RUSH: Jerry in Milwaukee. You’re next on the EIB Network, sir. Nice to have you with us, too.
CALLER: Hi. Thanks for taking my call, Rush.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: The consistent message I hear among conservatives is that, uh, liberals, even if you strongly disagree with the war, no matter how your objections to the war are, say in Iraq, you should support the troops, don’t undermine the president. The problem — and supporting the troops is the ideal. It’s more important than one’s objections. But the problem is that conservatives, during the Bosnian war, they didn’t support the troops. They stood up for their objections. They said that the war was wrong, and they didn’t — because they believed the war was wrong, and then they opposed the war. Why cannot liberals, those who oppose the war in Iraq, the same thing? If they don’t support the troops, why is it wrong…? But it’s right for conservatives not to support the troops in Bosnia?
RUSH: Um, I do not know where in the world you come up with that.
CALLER: I’ve listened to you, Rush! I listened to you during the Bosnia campaign!
RUSH: I did not oppose Bosnia! We were not protesting the troops!
CALLER: You opposed the war.
RUSH: I was not.
CALLER: You opposed the war.
RUSH: Those were NATO troops anyway!
CALLER: You opposed the war.
RUSH: I did not oppose the war!
CALLER: There were American troops in Bosnia. There were some American pilots fighting missions in Bosnia.
RUSH: Right, but the American involvement was from 15,000 feet.
CALLER: Should it matter? Should it matter? If there’s American troops…
RUSH: But there was no reason to protest it. Nobody did protest it! The Republicans supported President Clinton on that.
CALLER: No, they opposed the war. They voted to cut off funding for the war. The Republican caucus —
RUSH: Republicans did not oppose the troops! The one problem that anybody had with Bosnia, was Clinton’s motivation for it. That was a war for a legacy. There was no US vital national interest at stake. This was another European mess that they couldn’t handle in their own backyard. They had their little genocide going on over there, so yes, we went over and tried to stop it. It didn’t really succeed. It’s still a hellhole over there because sometimes these things have to play themselves out, and somebody wins, somebody loses, and after you get victory is when you get peace. But Clinton was doing Meals on Wheels. I love the way liberals will send the military anywhere. They want to go to Darfur now. They didn’t want to go to Rwanda, but they want to go to Darfur, and they wanted to go to Somalia til’ it got too dicey, then they wanted to pull out of Somalia. It was the New York Times that got us into Somalia with pictures of starving kids and flies buzzing around their faces. That one picture in the New York Times that shows up on CNN, and George Bush 41 is forced to send troops over there. Clinton brings them back when 24 Rangers die, and we showed bin Laden that we didn’t have the stomach, in his mind, to take any casualties.
We’re maybe sending that message again. But the Bosnia war was not a war where any vital US national interest was at stake. It was a Clinton legacy effort. But there were not Republicans running around in the street protesting the troops and doing anything equivalent to what is happening to the troops and the president in this case. There was a lot of people had a lot of problems with Bill Clinton, but they had nothing to do with the war in Bosnia or any of that. It was an accumulation of things. I’m not saying people weren’t protesting Clinton, because of course it would be ridiculous to assert that, but you are totally wrong. Even if you are right, though — even if you are right — listen to your logic. Hypothetically, just because Republicans protested a war, you gotta protest the war. Regardless of the merits, regardless of what’s at stake, regardless of what your protesting does in terms of affecting the morale of those involved in it. This tit-for-tat stuff that you guys seem want to get in, I know what’s going on now with Bush. You’re trying to get back because Clinton was impeached, and your boy was humiliated a bunch of times, mostly by his own actions, and he can’t find a legacy. So, the Tit-for-Tat Crowd is what you guys are, and it’s irresponsible and it’s also irrelevant because we’re not going to listen to you.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I just love it, Snerdley, when you find these limp-wristed seminar callers out there. (New Castrati impression) ‘Republicans, Mr. Limbaugh, tried to cut off funding for the troops in Bosnia!’ Yeah, name for me one Republican who came up with the strategy of redeploying to Okinawa? Name one Republican who issued a timeline. Name one Republican who’s out there calling the generals a bunch of idiots. Name one Republican who was ever saying, ‘We’ve lost. We should surrender. We should get out of there.’ How about Murtha? Give me the Republican equivalent of John Murtha and what his comments about the Marines have been, or Durbin’s comments about the soldiers at Club Gitmo, or Kennedy’s comments about the soldiers at Abu Ghraib. All the other Democrats. Clinton, he was right to go to war. He should have been bombing Afghanistan, dolt! He should have been bombing Afghanistan rather than being on some Meals on Wheels legacy mission here. Well, there was a timeline. Clinton said that we’d be home in eight months by Christmas, and we’ve still got troops there! What’s the exit strategy? That always comes up in a war, but what’s the exit strategy? (Clinton impression) ‘Oh, well, Limbaugh, just shut up. You know, you’re on the radio, and I’m running the country. I don’t have to listen to you. We’ll be home by Christmas.’ I’ll never forget the Bosnia war. It was a NATO thing, and they had that spokesman. Jamie, I forget his last name. I love this guy’s voice: ‘Our forces there, under the command of Brigadier General Omar Omar, reports heavily casualties in fighting. Our forces there are doing great…’ The whole thing in Bosnia and Kosovo was a mess that the Europeans had in their own backyard, and they couldn’t clean it up and hello NATO. It was made to order for the libs! It was genocide. It was ethnic cleansing. I’ll never forget Madam Albright. She would talk about Milosh-evic, as she pronounced it, and she hated the guy. She hated Milosevic. She’d go on the Sunday shows, and she would try to tell everybody what a rotten SOB Milosevic was. These are the same people that now say Saddam wasn’t that bad. Tony in Framingham, Massachusetts, I’m glad you called and waited, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. First-time caller, a long-time listener going back to 1991 when Bush was president, and we had troops on the ground in Iraq.
RUSH: Well, I appreciate that sir.
CALLER: The more things change the more they’re still the same, I guess. Anyway, question for you, Rush. I’m trying to answer it myself, but I want your opinion on it. Maybe you addressed it on your show. I kind of listen to you during lunch. But what would the world be like today if Saddam Hussein were still in power? Aside from the fact he’d still be paying terrorists’ families to go and kill themselves and kill a bunch of Jews and Americans with them, aside from the fact he’d be killing his own citizens faster than he could pronounce their names, what else would the world be like today? I say terrorism would really be on the march a hell of a lot more than it is right now because we’d have no stake in the ground, aside from Afghanistan. We’d have no stake in the ground.
RUSH: Well, these if questions… I know the point that you’re trying to make.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: They’re interesting sometimes is to speculate on it, if Saddam Hussein were still in power but under what circumstances? Had we gone to UN as we did, and the UN said, ‘No, we won’t help,’ and if we said, ‘Oh, okay. Screw it. We won’t go,’ then that would have been a major defeat for us and Saddam would be ramping up with all these terrorist buddies of his.
CALLER: Exactly.
RUSH: He’d be making plans to continue marching on. If we had never tried to enforce the resolutions, if we had never gone to the UN and Saddam were still in power, who knows? But that didn’t happen. We tried the diplomatic route, that didn’t work. You know, Saddam took a huge gamble. I know the point of your question, and the point of your question is this stuff isn’t going away. You can’t buy these guys off with a bottle of Bordeaux and Camembert because they don’t consume adult beverages. Well, they do when they go to the Bahamas, but that’s when nobody can see them. (sigh) You’re not going to get these guys bought off when they got a gun pointed at your kid’s head with a bottle of wine, nor are they going to go for this ‘group hug’ business to try to stop you. Their idea of a group hug is a suicide belt.