RUSH: Jim in Colorado Springs, you’re next. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes?
CALLER: I enjoy your show, and I agree with you on your take on issues 96-and-one-half percent of the time.
RUSH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CALLER: Yeah. Since I find out that you’re running everything and know all, as an old retired Marine officer — not related to Murtha — I had to call you and I don’t want to add to an air of redundancy, but I had a question, slash, point. The question that I had… You just asked Tony Snow at 1:20 your time, and that’s what is — what constitutes victory in Iraq.
RUSH: What did you think of his answer?
CALLER: Uh, the answer parallels the policy of President Bush’s — the administration’s — position on the issue, and President Bush said this morning at the press conference that he had considered going political, pursuing a political solution by going to the UN which I consider the UN a necessary evil but generally useless.
RUSH: Well, he did, but see, he was responding to Helen Thomas, who made an accusation, and her accusation was (screeching Helen Thomas impression) ‘Don’t you realize that Al-Qaeda is in Iraq because you?’ He says no. We tried to solve this diplomatically, and they did for a year and a half.
CALLER: I picked her bag up on the floor of the Press Club one day. (laughs) Rush, I think the —
RUSH: I’ll tell you what. Hey, Jim? Jim, hang on here. I want to know what you thought of Tony Snow’s answer and definition of victory, but I gotta take a quick time-out.
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RUSH: Back now to Colorado Springs and Jim. Jim, just tell me, what do you think, because I know you got a problem here with the definition of victory. What did you think of the way Tony Snow defined it?
CALLER: Well, I think it’s a cohesive — well, that’s not exactly the right word. I think it follows a pattern. The victory means an Iraqi can get a job, pursue a life, have freedom, a government that’s functioning, and that seems to be the goal.
RUSH: (sigh)
CALLER: Having been an advisor in Vietnam — and I’m in no way trying to make any parallels —
RUSH: No, of course not. Of course not.
CALLER: A lot of songs that are being sung today I’ve heard before. The problem is — and I’ll make a quick — a quick deal. Do you remember the film Lawrence of Arabia?
RUSH: Yeah, but I saw it a long time ago, and I just remembered the sand.
CALLER: Remember when Lawrence was being taken out to the chieftain? He was sent on a fool’s errand anyway by the British — who created Iraq, by the way, out of three parts.
RUSH: (tapping)
CALLER: But Lawrence was being escorted out by an individual to the chieftain that he was — warlord that he was — going to coordinate with, and they stopped at a water hole and they drank a little water and then out of the horizon —
RUSH: (long sigh)
CALLER: — comes Omar Sharif and his black horse and a black…turban and the whole bit and he takes a gun and shoots the — the escort to Lawrence of Arabia.
RUSH: Look, I —
CALLER: You ain’t got time.
RUSH: No! I just want you to focus. You obviously have a problem with this. Do you think we can win? Is that where you’re headed: ‘I don’t think we can win there’?
CALLER: I — I think that — I think that the — the problem —
RUSH: (laughing.)
CALLER: I’ll tell you, I — Some of the crap that’s coming out of Congress right now, I can’t believe.
RUSH: Let’s — (laughing.)
CALLER: The thing s the people — the individual American people, if they —
RUSH: (sigh)
CALLER: If they had a — an answer that they could give, how we going to win.
RUSH: (softly) I’m taking the nail clipper out.
CALLER: We’re not fighting a set-piece war over there in Iraq, and a lot of people have a misconception.
RUSH: All right, let’s try this — and I’m noted as the most polite host in America.
CALLER: I know. You’ve given me too much time already.
RUSH: Well, because you were an advisor. Who did you advise in Vietnam? Just a name.
CALLER: A name?
RUSH: Like did you advise Lyndon Johnson?
CALLER: No, I was a military advisor in Vietnam to the Vietnamese.
RUSH: Oh, that’s right. They were advising you guys on how to run the war back in Vietnam. All right, do you think we can win, yes or no? (whispers) Yes or no!
CALLER: Can we win?
RUSH: Yes or no.
CALLER: We have to turn it into an advisor effort, because General Petraeus and any active duty, unless General Petraeus — which I have no doubt that he’s going to do an excellent job with his report.
RUSH: (laughing.)
CALLER: No active duty general is going to tell the president anything other than what he wants to hear. Now, I —
RUSH: Jim, you are making me feel married all over again.
CALLER: (Guffaw.) You and my wife. She listens to you more than I do. But I — The thing is, we’ve got to —
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: (Laughing.)
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: We’ve got to get —
RUSH: (Laughing.)
CALLER: It’s not —
RUSH: Jim, do you…?
CALLER: — just getting the hell out of there.
RUSH: Jim, do you want to win? Do you want to win?
CALLER: I want to win!
RUSH: All right! If you want to win and you’re a retired Marine, that means we will. Because people like you are in charge of this over there. I appreciate the call.
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RUSH: To Orlando. This is Adam. Adam, I’m glad you called, sir.
CALLER: How you doing? I just wanted to make two real quick points. I know your time is valuable. I’m a second lieutenant in the Florida Army National Guard, and about the war, a couple things. First thing is, when you make a decision to go to war, you go to war and you win it. There’s no question about that. You gotta give the military the tools that they need to do it and butt out to those politicians. Politicians make the decision to go to war; generals fight wars. Second point. The least that you can do once the decision has been made, is to support us while we’re there. It is incredibly demoralizing when you hear politicians come out and just… One thing when Harry Reid came out and started saying the war is lost, the war is lost, and this whole thing started happening? I can’t tell you… It has an effect. Once the decision’s been made — and as far as I know, almost everyone that’s running for president right now signed off on that decision — the least you can do in exchange for a sacrifice that everyone else is giving to go over there and do it is to at least support us while they’re there. That’s all I want to say, Rush.
RUSH: Amen! Amen. (applauding) That-a-boy — and a lot of Americans do. The thing about Harry Reid… As I was listening to you, the thing about Harry Reid that is curious to me… He can say what he says. He did say it. I don’t know how widely reported in the Drive-By Media it was, meaning was it all over cable news at night? Did it make the three network newscasts at night? But it’s troubling, ladies and gentlemen, that there was so little outrage among the American people over that. I mean, here is a United States Senator, the majority leader, proclaiming defeat, waving the white flag of surrender! ‘We can’t win,’ he said. ‘We have lost.’ This should have elicited, in a sane political environment — he should have been greeted with — condemnation three to four times that of what all these people got during the illegal immigration debate.
RUSH: Tom in Richmond, Virginia, thank you for waiting. You’re next on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Many, many dittos.
RUSH: Appreciate that.
CALLER: I’m a Korean War veteran, and I think it’s just timely to remind young listeners that a political decision to settle the Korean War with a truce rather than victory has left us with nearly 57 years of presence in South Korea, and the same communist regime in North Korea as it was in 1950. We lost 54,000 Americans in two and a half years there, not 3,000: 54,000, and we’re still there with armed forces and the communists are still there.
RUSH: And so your point is, this is the result when you do not security victory?
CALLER: When you don’t get a victory, yes.
RUSH: Don’t win, yes.
CALLER: That was a politically engineered truce. No one complained about 54,000 deaths because the UN authorized our effort there. Somehow, that settled the liberals, but today they criticize.
RUSH: Well, it had to get roiled at some point, otherwise we wouldn’t have had the truce. I mean, you talked about the parallels. There had to be some unrest among the American people over the lack of progress for all the years that we were there, and hence we got this truth claiming victory. I forget how it was termed, but we are there, still there in the DMZ.
CALLER: Yes. So the truce didn’t settle anything. We’re still dealing with the North Korea communists and the nuclear threat that they have.
RUSH: Yeah. That’s a good point. I’m glad you called, Tom. I appreciate that. There are consequences to losing, and for some reason — and I don’t know how widespread this is, but for some reason — there are a number of people… I know a lot of Democrats over there in the Congress. You know, actually, they don’t believe this. They have to know. It’s just that they don’t care. They have to know that pulling out of there would be disastrous. They have to know it, and I think the only reason they would love for it to happen is so they could tag Bush with that defeat. But I don’t know. They have been on the march proclaiming defeat, owning defeat. They’ve been wanting us to lose. It’s not just that they have been proclaiming it. They’ve been desirous of it. They’ve been excited and eager about the concept of losing. And some people, because of their irresponsible behavior, some of the people that listen to them actually believe that if we would just, tomorrow and start over the next three months and bring back everybody, that somehow, why, it would be Garden of Eden time and it would be fun and roses and there would be no problems. We could go back. There wouldn’t be angst. There wouldn’t be any threats, wouldn’t be any danger, wouldn’t be any risk. Meanwhile, that part of the world has the, proven reserves of oil which I don’t care what anybody thinks about it, the world’s not going to be doing without it any time soon. To just abandon and walk out of there and turn that hellhole into (sigh) five to ten times worse than it is? It’s something that boggles the mind, and you compare this with what went on in North Korea and so forth. We are still there after all of these years, with a truce. We didn’t secure victory, and yet since there are no hostilities that have been declared and there’s no combat taking place, the anti-war crowd is not saying, ‘Get out of Korea, get out of Korea,’ but largely this is political anyway, this ‘bring the troops home.’ The Democrat kooks are who they are, but Democrats — like I told Tony Snow — if they do happen to win the White House, I will guarantee you they are not going to bring the troops home. They are not going to secure defeat while they are in charge of it. They will not do it, and they won’t do it also because they know the disaster that it would be.
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RUSH: Bill in St. Petersburg, Florida. Thanks for waiting. You’re next on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush. Thank you for taking my call.
RUSH: Yes, sir.
CALLER: The thing is — and I was trying to tell your call screener — I’m one who believes we can’t win this war. I’m an ex-Marine; I spent two years in Vietnam. I don’t… I love my Marines; don’t get me wrong. I can’t see where you can go into a place — and the same thing in Vietnam — where your enemy eats, sleeps, drinks, walks, talks, and looks just like your friends. You don’t know who to fight, and there’s no way to win.
RUSH: Uhhhh, of course there is.
CALLER: I beg your pardon. We went through the same thing in Vietnam.
RUSH: I can’t believe this. You’re not the first, and I just can’t believe attitudinally that we have people who actually believe the United States can’t win. I’m going to tell you something, Bill: if we can’t beat these people, it’s only a matter of time before our way of life as we know it is over.
CALLER: I agree. There are other ways to go about it.
RUSH: Well, then losing isn’t an option.
CALLER: But losing — well, you’re right. Winning the war the way we want to win it is not an option. We can’t do it.
RUSH: Ah! Ah! Now, that’s different. Winning the war — did you hear how Tony Snow defined victory?
CALLER: I did. I agree with him, but —
RUSH: No, you don’t, because you don’t think we can win it that way. He basically says we can’t get out of there ’til the Iraqis can defend themselves against these insurgents, these terrorists. If the Iranians attack the Iraqis have to be able to defend themselves. That’s the definition of victory.
CALLER: Okay, Rush.
RUSH: That he offered. You don’t think that we can achieve that.
CALLER: Go back to Vietnam. We used nothing but — Start off with advisers —
RUSH: This isn’t Vietnam. In the first place, the Vietnamese never attacked us liked Al-Qaeda have done. All these parallels I keep hearing about Vietnam, we lost that war (and it’s arguable whether we lost it) because we mismanaged it and we didn’t try to win it. It was not being fought by the people who know how to win wars.
CALLER: I agree with that, too, but also the point I like to make is you don’t know who to fight when you’re over there. You sent your young men over there and they shoot the wrong guy and he lives with it the rest of his life he gets punished for it or something like that. We should be training the Iraqis to win their own war, or let them fight it out.
RUSH: That’s what we’re doing, and the interim report came out today saying it’s going well on the military side. They set these eight benchmarks — frankly, who are we to set benchmarks, but we did. The leftists in Congress, and the Iraqis are out dying for their country now, and more and more of them are ramping up and being trained to do so, and they know who the enemy is. This is a gutless enemy in one way. They hide behind women and children; they hide in mosques and so forth. At some point, Bill, what’s going to happen is — and I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but at some point we’re going to get the will to wipe ’em all out. Wherever they’re hiding and whoever else goes with them. At some point, we’re going to be so threatened and we’re going to be realize it. Enough Americans are going to wake up. I don’t know when it’s going to be, but enough of them are going to wake up and realize our way of life is threatened, especially if we don’t pull this off over there, if we cut-and-run.
At some point people are going to demand: just wipe ’em all out. They’re raising all those little kids to hate anyway. They’re raising all these kids to be future terrorists, especially the young boys. You find some people who say, ‘This is really a 30- to 40-year project if we can get started now on trying to get hold of these cultures.’ That’s another thing the Iraq experiment is about, is to try to demonstrate that there’s something more in life than strapping on a bunch of explosives and killing yourself! You know, the leaders of this movement never do it. The leaders of this movement are not out there dying for the cause. They’re using these little recruits that moms and dads start drilling all kinds of hatred into from the minute they can understand the language. How do you think these highly educated, professional doctors at the National Health Service in the UK ended up wanting to blow up 1400 people in a nightclub and destroy an airport? They were Brits. They were in the system. They were trained to be doctors and so forth.
In addition to whatever medical training they got, they were filled with a boiling rage when they were growing up, and it’s happening all over that culture, the militant Islamist faction of that culture. The more they think that they can get away with impunity, the more they think they can get away with attacking and nobody’s going to do anything about them, the bolder they’re going to get. At some point, we will do what it takes to deal with this. We always have, and we always will. It’s just, we find ourselves in this situation right now where we’re in the midst of all kinds of internal political hostilities in this country because the spoiled-rotten, little brat Democrats just can’t get over the notion that they haven’t had the White House the last eight years. (whining voice) ‘It’s just not fair! It’s their birthright to run this country. They’re the best people to do that.’ So to hell with anything else, including national security! The hell with defending the country! The hell with the morale of the troops!
The hell with respecting anything that this country is trying to do to defend and protect these people; it doesn’t matter right now. What matters right now is only one thing, and that’s destroying George W. Bush, destroying this presidency, and setting up a sweeping victory for their nominee in 2008. That is all they care about, and they have allies in the Drive-By Media who care about the same thing. Democrats and the media, holding hands, running the country again, with a monopoly: that’s like their dream. To hell with whatever disasters they create in the interim, and then they say, ‘We’ll fix all this stuff. We’ll deal with it when we’re in power.’ In the meantime, you have a country that is undecided. You have a country that’s dispirited and demoralized and you have troops that are subjected to the same attempt of demoralization. Frankly, it is a criminal shame that the Democrats are behaving the way they are. But don’t for a minute think that we can’t win. We can and we will.