Western Civilization Is Under Attack, Imagine If We Were United in Response?

RUSH: Yeah, maybe we just ought to get out of Iraq. “Maybe we just ought to close G’itmo; get out of Iraq, and then stop all of this!” How long do you think it’s going to be before we start hearing that in earnest? We have heard it already. There are people already saying that. You know they’re out there saying that. I am seething here today, folks. I may be angry over a bunch of things — I can’t even tell you all of them — but this is just really… Anyway, greetings and welcome. It’s the Rush Limbaugh program and the Excellence in Broadcasting Network, and we are here. We got three hours of broadcast excellence straight ahead. The Dittocam is on for those of you that want to tune in or log on to RushLimbaugh.com. We’ll have it on for all three hours today, barring some unforeseen circumstance. (I always issue that warning. No such unforeseen circumstance has ever occurred but you never know.) Here’s the telephone number if you want to be on the program today, 800-282-2882, and the e-mail address, Rush@eibnet.com. I certainly hope that the Churchill generation still has some breath in it in the UK, and it’s not become a Spain or a Madrid. I hope that the whole concept of toughness and perseverance and victory didn’t get buried over there with Churchill. It doesn’t seem to have been in Tony Blair, but we will soon find out. I was thinking back, folks, to September 11th. You know, I didn’t get back to this microphone ’til 2:30 that day. I had only a half hour of the program to do. I was on my way to Omaha. I was actually in the air when 9/11 happened and air traffic control ordered all aircraft on the ground by an hour and 15 minutes, which was not enough time where I was to turn around and get back to my home. So we got about within 45 minutes, had to rent a car and drive down there — and I didn’t see any pictures of 9/11 ’til I got back here to the office at 2:30.
But I’ll never forget the first thing that I said when I hit this studio and microphone that afternoon — and I am going to say it here going to today — that the attack on 9/11 was not an attack on America, and this attack on London today is not an attack on London. This is an attack on Western Civilization, and they are going to continue until everybody that’s opposed these kind of attacks unites and gets together and fights this as it should be fought. We’ve got too much dissension in the ranks. We got a too much political partisanship going on — not just in this country but around the world — and there are too many people taking too many actions that encourage the kind of thing that happened in London today, and weaken the resolve of those who would prefer to stand against it. Make no mistake about this: this was not an attack on London, and this has nothing to do with the fact that the Brits joined us in Iraq. It has nothing to do with it. The Brits have started pulling troops out of the Iraq, by the way. They’ve announced that. It may have to do with the G8. It may have to do with it. This kind of thing was happening before 9/11. This kind of thing was happening before we went to Iraq. This kind of thing was happening when Bill Clinton was president. This happened to Americans all over the world. It happened to us in 1993 at the World Trade Center, in an attack that’s similar to this in terms of scope, 40 people — 33, 40 people — somewhere in that neighborhood. Okay, 33 confirmed dead. But the bus fatalities are not counted yet, over a thousand injured and 150 seriously. It’s not a dead-on parallel, but it’s fairly close to what happened in 1993. We didn’t do diddly-squat. Oh, I take that back. We did. We prosecuted. Terrorism cannot be wished away, folks, and it cannot be ignored and it cannot be prosecuted away in the courts. We are not going to win the war on terror with federal judges usurping the authority of the commander-in-chief in terms of how he gets information from prisoners, how he fights the war on terror.

But that is, in fact, an attempt being made by the left in this country today — and we’ve tried it that way. We tried it that way throughout the nineties. You prosecute somebody you find and you convict them, and all do you is anger the terrorists who demand their release — and if you don’t release the convicted terrorists, then they promise to attack you again, and that may be an element of what’s happening here in Great Britain, too. But all of these incidental reasons — the G8 summit, the war in Iraq — miss the boat. This is an attack on Western Civilization, and it is an attack based on the belief of those who commit them that they can get away with it, and that they can continue to get away with it. You got two things you can do with terrorism: You can surrender to it, or you can defeat it. There are no other options. You can’t appease them; you can’t get along with them; you can’t make treaties with them; you can’t negotiate with them. You either surrender to it or you defeat it. President Bush knows this, and you hold out hope that the Bush-haters might get it but I don’t have much hope in that regard because I think there’s so much seething rage and hatred for Bush out there that the majority of the Bush-haters are already gleefully blaming Bush for this, and blaming the war in Iraq for this, and blaming Afghanistan for this, and feeling sorry for Tony Blair that Bush roped in into joining us in Iraq. That’s the kind of thing. You can expect it to exist in a free country, but it’s going to continue to be an impediment, as those people represent forces who attempt to weaken our ability not only take the offensive but to defend ourselves as well. But here’s the interesting thing for those of you on the left to consider. The terrorists today not only attacked civilization. They attacked you. They attacked you liberals, you leftists who may think that you’re the ones who have the ability to forge a common understanding.

I wonder if the Brits will do what we did after 9/11. I wonder if the Brits will convene, at their version of the state department, a seminar exploring the question: Why do they hate us? You can do those seminars all day long, and you can even get the answer right, and it isn’t going to help you a bit. The evidence, the terrorist attack, not only civilization today, but the left, the Hollywood crowd, the music crowd, the kumbaya crowd. Today was supposed to launch the G8 meeting. Leaders of the most prosperous nations are being coaxed to show up and for the umpteenth time save Africa, end hunger, end global warming, end poverty. Whether you buy the solutions that were on the table or not, the goals are certainly high-minded. You could even say the goals are civilized: end poverty, end hunger, end global warming. But there’s a war against civilized thoughts out there, and the world gets another wake-up call today because here at this big leftist conclave known as the G8 summit, it’s occurring not far from where the blast took place — and make no mistake: the terrorists have as one of their purposes besides the death and mayhem to become the subject matter of the G8 summit. They want the attention focused on them. Tony Blair says he’s not going to let that happen. We’ll see. Hope he doesn’t let that happen. But nobody is safe, is the point. You cannot make friends with these people and maintain your culture or your identity and your way of life. The healing nature of time, some people forget what happens. Others you think that the passage of time will just enable everybody to wish this kind of evil away. But thank goodness for Bush because he understood it from day one. Today we get another reminder and another opportunity for even more people to understand it now who maybe have had it slip from their mind. Maybe it’d gotten caught up in the notion of “it’s not going to happen again.” Some people are probably saying, “Well, it happened over there. I’m not worried about that.” You may as well considered this an attack on us, folks. It’s not attack on our way of life; it’s an attack on our civilization.
I just watched the briefing here that Michael Chertoff did. He’s our director of homeland security, and he said something that a lot of people I think are going to sniff at. (sniff, sniff, sniff) “Oh, yeah, easy for you to say.” But he said, “You know, when it comes to transit — public transit, train stations, subways, airports, those kinds of things, shipping ports — we don’t have the official government personnel to watch everything that happens there. We need you.” He said, “I want you Americans, go to work today, use the public transit system, just be more vigilant,” and I’m sure some people sniffed. “Oh, yeah easy for you to say ‘be more vigilant.'” Well, folks, it’s going to require this kind of an effort. When you get right down to it, we are a people that can take care of ourselves. We do so in so many other walks of life but some believe when it comes to government we expect government to do everything for us, protect us, defend us and so forth. In circumstances like this you never know who you might see or run into that doesn’t look normal, that doesn’t look right, looks suspicious, and you can report it to somebody who didn’t see it. It is going to take that kind of involvement and that kind of awareness — and a lot of people just don’t want to go there because it’s an interruption in a carefree life. But this is just another wake-up call and another reminder that civilization, Western Civilization is under constant attack. Make no mistake: it was planned; it was coordinated and it was timed to coordinate with the G8 meeting. It was. I think all these other reasons that people are putting forth today — well, the one I would throw out would be the Olympics; nobody knew London was going to get the Olympics ’til this week. I don’t think that has anything to do with it. I think the large factor is it’s just our way of life, and the surprise factor. They continue to succeed in creating these attacks and these events when they are least expected in the places where people feel the safest, and that should alarm everybody.
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RUSH: We have audio sound bites here from Tony Blair. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London has a nickname — you may not know this — Ken the Red, and the nickname, Ken the Red is given for the reason you think when you hear that. We have President Bush on tape, and we’ve got Brian Ross on Good Morning America today with the predictable liberal media spin that Al-Qaeda “has become much more killed as urban warfare by training in Iraq.” The unstated implication is that we are responsible for this attack because by engaging the terrorists in Iraq they have learned urban warfare, blah, blah, blah. We’ll get to all that in due course. Speaking of the media, you know, I’ve been watching it all morning like everybody else has. Now, folks, this is going to be morbid. It’s going to sound morbid to some of you. Those of you that are in the World War II generation or who have relatives that were will understand this. Those of you who have no connection to anything beyond say 1970 or 1960, you’re not going to… Like Dick Durbin, I’m going to apologize in advance for hurting your feelings but I am not going to apologize for what I’m about to say. I’m watching the media today, and all I’m seeing is doom and gloom. I’m seeing hand-wringing anchors talking to hand-wringing terror experts; talking to hand-wringing reporters, talking about, “Oh, how horrible! Oh, how terrible! Oh, this is just unbelievable! Oh, woe is us! Oh, what are we going to do!” and, frankly, it offended me. This is not the way to react. What is called for here is a controlled rage, not defeatism, and not pessimism, and not doom and gloomism, and not, “Oh, woe is us,” and we don’t need a bunch of people out there broadcasting all the oh-woe-is-us-negative aspects of this all day long because they’re plainly visible. We don’t need reporters telling us how bad it is. We can see it.
It’s like we don’t need reporters standing in five inches of snow in the wintertime to tell us it’s snowing. All we have to do is look out the window. But if you go back, if you go back to World War II, Britain got far worse than this. They were bombed daily by the Nazis. The only difference is they knew it was coming, and they were prepared for it, but look what happened. They rebuilt the country. These are tough people over there, just as we are tough people here. Here’s the morbid part. I think will be morbid to some of you — and I’m really going to apologize if this offends you. You’ve got how many millions of people running through this transit system in rush hour in the United Kingdom, and what do we have? We have 33 dead and 150 seriously wounded. I wouldn’t call this a successful terror attack. I wouldn’t say these guys missed the boat. If I were the Brits I’d stand up and say, “You think this is going to deter us? You think this is going to stop us from being who we are? We’ve been through worse than this. We have dealt with worse than this, and we have triumphed over this. You think this is something? You think you’ve done something great today? You’re nothing but a bunch of cowards. You don’t have the guts to put on a uniform and attack us and tell us why. You have to put suicide bombs on some of your worthless members, send them on board a bus or hide out in some deep, dark subway tunnel and then blow up people. Well, we don’t cower from cowards.” Now, I would love seeing somebody say this today, instead of, “Oh, no! Oh, no! It happened again! It happened again! Oh, no! Are we next? What are we going to do, Mabel? Mabel! What…? Can the Supreme Court stop it? Is there anything Rehnquist can do?” Now, if this offends you, again, as Dick Durbin, I apologize for hurting your feelings. But I think I’m being pretty consistent in this, folks.

This is not something — it ought not be something — you think is unexpected. Everybody has been talking about the next attack ever since 9/11. Everybody’s been wondering politically who’s going to benefit from it; who’s going to hurt from it. Everybody has been saying, “We know there’s going to be another attack.” Just last week I think, wasn’t it, I was here talking about, “There’s going to be another attack.” Last week, exactly. “There’s going to be another attack. You could make book on it,” and that brought about a discussion, “Well, Rush, who do you think will get blamed for it and who do you think who will get the credit and who will be hurt and harmed politically?” and so forth and so on, and while those are interesting things to speculate about, and we did last week it misses the point. As long as we’re continually on the defensive, as long as we are cowering in corners and waiting for the next to happen and hoping it’s not too bad, and as long as we are engaged in this war on terror, as long as we have committed US men and women in uniform to sacrifice their lives to beat this thing, it makes sense to me to motivate them. It makes sense to me to undermine them. It makes sense to me that you don’t do things and say things and take action that actually encourage the people that we’re fighting. The question was asked in this program yesterday, “What if we were all united in this country verbally? What if anybody who said anything about the war on terror was saying the same thing, and that is: “Proud Americans, we’re not going to stand for it. You attack us again, you’re dead,” blah, blah, blah? What effect would that have on our military in terms of motivating them and what effect would it have on the enemy? This cowering in the corners and slinking away and going, “Oh, no!” is only encouraging them.
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RUSH: So Senator Schumer, we heard yesterday — Senator Chuck Schumer from New York — decided that this Supreme Court battle is “war.” Democrats are going to declare war on the Supreme Court nomination. Senator, might I ask you to consider something else? You might just want to think about joining us and declaring war on Islamic terrorism first, and then you can play your silly little ideological games however you wish and you can lose again and again and again later. But there’s something that does take precedence. Now, I know it may not happen today, but I know in ensuing days and coming days, the left-wing kooks that have become the mainstream of the Democratic Party are going to gin up and they’re going to come out with their own explanations for this attack in London. Here is just a sample. “It was a plot conceived by Karl Rove. The plot was designed to lift the president’s poll numbers as he went into the G8 summit and the Supreme Court vacancy, not to mention a trick to make everybody bend over and willingly accept the new Patriot Act or whatever judicial appointment Bush wants or whatever defense budget increase he wants.” You’re going to hear — and probably wackier things than this in the coming days. Well, somebody will accuse Blair of knowing in advance and getting out of town.
You know, make sure he’s at the G8 summit while London was attacked. He was out of town — just like that poet laureate in New Jersey? Amiri Baraka who called up Sheila Jackson Lee. They talked about it and they convinced themselves that the Israelis were behind 9/11 because “all the Jews got out of the World Trade Center before the attack.” So here’s Blair getting out of London before these things happen, the G8. You can just imagine the kind of things that are going to be said, and the reason for this, if I may just get political for just a brief moment, I told you. You’ve been asking me since 9/11, “Rush, if it happens again, does it hurt Bush?” No, it’s not going to hurt the one guy that’s out there trying to do something about it. The people that are trying to pretend it didn’t happen — a-hem — I can name you any Democrat senator, any number of the American media, trying to pretend 9/11 didn’t happen, trying to make you think that all of these efforts to stop another attack are just a waste of money and some sort of silly little personal vendetta that Bush has, whatever excuse they came up with. The Dick Durbins of the world that are out there wailing and moaning about G’itmo and Abu Ghraib and so forth, they’re the ones that are going to have to face cameras and explain themselves. President Bush isn’t.
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