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RUSH: Before we get into the details, let me just tell you what I think. I think the prime minister of Israel is a disaster. I think our continuing reliance on the UN is a disaster; and I for one do not understand it, and there’s nobody that can make me understand it. I don’t care who wants to try, you won’t succeed, and as a result we are prolonging this war. This ceasefire, however long it takes, it is just going to be used for Hezbollah to ramp up and arm up. It’s another meaningless UN resolution, and I honestly think that what’s going on right now, folks, is that our leaders around the world that represent western societies and western cultures really don’t have the will to fight this right now, and I think they don’t even have the guts to admit what this is.
This is a religious war. It is viewed in too many circles as just episodic events, an episode of terrorism here, an episode of terrorism over there, an episode there, but not really related, we’ll just keep dealing with these episodes. But it’s more than just an episodic series of events here, and I am stunned — I was stunned all weekend that we have reversed course and now push for this lame ceasefire BS. How many ceasefires have we had? Too many to count and they all end up being the same thing. You can look at all the celebrations. This guy in Iran today is cheering. Bashar Assad is out there saying the US vision of the Middle East is nothing more than an “illusion.” Hezbollah is out there pounding their chest, saying they won — which they would do anyway, regardless.
When I say it’s a religious war, religious wars are numerous. You can look them up historically, and one of the things about religious wars and one of the reasons why so few people really want to categorize this as a religious war is because there is no room for compromise in a religious war. Fervently devout religious believers don’t compromise. That’s the whole point. As an example, you don’t go to the pope and say, “Hey, Pope, in order for us to have a little peace, will you please accept that Mohammed did fly to the heavens and so forth on a horse and that maybe Mohammed is actually Jesus, just for peace?” The pope’s not going to do that.
Whatever religion you go to, you could go to the Jewish people, “Would you please accept that somebody’s been a messiah here so we can have some peace?” Nope, not going to do it. Would you go to the Christians, “Come on, you know damn well it’s impossible somebody could be born from a virgin mother? You’ve gotta give that one up.” Nope, ain’t going to happen. So there’s no room for compromise. That’s why there’s no room for the UN. There’s no room for a settlement negotiated when you’re talking about religious wars, and we are in the midst of a religious war, and the aggressors in this case are militant Islamists finally so proclaimed by the president. Of course, there’s outrage that he would dare refer to these people as Islamic fascists, which he did.

But, you know, it’s amazing, we continue to react as though we’ll be hurt and stung by words, that the words we hear will offend us. The words we speak will offend someone else. It’s a setback. I told you. I can’t say I’m actually surprised. This is going to come to a head at some point, and I told you last week, may not be in our lifetimes, may go through all these sufferin’ ceasefires to end the sufferin’ and so forth, but here’s the truth. I’ll just lay the truth out for you, we’ll get into some detail in a minute. The enemy has not suffered a loss yet. They’ve just taken Somalia, they’re slaughtering people in Iraq, and they’re on the rise in Afghanistan. I’m not saying that we haven’t made any progress. But we’re not taking the war to this enemy. We’re not doing it. This move with Israel will prolong the war when we could have used it, and it could have been used to make great advances. And then again, when I hear the president say, ‘We can’t let Iran take over the Middle East.’

Would somebody tell me what we’re doing to stop that?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Right, right. I know. Yeah. Ha, ha. This time the UN, they really mean it! Oh, yeah, and this time, the Lebanese army, well, they’re really going to work the job this time. The Lebanese army really going to make it happen this time. I said they’re not (interruption). Well, they’re not supposed to disarm Hezbollah. That’s not what (interruption) Yeah, well, they say that. I’m being facetious, Snerdley. Of course this is a joke! This time the UN really means it? Yeah, right. This time the Lebanese army really will do its job? This time the international community really will come to Israel’s side when the terrorists attack them? Yeah. We got faith. This time everybody is going to do the right thing. We just helped negotiate a resolution that enhances the Hezbos’ standing from a terrorist group to some kind of legitimate enemy.

What do you mean we’ve got peace? We don’t have peace and you know damn well we don’t have peace. Peace follows victory. We’ve got another ceasefire. Here are the elements as I understand them. Here are the elements of this negotiated settlement over which they probably had hot dogs and beer this weekend at the state department, United Nations. This resolution, what is this one now, 1701? Okay, well, 1559 is still out there, didn’t do diddly-squat, so I guess we’re just going to forget it. Now we’ve got resolution 1701, that’s supposed to help the democratically elected Lebanese government emerge from this conflict stronger and better able to extend its sovereignty over all of its territory as called for in Resolution 1559.

This will mean more security and a better chance for peace for the people of both Israel and Lebanon. Well, fine, but it’s still a new resolution. Instead of going through the details first, let me go to the conclusion of the details here and just get to the nut of it. The nut of it is this. Now comes the hard part. Implementing the resolution and making good on the world’s commitment to save Lebanon and the people in Lebanon and Israel who didn’t want this war and who do not want another. The president’s called on the international community to turn its words into action. That’s precisely what the United States intends to do. But the key word here, now comes the hard part, implementing the resolution. Seems to be always the stumbling block.

It just seems to me, folks, that it would have been better if the Hezbos had been crippled and unable to continue to fight and maybe even reconstitute themselves rather than go through this ruse, but here’s what the resolution 1701 does. It makes clear who’s responsible for the war, and the blame is pinned squarely on the Hezbos, their July 12th attack. It calls for the unconditional release of the Israeli prisoners abducted by the Hezbos, although I don’t think it does. There’s a disagreement of opinion on that. Amir Taheri, who writes about this in the New York Post today, says it does not, the latest UN resolution is really designed to fudge the real issues. It does not provide for an immediate release of the Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah. So that remains up in the air.


What else did it call for? An immediate cessation of hostilities. That means that Hezbollah stops attacking Israel and Israel suspends its offensive operations. Israel, however, does not withdraw until the arrival of a robust international force and the deployment of the Lebanese armed forces. The Hezbos cannot be allowed to return to their old positions from which they harassed northern Israel. Now, diplomats say that France is likely to lead this force. Now, you just have to excuse me. That would be Douste-Blazy, right? That would be Philippe Douste-Blazy, French foreign miniature — a faux pas there — but I’ll stick by it. The French foreign miniature, Philippe Douste-Blazy, was due in Beirut tomorrow to discuss the conditions for the deployment of the international force; the re-opening of Lebanon’s ports and airport and humanitarian aid.
Lebanon’s defense minister said the Lebanese army would send 15,000 troops to the north of the Latani river around the end of the week ready to enter the southern border areas. However, he said — and this is the Lebanese defense minister, he said, “The army is not going to the south to strip Hezbollah of weapons and do work Israel did not.” All right. You know, this Douste-Blazy guy called the Iranians a “stabilizing force.” Send them in there! We may as well send the Iranians in with the French to monitor all this, for all it’s worth and all the good that it will do. The resolution also calls for “a robust international force to deploy throughout the south, authorized to assist the Lebanese army to enforce an arms embargo to prevent the resupply of Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah is not being disarmed. That’s not in the resolution, and the Lebanese say we’re not going to do it. Hey, that’s what the Israelis were supposed to do. We’re not going to help the Israelis do their work! This resolution, we’re just not going to allow them to be rearmed. It enhances the existing UNIFIL. Though the enhanced force still carries the UNIFIL name, this is the robust international force going in there, folks, to make this really work. That’s not the same force. This force has a broader mandate (unlike the current bunch): the authority to take the initiative because the resolution authorizes it to take all necessary action to fulfill its mission. It also will have the capabilities to take the initiative. The enhanced force will be much larger than the existing one.
We set a target of 15,000 soldiers, sevenfold increase. This robust and enhanced force will deploy with another 15,000 Lebanese troops. I’m just here to tell you that the 15,000, the international troops from France and wherever else, and the 15,000 troops from Lebanon, are not at any moment in time going to consider the Hezbos to be the enemy nor the problem. Now, this just this morning from the Jerusalem News Wire. “Anticipating Hezbollah’s failure to comply with the UN-brokered ceasefire, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan sent a letter to Jerusalem over the weekend insisting that Israel not respond militarily to any violation of Security Council resolution 1701,” this according to the Jerusalem Post.
“The secretary-general said that Israel should only respond in immediate self-defense, not by re-launching a wider military offensive against the terror group.” In effect, Kofi Annan saying that Israel should totally ignore Hezbo efforts to reestablish itself in southern Lebanon, even though they’re supposed to get out of there under terms of 1559. The Israelis are supposed to ignore Syrian efforts to resupply the group and should only respond in a very pinpoint manner to any further firing of missiles at northern Israeli. “Both the Lebanese military and French forces expected to bolster peacekeepers already on the ground have said they will not confront Hezbollah with force if the terror group fails to go along with the ceasefire terms. The Israeli government sources said Annan’s letter was unacceptable and that a firm response was being drafted.” So there you have it. That pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. Ceasefire leads to more war. Ceasefires lead to increased wars, increased intensity.
Ceasefires lead to more death.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Something else about this resolution. It totally, totally ignores the previous one, Resolution 1559. It just totally ignores it. It’s like it’s not even there. That was passed two years ago and it called for the disarmament of the Hezbos as a step toward giving a legitimate Lebanese government a monopoly of armed forces in the country, and everybody says that the purpose of this new resolution is to establish a firm and functioning government in Lebanon, that the Lebanese totally control. Well, that’s what 1559 was, and it’s just been pffft, thrown away in the wind. This new resolution, 1701 just says nothing about it whatsoever.

Caroline Glick, a columnist for the for the Jerusalem Post, says the big winners here are Kofi Annan, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran. Kofi Annan is a major beneficiary of the resolution because it named him the arbiter of compliance with the ceasefire, and that’s why he fired off that letter to the Israelis that I just shared with you. Moreover, by retaining the United Nations peacekeepers and widening their mandate, it rendered Annan generalissimo Kofi Annan of Lebanon. Israel can expect daily condemnations from the UN secretariat’s office for any act to defend itself against has strikes. The Hezbos are the big winner of the resolution because it adopts almost every Hezbo demand. Hezbollah will not be disarmed. An arms embargo will not be instituted against it. Its unsupportable claim to Lebanese sovereignty over the Shebaa farms in the Golan Heights has received international recognition.

It’s not going to be forced to release the Israeli soldiers it holds as hostages. As Hassan Nasrallah put it: Yippee, we won! But we still have more demands so you better watch out in Haifa. They are being emboldened, and of course Syria is a winner because the resolution made no mention of the fact that Syria is the Hezbollah logistical base. By ignoring Syria’s central role in the war, the resolution effectively gave its blessing to continued Syrian aggression against Israel and US forces in Iraq through terrorist proxy armies. Big winner of all is Iran. Iran, which was the architect of the entire war, did not even receive a mention in this resolution. It’s already using this victory to force the Arab world to accept its leadership. The Iranian foreign minister’s visit Sunday with Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was a clear sign that its stock is sky high.

Iran has not had full diplomatic relations with Egypt since 1979. So they’re feeling their oats out there, and then that little Bashar Assad up in Syria, said that America’s plan for a new Middle East has collapsed, that it is an illusion. This is after the Hezbos’ successes in fighting against Israel. ”The Middle East the Americans aspire to has become an illusion.’ Assad was speaking to a journalists association in Damascus. He said, ‘The region had changed because of the achievements of the resistance.” In this case the resistance actually was the Israelis, but the resistance is being called the Hezbollah group. Hezbollah is minding their own business, just doing their social programs, building highways and bridges and roads and hospitals and all these other good works, health care for the masses. All of a sudden here come the Israeli tanks over the border, and the great resistance of the Hezbos mounted this attack, this defensive maneuver, and saved the day and showed the rest of the world that the mighty Israel is now impotent and so is its ally the United States. Let’s start on the phones. People want to weigh in. Tim in Detroit. You’re first on the EIB Network. Hello, sir.

CALLER: Hello, sir, honor to speak with you.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: My opinion is I think Israel has no choice but to sit for a minute and wait for Hezbollah to break the ceasefire, and then they really don’t have any choice but to then move forward. I think they got caught by surprise with the arms that Hezbollah got from Iran and Syria and they’re just kind of regrouping and waiting to move forward.

RUSH: Well, you think they’re going to do that under this current leadership?

CALLER: I think the general —

RUSH: The current —

CALLER: — pressure on Olmert, I think they got caught by surprise with the resistance, but they have no choice. If they wait for Hezbollah to rearm with weapons that can go farther into Israel, how long are they going to wait? Israel hasn’t waited before. I mean, they’ve moved when they thought they really needed to and I think it’s getting to that point.

RUSH: My memory on this is the Israelis don’t violate these ceasefires. So you’re saying they’re going to have to wait for the Hezbos to violate the ceasefire? The Hezbos —

CALLER: I think they’ll do it. I think they’re emboldened; I think they’ll end up violating the ceasefire in a relatively short time and in the meantime Israel can regroup and be ready —

RUSH: Actually, they already have, but nobody is talking about it.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: They’ve already launched some Katyusha rockets. They didn’t make it to Israel, so the ceasefire still holds. The missiles didn’t make it to Israel, uh, uh! Ceasefire still holds.

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: But they’ve already… I mean, Israeli Defense Army shot five Hezbollah fighters in two incidents today. But there’s a ceasefire.

CALLER: I think they are just biding their time. I think they have no choice. I don’t think they can go much longer. I do have one side comment if I can —

RUSH: By all means. Side comment, rear comment, front comment, they all work.

CALLER: For the people in Rio Linda, I don’t know, maybe your statistician can bring something up just to put things in perspective there, but has anyone put lately the population of Israel compared to the Arab states and even the square miles of Israel compared to the Arab states in the Middle East just to give the people in Rio Linda a picture of —

RUSH: Sir, I am shocked.


CALLER: — a Rhode Island against the United States kind of thing.
RUSH: Shocked. I am stunned you asked this question. Because it was I, El Rushbo, your host, who did just that two weeks ago. I did it in a number of different ways. Let’s try it again. Imagine New Jersey. Israel is smaller than New Jersey, but imagine New Jersey is Israel, and everything around it is its enemies who want to wipe it out. Depending on how you count the populations, how far out you go with Arab countries, the population of Israel is about six million, there’s five million Jewish people there, versus five hundred million Arabs, and of course those five million Jews are on land that they “don’t deserve. It’s not theirs! It’s the Arabs’,” and so forth. You get 500 million Arabs surrounding five million Jews, and who is it that’s putting bombs on each other and sending their kids out to blow each other up? It’s not the Israelis. It’s the Arabs. Israel is smaller than Massachusetts, smaller than — not smaller than Rhode Island — smaller than New Hampshire, it’s tiny, tiny. It’s nine miles wide at its narrowest. It’s a nine-mile-wide country. Boca Raton, this is Maria. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Great to have you back.
RUSH: Thank you.
CALLER: I have a question, since now I feel the same as you do, we’ve kind of given up all hope to win this war between Israel and Hezbollah since they turned it over to the absolute worthless UN. When and if the Muslim world finally solidifies, because we are not really doing what I feel we should be doing strong enough, and all of a sudden Iran gets powerful enough and takes over Iraq and possibly Afghanistan again, and these Muslim nations totally solidify in that area, and then we’ve got endless terrorist cells in almost all the allied countries that we work with and deal with. And all of a sudden Ahmadinejad says, okay, it’s time to go, let’s go, and all these cells take off, and they are now blasting off in every country: Australia, England, Spain, Italy. Where are we going to be and who’s going to be our ally? All of those nations are going to be really busy trying to take care of themselves. I don’t see who’s going to be helping anybody. I just wonder what you think about that.
RUSH: All right, here’s how I want to react to that. I want to go back to my comment earlier about this being a religious war. I know most people don’t want to deal with that, and they don’t want to deal with it because they don’t want to deal with the scenario that you’ve just painted. Most people — I will guarantee you, Maria — listening to the program today, having heard your scenario, are going, “Come on! That will never happen. It isn’t possible. Come on. Let’s get real, Rush. Why are you letting that’s wackos on the radio? That’s never, ever going to happen.”
It is the objective of Iran, so far as it goes in the Middle East. This stuff is all being driven by fervent religious beliefs. Some might consider them perverted and foolish, but nevertheless that’s what I think is on the agenda. Nobody seems to want to deal with that aspect of it. As I say, they want to deal with things in an episodic fashion as though these wars. “Ah, it’s just another skirmish in Israel. Come on, Rush. Why do you care about it so much? There’s more to talk about. Let’s talk about the elections. Let’s talk about the Democrats. There’s a little episode. These things have been going on my whole life, Rush, just individual little episodes.” People don’t want to conjure up the possibility of the scenario, or one like the scenario that you shared with us, because it’s a call to arms in effect, you can’t let something like that happen. You can’t allow yourself to sit around while events spiral out of control so that one day you’re asking, “Well, gee, who are our friends?” and there aren’t any left.
That’s my reaction to it. I don’t know what it’s going to take for people to wake up and realize the genuine scope of the threat, what this little war between the Hezbollahs and the Israelis actually represented in terms of the proxies involved, but it won’t be long before we’ll find out. I have no prediction on how. I know this: I can hasten it by taking another vacation.
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