RUSH: All right, admit it, folks, nobody really knows what to think about this speech until I weigh in on it, right? Even though you all have your opinions, the most often asked question across the country this morning is, ‘What does Rush think about it?’ Well, I thought it was incoherent. I thought it was incoherent because his policy is coherent. He didn’t even announce a policy other than to get out of there. It’s all political, the whole thing. He didn’t use the word victory. He didn’t talk about winning anything. He talked about bringing it to a successful conclusion, but what’s the conclusion?
Greetings anyway, my friends, Rush Limbaugh here the EIB Network and the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The telephone number if you want to join us, 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
If there’s a policy for the use of these troops, we didn’t hear it last night. Now, normally when presidents announce military action, they don’t give away the game plan, but there at least is some inspiring motivation to send the troops off to war to explain what the objective is. I don’t know what the objective is. I mean, I know what it should be, but I don’t know that we heard the objective last night. You have to know how to listen to Obama. You have to know how to listen to liberals. And I do. This speech last night was all about placating as many sides of the political spectrum as there are. The last thing it was about was military victory. And you could tell by looking at the faces of the cadets that they thought the same thing. And, man, did they assemble one diverse group of cadets. I mean I saw it all. They were all there, those that were awake. The senior military people, I mean they had looks on their faces that you could tell Douglas MacArthur wasn’t in the building. You could tell Ike was not in the building.
In fact, from an Obama supporter point of view, they probably loved it. It was a relic of the campaign speech, a soaring — he read the teleprompter well. But it was typically dead. There was no emotion. There was no inspiration. He used the word ‘I’ 36 times. He placed a cost on national security: ‘We’re going to scrutinize the cost of war versus our budget deficits more than I’ve ever done before and I’m going to work with Congress very hard.’ There’s not a price to US national security. This is a rounding error what we’re spending here compared to what he spent elsewhere in the federal budget. It was incoherent. But if you’re looking for a sign that this guy is going to do the right thing by sending some troops, and there are many people on our side who are saying, ‘All right, well, you know, he sent some troops, he finally came to the right conclusion.’ He looked bored last night ’cause he gave this speech in March. I went back and looked at it. I’ve got it here in the stack, the same speech. In fact, he was more committed to success in Afghanistan in March than he was last night at the United States Military Academy. He had far more powerful things to say. He had far more damaging and critical things to say of Al-Qaeda.
He didn’t talk about victory because, remember, he’s uncomfortable with the concept of victory. He has said this. And in Obama’s world — and I know some of you are not going to like this — but if you haven’t learned yet not to doubt me, learn now. Do not doubt me. Barack Obama believes Al-Qaeda has a point. Barack Obama believes our enemies have a point. He even admitted again last night our mistakes, national mistakes, targeting the Bush administration, apparently lying about Rumsfeld denying troop requests from 2001 to 2006. Rumsfeld has issued a statement. ‘What do you mean, Rush, Al-Qaeda has a point.’ In Obama’s world, America is guilty, or was, until he was elected. America is unjust. America is immoral. America has plundered the world and stolen resources for our own selfish capitalistic use. Don’t forget in one of Obama’s books, just as an aside here, when he’s talking about the first job he had in the private sector, he felt like he was behind enemy lines.
He doesn’t like the private sector, just like Chris Matthews last night referred to West Point as the enemy camp! He referred to Obama going into the enemy camp, the United States Military Academy. And people are livid and outraged by that, as they well should be. (interruption) You’re not livid and outraged by it? Well of course he told the truth about what he thinks, but it’s an outrageous truth. You want to praise him for being honest? Fine. But the United States Military Academy is not the enemy camp. The enemy camp is MSNBC. The enemy camp is the White House right now, not to us, for the country. The United States Military Academy is in no way the enemy camp other than to these people, and it is quite instructive that they say so. As they panic, they get more honest. As they panic and as they acquire more power, they become more hateful.
(paraphrasing) ‘Al-Qaeda has a point, our enemies have a point,’ Obama has run around the world apologizing for this country at every chance and he did so again last night. (imitating Obama) ‘We made some mistakes. I’m gonna fix ’em,’ whatever he said. ‘They have a point. America’s done some pretty horrible things. We’re not going to torture.’ Oh, I’m sure the cadets loved that. He just slams the Navy when he talks about torture at Guantanamo because that’s who runs Guantanamo. It’s a naval base. Some of these people in that room last night may be deployed. They’re all going to graduate as officers. And, I’m telling you, I don’t know what the strategy is. McChrystal obviously has one. Here’s a question for you. Remember all during the Iraq war, the Democrats and Obama said, ‘Afghanistan’s where we ought to be. Afghanistan is where we dropped the ball. Afghanistan, Afghanistan, Afghanistan.’
They didn’t really mean it. That was just a way to make their political attack on Bush and on Iraq. And during the Iraq surge, remember Petraeus was a liar before he said a word, it wouldn’t work. ‘This war is lost,’ said Harry Reid. ‘The surge won’t work.’ Obama said the surge won’t work and, even after it has worked, Obama denies that it’s worked. One might say, ‘Well, if it didn’t work in Iraq in his perverted polluted mind why is he doing one in Afghanistan?’ But then is it a surge or is he just sending these people over there to stand around and make sure the Taliban doesn’t take over the cities. Most of them are going to go to Kandahar and Kabul. Kandahar is really the hot spot over there, and I’ve been to Kandahar and it’s the southwestern region of the country. And that’s where a lot of the warlords are holed up. I mean it’s pretty testy there and it’s close to the border with Pakistan. So what are we going to do? What are the rules of engagement? We had phone calls from military personnel the past week on this program. The rules of engagement are pretty tight.
So what we have here, we have 30,000 troops when the original request was 80, that was the optimum. Forty was okay. Twenty, it doesn’t matter. So we’re at 30. Are they going to stand around or are they actually going to engage the bad guys? What is the policy? What is the plan? We got broad philosophical terms, we got the word ‘I’ used 36 times. It took three months to conceive sending 30,000 troops. The cadets were used as pawns. You could see half of them either falling asleep or trying to keep their heads up so they wouldn’t nod off. Their applause was sporadic and unenthusiastic, and the only time that there was real robust applause was when Obama started saying what today are traditional conservative values, like freedom. When he sounded Bush-like near the end of the speech, that’s when the audience came alive. And I knew when the left was watching that segment, that’s what they hated. They hated that moment when the audience comes alive, the concepts of freedom being mentioned.
Now, okay, Snerdley just sent me a little prof note here on the timing of the withdrawal, summertime 2011. But now see, here’s something else, Snerdley, you need to know this. During the speech last night Obama did say, (imitating Obama) ‘I’m going to send ’em over there, make sure Taliban, bring ’em back, summertime 2011.’ Just in time for what? The elections, satisfying his leftward base, provided the conditions on the ground are whatever. Now, he mentioned that. Now, the AP has a story: ‘Administration officials now running out across the country selling the speech, selling the plan.’ Victory is not something you ought to have to sell. So victory is not what they’re selling here, folks. Nobody has to sell the United States winning, but he didn’t talk about winning, he didn’t use the word ‘victory,’ and if you have to run around and sell whatever that was last night then you know you’ve got problems, and one of the things that Gates, the secretary of defense, is saying, (paraphrasing) ‘That 2011 thing, that’s totally dependent, that’s not a hard–and-fast date,’ they’re all out there saying that now.
Nobody’s going to hear that. What they heard last night is we’re getting out of there in 2011. And the question is, why go in the first place? Yeah, you go in the first place because you politically can’t afford not to. You get out in the first place because that’s the most politically advantageous thing for you if you’re president and the reelection is coming up. See, this is not a campaign. This is not a persuasion seminar. This is life and death. The president of the United States is ordering people and deploying people into a war zone. God knows if they know what they’re supposed to do. God knows if they know what their objective is. And this is all treated as a speech to the nation on selling Social Security reform or health care. There was no passion here. It was professorial. I’m sure the cadets said, ‘My God, I just took notes on this today, we have to get another class here? I thought the president was coming up to speak to us.’
It was a classroom lecture by a community organizer. And in that context, I found this whole thing appalling. He read the teleprompter better than he has in months. There’s no question about that. And he had the godlike glance, you know, looking up over the teleprompter and everybody. And they made sure there was reverb and echo in there so that he sounded godlike or out of this world. He’s being praised. The usual pundits are saying he can’t please the left or the right, which means he must be doing something right. Some are saying he has more Republican support than support in his own party. Probably does. Republicans are interested in victory, and they think that’s what this is about, but I don’t. This is treated as a game last night, a political game, just the next step in the political progression of Obama’s takeover of this country. It was all nonsense.
Now, Afghanistan was rightly said to be crucial. The liberals used to say that it was crucial when they were undermining us in Iraq. They said we should focus on Afghanistan. So now they have their president, they run the military, we’re pulling out of Iraq and what are they doing? They’re pulling out of Afghanistan. The left is complaining he’s not pulling out fast enough. Forget them, because the left has never seen a war worth fighting or a war worth winning. The left is dangerous to the nation. They always have been, they always will be, but that does not mean Obama’s not pulling out, which he is. And he announced it. You just don’t do this. Wait ’til you hear some of the audio sound bites from the State-Controlled Media. They don’t think it made any sense last night. Bob Schieffer: ‘Why would you tell anybody when you’re leaving?’ All they gotta do is sit around and wait for you to leave and tell anybody that lives there that if you help the Americans when they pull out, you’re dead, we’re going to burn you and hang you in the streets.’ We’re not going to have any allies for the time we are there. This is pure sophistry. And then to put a price tag on it.
Folks, I don’t know about you, I was insulted by this. I was profoundly insulted. I was not impressed with how well he read the teleprompter. I was not impressed with the soaring rhetoric and the so-called oratory. The enemy now knows to hold on, the enemy knows to threaten villagers that they are going to be around forever when the Americans are going to leave. You better be allegiant to us. So Obama’s sending in these 30,000 troops not to win anything, but to lay the foundation for pulling them all out. And the other troops that are there, not just these 30,000. This is the policy of a left-wing politician, not a serious commander-in-chief who leaves the strategies to the experts. I heard this this morning and some last night that he can’t please anyone. We’re not talking about pleasing anyone! It’s a war, for crying out loud! There’s a goal in war, it’s to win it. We win, they lose. To hell with pleasing people! This is what I mean: ‘Al-Qaeda has a point.’ Like we have a policy that supports Israel and they don’t like Israel, no wonder they’re mad at us, they have a point. That’s how he views the world.
He can’t please everyone? We’re looking at this through a political prism. This is a war. The goal is to win it. Those who oppose victory are not morally equivalent to those of us who support it. This is the thing that frustrates me the most. There is no moral equivalence between victory and defeat. Just because somebody wants to lose does not mean they have an equal morality right to sit at the table and debate this. We’re not about losing. If we’re going to lose, don’t send the troops. The people on the left are wrong about this and we are right, and we don’t have to worry about how they feel. It’s not a strategy for winning anything. Obama did not use the words ‘victory’ or ‘win.’ And I hear, ‘Well what is victory, Rush, what is victory?’ Come on, folks, have we descended to the point that we’re going to argue with ourselves over what victory is? I’ll tell you what it is. Victory is preventing our enemy, which killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11 from using Afghanistan again to hit us. And it was the Taliban that gave Al-Qaeda the safe haven that they needed.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The nation awaits at 12 Noon Eastern every day to find out what’s really going on. Let me wrap this up here about this speech last night. You do not — if you’re serious about winning, you do not — create artificial deadlines like this. Eighteen months? Why not 20? Why not 17 months? At no time last night did President Obama explain why 18 months. At no time did he explain why 30,000 troops rather than 40, rather than 60, rather than 80 — and at no time last night did he say how many additional troops our allies and NATO would add. We learned today they’re adding 5,000. He simply said they would because they have not committed to 10,000 more troops. On top of all of this, most of the speech had nothing to do with Afghanistan. Do you realize that? Most of the speech had nothing to do with Afghanistan.
Most of it was another patronizing lecture about America, about the failures of his predecessor (exactly as I predicted, by the way), about the failures of past policies. At least three dozen references to himself, how ‘I did this, how I did that,’ and so forth, and how the nation ‘I really want to build is our own,’ while he is in the process of tearing it apart. Near the end, he had a few kind things to say about his country. He did talk about freedom, and that is when the cadets came alive. But it was almost as though it were an afterthought. Now, I understand why some conservatives and Libertarians are saying, ‘Look, Obama has no intention of winning the war so we need to get out now.’ That will not make the nation more secure.
What we need to do is keep up the pressure. We need to keep making the case. Not because of Obama, but because of the security of the country and our troops. If Afghanistan is not the right place to take a stand as the launching base for 9/11, then where is it? Because, I’ll tell you, it involves a lot more than Afghanistan, and we’re talking about getting out of the war on terror. I was actually surprised, ladies and gentlemen, that he used the word ‘terrorism’ a couple of times last night because his own administration has banned it. Remember that? There’s no such thing as a war on terrorism yet he used it twice last night. Had to be a… No, it wasn’t a slip of the tongue because somebody wrote it and put it on the teleprompter. Rules of engagement. Are we going to now…? These 30,000 troops, are they going to be given information and instruction on how to Mirandize the enemy, given they might end up in civil trials in America?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, let’s go to… Well, before we go to the media reaction, one story here, July 15th, 2008: ‘Obama Says Afghanistan is a ‘War That We Have to Win’ — Contending that the US is not pursuing a sound strategy…’ This is July 15, 2008, now. This is the presidential campaign. ‘Contending that the US is not pursuing a sound strategy for keeping Americans safe, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday that fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan would be his top priority after ending the war in Iraq. ‘This is a war that we have to win,’ Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery at the International Trade Center in Washington. In a major speech on Iran and national security, Obama said he would also secure nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue nations, achieve ‘true energy security’ and rebuild the nation’s international alliances.’
None of this has happened. It’s all worsening. ”By any measure, our single-minded and open-ended focus on Iraq is not a sound strategy for keeping America safe,’ Obama said. ‘In fact — as should have been apparent to President Bush and Sen. McCain — the central front in the war on terror is not Iraq, and it never was.” It’s Afghanistan. That’s from the presidential campaign, July 15th, 2008. Contrast that to that wet noodle speech that we got last night. Well, it was! It was a wet noodle speech. There was nothing about winning. There was nothing about how desperately important it is. It was focused on withdrawal, which means it was purely political. It’s no different than if Coach Mike Tomlin brings the Pittsburgh Steelers in on Friday and says, ‘We’re only going to play the first half, gang, on Sunday against the Raiders — and then we’re going home, and we’re going to announce it. The Raiders are going to be the only team on the field in the second half.’ Sometimes you have to convey things via an analogy.