashing.
And there's some Palin bashing thrown in for good measure.
Now, if Dana Milbank or any of you editors at the Washington Post, if you want to write an article about this speech tonight, how about something along the lines of Obama's dithering and how that has affected morale in the military?
And should we talk about props?
Greek columns, fake Greek columns.
These cadets at West Point are just going to be the latest version of Greek columns at his acceptance speech at the Democrat National Committee.
What about all those sick people who have died because we don't have national health care?
How often does he make those stories up?
This is just outrageous.
The proliferation began in 2002 when Bush went to West Point for a June 1st speech to the cadets, not to the nation, by the way, detailing the doctrine of preemptive war.
Had Sarah Palin watched that speech, she would have avoided four of the most damaging words of the 2008 presidential campaign uttered when Charlie Gibson asked whether she agreed with the Bush doctrine.
In what sense, Charlie?
So they bash Palin.
Here you've got an incompetent commander-in-chief running around using the military as props because there's nothing more than an annoyance and inconvenience.
And to give this incompetent little guy cover, the state-controlled media now bashes Bush.
At least he won't be showing up on a flight jacket.
They do then quote Michael Moore at the end of the story.
With just one speech tomorrow night, you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics.
You will teach them what they've always heard is true, that all politicians are alike.
See, the left is not happy.
They want us out of there.
They don't like war, period.
They don't like the concept of American exceptionalism or victory.
You know what Obama might try to teach young people tonight who tune into this speech is that America is worth honoring and protecting, and that it takes really strong and brave, selfless people to do that, so that the bloated bigot Michael Moore can do his dumbass movies without getting shot, or Obama might look at the military as the ultimate community service.
Why not a little reverence for them?
Why not a little respect?
Why not a little encouragement?
Why not a thank you?
Instead of explaining and going on television about how tough all this is and what we're going to do here, and we've had the leaks already claim that the real focus here is going to be on getting out.
If you are an Afghanistan warlord and you watch this thing tonight and you hear Obama focus on getting out, what do you do?
You get jazzed.
You get all jazzed up if you're the Taliban, if you're Mullah Omar watching this.
What do you do?
Not focus on winning.
And there is this, ladies and gentlemen.
Hezbollah blames the United States for all terrorism.
This is some CNN.
Hezbollah's chief on Monday announced the group's new manifesto, which calls on all countries to liberate Jerusalem and declares the United States a threat to the world.
American terrorism is the source of every terrorism in the world, said Hassan Nasrallah in a televised speech from an undisclosed location.
We have had Obama for less than a year now.
The sea levels are no lower.
And the terrorists still don't like us.
In fact, they hate us even more.
The United States is a nation, great nation at risk in a dangerous world that has gotten more dangerous in the 11 months that Obama has been president.
Or 10 and a half.
The Iranians are thumbing their nose at us.
The CHICOMs are thumbing their nose at us.
The Russians are thumbing their nose at us.
And Obama's focused on giving us health care that the vast majority of the American people now, in poll after poll after poll, do not want.
Quick time out.
We'll be back.
Lots straight ahead here on the EIB network.
Don't go away.
Okay, now, wait a minute.
McChrystal requested 40,000 troops.
In last week, the leak was 34,000 troops are going to be sent.
And now the number is 30,000 troops are going to be sent.
The number keeps shrinking as the day goes on.
What's the number going to be by the time he reads the speech off a teleprompter tonight?
All right, folks, let me give you the benefit of my logical thinking and wisdom here on a couple things that seem to have people all tied up in nuts.
And there's no reason to be tied up in nuts about any of these things.
First, Tiger Woods.
This is not hard to understand.
On Wednesday, the National Inquirer publishes a story saying he's having an affair with a woman named Yucatel, who is apparently well known for flagging down sports celebrities and having relationships with them.
On Friday afternoon at 2:30, we learn that 12 hours earlier, Friday morning at 2:30, Tiger Woods is found lying on the street unconscious with lacerations on his face, his car having run over a fire hydrant and hit a tree.
He's in and out of consciousness.
Two windows of his SUV are bashed in, and the 911 caller says, I don't see his wife, and I don't see him wearing shoes.
What do you think happened here?
Now, the two people that snuck into the White House and supposedly crashed it, this is not hard to understand.
And the White House is giving us a huge bit of distraction with this, which is why I'm getting it out of the way here.
This bunch, there's so much here that is so simple if you just know some baseline facts.
In the first place, this woman wants to get on this Bravo show, The Great Housewives of Washington, D.C., the real hollow, whatever it is.
Bravo is owned by what?
NBC.
Jeffrey Imelt is what?
The CEO of what?
NBC, which owns Bravo.
These two people just happen to get into a White House state dinner when their names are not on a list and they happen to get up and get their picture taken with Obama.
And now the Bravo brand, the Bravo network, everybody knows what it is, where only a few hundred thousand knew what it was beforehand.
When you also know that Jeffrey Immelt is in bed with Obama on green technology and government grants to GE to promote that business, it all begins to make sense.
Then when you find out that these two showed up on the Today Show today saying they were invited, that somebody in a liaison post over at the Pentagon invited them and they've got proof.
And now their friends are saying, yeah, they were invited.
And they've given the emails to the Secret Service.
And then when you find out that the same couple crashed a Congressional Black caucus dinner back in September going into the bus boy entrance, and then when you realize that nobody gets into the White House without somebody knowing it and approving it, it's very simple to understand what happened in both the Tiger Woods story and in this.
Somebody wanted those people in there at the White House.
Somebody, when they got there and they're getting all the attendant publicity, and Obama's getting a giant distraction out of it as people focus on that and a Tiger Woods story while Obama's, you know, sneaking around with his other agenda, well, nobody's looking except me.
I just dealt with this in five minutes, where most cable networks are devoting the whole day to these two stories.
It's not hard to figure out what happened in any or either of these cases.
It's not.
Is it snurdly?
Do you disagree with any of this?
I've given you a logical timeline with a baseline of information.
And once you have that, then it all falls into place.
It all makes perfect sense.
And when you add the latest tidbit, no shoes, driving the SUV.
Now let's get back to the serious stuff.
Maurice Henshi, he is a wacko from New York State.
He's a member of Congress.
And yesterday afternoon, he was on MSNBC Live, and he was asked, how much longer can we invest in this war in Afghanistan?
Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan.
How we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away.
How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as they were escaping up into the northeast of Afghanistan over into the Pakistani border.
That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture Al-Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq.
So the tin hat crowd is out.
This is Maurice Henchy.
He is from New York.
He's a big Democrat, by the way.
He's one of the architects of fairness doctrine legislation.
So he's basically saying that Bush intentionally let bin Laden go, that Bush intentionally lost Bin Laden.
In fact, there was a story on Sunday, and I don't recall if it was a news magazine or a Washington paper, but regardless, it was part of state-controlled media.
And it was all about how, oh, it was a Senate report, a Senate, some Senate committee report from John Kerry.
We had bin Laden in our grasp at Tora Bora.
We had him and we didn't go for him and we didn't get it.
It's Bush's fault.
And that's what's going to happen tonight in this speech.
We're going to hear that not enough troops were sent to Afghanistan in the first place.
All of this.
I'll tell you why it has to happen.
Obama is on risky ground.
All presidents have to hold on to their base.
They have to hold on to their base.
They have to.
Obama's got to hold on to his.
Now, his base is the kookiest fringe nutcases in this country.
They believed all of the lies that he told them about closing Guantanamo and the sea levels falling and getting out of Afghanistan and getting out of Iraq.
They believed all of that.
If they would have listened to me, I could have told them, and I did tell them, no Democrat is ever going to saddle defeat around their own necks.
They're not going to do it.
They're going to find some way to say they've won this.
And they can't win it by simply getting out and claiming a moral victory.
So what Obama is going to do tonight to hold on to his base, he's going to send troops.
He's going to send not nearly the number that's been requested by the expert, General McChrystal.
In doing so, he is going to blame Bush, and he's going to blame Cheney because those are the magic words.
You heard those seminar callers yesterday on global warming.
Everything with these people is blame Bush.
So Obama's going to go out there and he's going to say Bush never, never did send the right amount of troops, the right amount of armaments.
He never upstaffed this properly.
I've got to take care of it now because I did say it was a war of necessity, but he's going to dump on Bush.
That's how he hopes to hold on to his base while doing something they dramatically thought he would not do.
Yeah, we're back, El Rushbow at 800-282-2882.
Talent on loan from God.
It was John Kerry who ordered up that report that was released recently that said bin Laden was allowed to escape.
And Kerry has been claiming this for years.
Now, listen to the second soundbite.
Even a certifiable kook like David Schuster over at MSNBC cannot believe that Maurice Henchy actually said that Bush purposely let bin Laden get away so that we can attack Iraq.
But John Kerry has been saying this for years.
You think they deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away?
You think they deliberately let the head of Al-Qaeda get away right after the 9-11 attacks?
You really believe that?
Oh, there's no question about that.
To suggest that they would deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could justify the war in Iraq, that will strike a lot of people as crazy.
I don't think it'll strike a lot of people as crazy.
I think it'll strike a lot of people as being very accurate.
And all you have to do is look at the facts of that set of circumstance.
And you can see if that's exactly what happened.
When we went in there, when our military went in there, we could have captured them.
We could have captured most of the Taliban, and we could have captured the al-Qaeda.
But we didn't.
And we didn't because of the need felt by the previous administration and the previous head of the military.
That need to attack Iraq.
Now, all of this is designed to give Obama cover for sending these troops in there tonight.
With his base, everything with Obama is political.
It always is with the left.
It's not ever for the stated intentions that they claim.
It's all political.
Obama is running a risk losing his base tonight.
The only way to save him, they think, is to dump on Bush.
So Kerry issues this report over the weekend that we had bin Laden and we didn't do enough to get him and sends guys like Hinchy out here.
Oh, yeah, it was on purpose.
Wall Street Journal.
Editorial today.
President Obama unveils his new Afghanistan strategy today.
In the nick of time, Senator Kerry has arrived with a report claiming that none of this would be necessary if Rumsfeld had only deployed more troops eight years ago.
That's right.
He really said more troops.
And by the way, we turned Tora Bora 2,000 degrees when bin Laden was there.
You can count me among those who think bin Laden is dead, by the way.
I have always thought it, just like I've always known, that global warming is a man-made hoax.
We turned that place 2,000 degrees.
We bombed the hell out of Tora Bora.
In a 43-page report issued yesterday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry says that bin Laden and Deputy Eyman Zawahiri were poised for capture at the Tora Bora cave complex in late 2001.
But because of the unwillingness of Mr. Rumsfeld and his generals to deploy the troops required to take advantage of solid intelligence and unique circumstances to kill or capture bin Laden, he escaped.
This in turn paved the way for exactly what we had hoped to avoid, a protracted insurgency that has cost more lives than anyone estimates would have been lost in a full-blown assault on Tora Bora.
The timing of this report's release suggests that Mr. Kerry intends this as political cover for Obama and the Democrats, and some in the press corpse have even taken it seriously.
But coming from John Kerry, of all people, this criticism is nothing short of astonishing.
In 2001, journal readers may recall the Washington establishment that included Mr. Kerry was fretting about the danger in Afghanistan from committing too many troops.
The New York Times made the quagmire point explicitly in a famous page one analysis, and Seymour Hirsch fed the cliché to the New Yorker on CNN with Larry King on December 15, 2001.
A viewer called in to say the U.S. should smoke bin Laden out of the Tora Bora caves.
Mr. Kerry responded, For the moment, what we're doing, I think, is having its impact, and it's the best way to protect our troops and sort of minimalize the proximity, if you will.
I think we've been doing this pretty effectively, and we should continue to do it this way.
The Rumsfeld General Tommy Franks troop strategy may have missed bin Laden, but it reflected domestic political doubts about an extended Afghan campaign.
Now, remarkably, John Kerry is now repeating those same doubts about Obama's troop decision, saying the Afghans must do the heavy lifting, and he supports additional troops only for limited purposes and wants the U.S. out within four to five years.
Adapting his legendary 2004 campaign locution, Mr. Kerry is now in favor of more troops after he was against them.
But in any case, not for long.
Folks, this is rock solid the truth.
We are getting schizophrenic behavior from these people, and it's all because they are not real.
They live in the universe of lies.
They live in the universe of spin.
Back in 2001, John Kerry did not want more troops.
They didn't want a quagmire.
The New York Times supported that.
That's why we turned Tora Bora 2,000 degrees with a bombing attack.
Not troops.
Now, all of a sudden, the day before Obama's big speech, Kerry's committee in the Senate comes out and said, Bush never sent enough troops.
And that's why we have to send in troops now.
But we don't want them there for very long.
So John Kerry is now in favor of more troops after he was against more troops, but in any case, not for very long.
And you've got Henshey going on, oh yeah, they let him go on purpose.
Don't doubt me.
All of this is to give Obama cover with his base because making this commitment of new troop levels is angering the people on the left that he thinks he can't lose.
While he's losing people in the middle, while he's losing Republicans, while he's losing independents, he wants to hold on to the kook fringe.
All presidents think it's necessary to hold on to their base.
Yet they all campaign saying they have to win the independence.
And he's losing them.
He's losing them big time with health care.
He's losing them big time with this.
He's losing them big time with his general incompetence.
It's perceived incompetence.
When people finally wake up and realize all this is being done on purpose, they're going to be livid and outraged.
And slowly, more and more people are awakening the idea that they were defrauded by the media and by the candidate during the 2008 Democrat presidential campaign.
Now, this report, Democrats run the Kerry's committee.
They can issue a report, whatever Kerry wants it to say.
But his hypocrisy here cannot be overstated.
He is still the same flip-flopper that we came to know and loathe during the 2004 campaign.
This is just another one of those things that Kerry was for before he was against.
It was John Kerry who ordered up this report that came out last day that said Bin Laden was allowed to escape, which he's been claiming this for years.
But remember, in 2001, when we were supposedly unified as a nation, well, I can't send any more troops in there.
We don't want a Vietnam-like quagmire.
Everybody agrees with this.
What we're doing right now is fine, he said to a caller on Larry King Alive.
Now, all of a sudden, it's the only, I hate to sound like a broken record here, but the only hope that they have of not losing their base on this is to make this whole thing tonight a bushbash.
And I got to mention Bush, and they might mention Runsfeld, but certainly the previous administration did not make a serious enough troop level commitment, blah, blah, blah, blah, that give themselves cover because they're balancing things.
And they think that there is more hatred for Bush on the left than there is anger at this Obama policy.
And all the Democrats are circling the wagons to see to it that that's the message that gets out.
Now, my friends, in the real world, where you and I live, it was Bill Clinton who let bin Laden go before 9-11.
It was Bill Clinton who had bin Laden in the crosshairs.
It was Bill Clinton and Richard Clark who let bin Laden go in the real world.
This Dana Nilbank article in the Washington Post, do you think Bush might have been giving a lot of speeches to the military because we were at war?
You think there might have been a reason to say that George W. Bush used the military as props when that's precisely and exactly what is happening now?
No greater contrast could there be. between the universe of lies, the four corners of deceit, and the universe of reality.
Fuad Ajami in the Wall Street Journal today, a foreign policy of penance has won America no friends.
Poll numbers are all the same.
Barack Obama hasn't done jack to change anyone's opinion of America, except they think we are weaker.
The Iranians discarding any pretense now at letting inspectors in, any pretense of participating in a non-proliferation treaty because they're not frightened.
The thing that Obama doesn't understand is they hate us regardless who the president is.
The Islamic world, the militant Islamic world hates us regardless who the president is.
Venezuela, the Chikoms, the Russians hate us regardless who the president is.
He actually has this community organizer's mentality that somehow and his ego that makes him believe that just his presence can solve problems.
It's obvious to me that bin Laden is dead for one reason.
Obama hasn't captured him.
Because Obama can do everything.
Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama.
Well, we don't have bin Laden.
Must mean he's dead.
There must be nobody to capture.
Listen to some excerpts here from Fuad Ajami's piece in the Wall Street Journal.
And by the way, if you don't know who Fuad Ajami is, you've probably seen him on television.
He's a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, the author of The Foreigner's Gift, which was published in 2007.
He talks too much.
A Saudi academic in Jeddah who had once been smitten with Obama recently observed to me, he has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory.
And he's heartily alone, this academic.
In the endless chatter of this region, in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment.
In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.
He has not made the world anew.
History did not bend to his will.
The Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms.
And the theocrats in Iran have not unclenched their fists, nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.
There is little Mr. Obama can do about this disenchantment.
He can't journey to Turkey to tell its Islamist leaders and political class that a decade of anti-American scapegoating is all forgiven and was the product of American policies.
He's already done that.
He can't journey to Cairo to tell the fabled Arab street that the Iraq war was a wasted war of choice and that America earned the malice that came its way from Arab lands because he's already done that as well.
He can't tell Muslims that America is not at war with Islam.
He, like his predecessor, has said that time and again.
It was the norm for American liberalism during the Bush years to brandish the Pew Global Attitude Survey that told of America's decline in the eyes of foreign nations.
Foreigners were saying what the liberals wanted said.
Now, those surveys, the Pew Global Attitude Surveys of 2009, bring findings from the world of Islam that confirm that the animus toward America has not been radically changed by the ascendancy of Mr. Obama.
In the Palestinian territories, 15% have a favorable view of America, 82% unfavorable.
The Obama speech in Ankara didn't seem to help in Turkey.
The favorables are 14, those unreconciled, 69.
In Egypt, a country that's reaped nearly 40 years of American aid, things stayed roughly the same.
27% have a favorable view of the U.S., 70% do not.
In Pakistan, a place of great consequence for American power, our standing has deteriorated.
The unfavorables rose from 63 in 08 to 68 this year.
Mr. Obama's election has not drained the swamps of anti-Americanism.
That anti-Americanism is endemic to this region, an alibi and a scapegoat for nations and their rulers unwilling to break out of the grip of political autocracy and economic failure.
It predated George W. Bush, and it rages on during the Obama presidency.
They hate us regardless who is the president.
We had once taken to the foreign world that quintessential American difference, the belief in liberty, a needed innocence to play off against the settled and complacent ways of older nations.
The Obama approach, though, is different.
Obama is steeped in the overarching idea of American guilt.
Mr. Ajami knows not how right he is.
Mr. Obama was born and raised on the notion that this country is unjust and immoral, that it discriminates, that it is unfair, that it is bigoted, that it is racist, that it has stolen the world's resources, it is the cause of poverty around the world.
He believes all of this.
It is easily understood when you see him running around the world apologizing for this country.
He is essentially thinking he's making friends by telling these people that hate us that he understands the hate and that their hate's justified.
Steeped in an overarching idea of American guilt, Mr. Obama and his lieutenants offered nothing less than a doctrine and a policy of American penance.
No one told Mr. Obama that the Islamic world, where American power is engaged and dangerously exposed, it is considered bad form, a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own tribe when in the midst and in the lands of others.
So contrary to being exactly what they want to hear, it's something they do not condone.
They, therefore, think Obama is weak.
They think that Obama is not this great messiah that he portrayed himself to be and that even some in the Islamic world thought he was going to be.
Again, no one told Obama that in the Islamic world, it's considered bad form, a great moral lapse, to speak ill of one's own country when in the country of others.
The crowd may have applauded the cavalier way the new steward of American power referred to his predecessor, but in the privacy of their own language, they doubtless wondered about his character and his fidelity.
My brother and I against my cousin, my cousin and I against the stranger, goes one of the Arab world's most honored maxims.
The stranger who came into their midst and spoke badly of his own was destined to become an object of suspicion.
So Obama couldn't make up his mind.
He was at one with the people and with the rulers who held him in subjugation.
The people of Iran who took to the streets this past summer were betrayed by this hapless diplomacy of Obama's.
Obama was out to engage the terrible rulers that millions of Iranians were determined to be rid of.
The man is simply on the wrong side of history because his mind has been corrupted, polluted, and perverted by the anti-Americanism of the people who raised him and educated him.
We are beyond, Mr. Ajami continues, we are beyond stirring speeches.
The novelty of the Obama approach and the Obama persona has worn off.
There is a whole American diplomatic tradition to draw upon, and we are not doing it.
That's setting the stage for this supposedly important speech tonight.
You know, it's amazing considering the source.
This is actually a pretty good story.
It's by Richard Benedetto at Politico.com.
He's a retired USA Today White House correspondent and columnist, teaches journalism and politics at American and Georgetown universities.
And the headline, a story, and I'll give you details of it when we get back here, Media Follow White House script.
Now, the headline's a little long.
The headline should read, Media Works for White House.
Lapdogs.
Drive by lapdogs is what this story actually claims.
It essentially says they are a state-run media.
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