RUSH: A couple of audio sound bites here, then we’ll go back to the phones. First off, this afternoon, CNN Live. The guest, American University Chair of Islamic Studies Akbar Ahmed, and he said this about Barack Obama’s challenges.
AHMED: Remember that today for President Obama his greatest headache is not coming from Rush Limbaugh and the Republicans. It’s really coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan. He staked his reputation and his foreign policy in that part of the world.
RUSH: So here you have the American University Chair of Islamic Studies, Akbar Ahmed, saying, ‘Limbaugh and the Republicans are not Obama’s greatest headache. It’s Afghanistan and Pakistan.’ Pakistan’s falling apart. Pakistan’s falling apart, and the Taliban is taking over. They did a stupid thing. They advocated a stupid thing. They gave the Taliban a province, at the urging of the Obama administration. They gave the Taliban a province in Pakistan. ‘Okay, you guys. You want to be the Taliban? Be the Taliban in this province,’ and guess what? The Taliban’s taken over neighborhoods provinces, or trying to. Once again, even in Pakistan, they’re exhibiting a total lack of understanding of the enemy — of evil — and what their intent is. And they have every intention of getting back in control in Afghanistan.
And Dr. Ahmed here is right in the sense that this is where Obama has applied himself foreign policy-wise, other than the — eh, well, Hamas, too. You know, he’s legitimizing Hamas. He’s putting out little threatening notices to Israel. ‘If you don’t accept Hamas, why, we might have a policy thing on Iran for you that you don’t like.’ I mean, we’ve gotta thugocracy going on here, but Obama goes to the G20, and then he goes to the NATO summit, and he asks our allies for our help in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He doesn’t get it. It was an abject failure there. NATO allies are going to send 5,000 ‘trainers,’ no combat troops. So Dr. Akbar Ahmed is exactly right about Obama’s big headaches today. But this, of course, hasn’t stopped other Democrats in this country from saying that I am the problem.