HAGEL: Mr. President, we have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.
RUSH: Oh, spare me.
HAGEL: America finds itself now in a dangerous and isolated position in the world. We are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims.
RUSH: You idiot!
HAGEL: This debilitating and dangerous perception must be reversed, as the world seeks a new center of gravity for this new century.
RUSH: You, sir, are… I’m going to refrain from name-calling. He says we are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims? Senator, you are an elected senator. You are one of 100 special people in the world’s greatest deliberative body. It is Muslims who are at war with us! Does 9/11 exist in your memory bank, sir? What did we do to cause this? I want Senator Hagel to explain this. What in the world did we do to cause it? He must have the view that if we’re at war with Muslims, we must have attacked them at some point. The problem is we didn’t defend ourselves against their attacks for 20 years. Now all of a sudden we are, and we’ve got senators in the United States, from the Republican Party, who are concerned the world thinks that we are at war with Muslims — and so the only way to make the world love us is to surrender and give up! It was just a few short weeks ago that this very Senator, Chuck Hagel, rejected any concept of a timeline for withdrawal.
By the way, we’re going to start a new game on this program, and I’m going to include Senator Hagel in this game. It’s called Let’s Play ‘Guess the Religion!’ Two stories. The first is a story out of France. There were riots on a French subway yesterday by ‘youths.’ Youths rioted. What youths? Who besides militant Muslims are rioting in France? So Let’s Play ‘Guess the Religion!’ Here’s another story: ‘Students Held Hostage in the Philippines — Gunmen who say they have grenades seize group near Manila’s city hall. Gunmen demanding improved housing for children seized a busload of day care students and teachers Wednesday as police surrounded the stalled vehicle in downtown Manila. Hostage takers scribbled in large letters on a sheet of paper taped to the bus windshield, they were holding 32 children and two teachers, were armed with two grenades, an assault rifle and a pistol. They said they were demanding improved housing and education for 145 children in a day care center where the incident appeared to have begun.’
It would be hard to house kids when they’ve been blown up. You have to admit that.
So I wonder what religion these people are. ‘Guess the Religion!’ of these ‘gunmen’ in the Philippines. The Philippines is a hotbed for Islamofascism, as well as much of that region of the world. Yet here is the brilliant Senator Hagel suggesting that we are ‘perceived as a nation at war with Muslims.’ I’m going to tell you something, folks. You go through life governing your own life on the basis of what you think others think of you, and you are a failure, and you will amount to nothing but a hill of beans. Who wants a hill of beans? You will be nothing, if your whole life is devoted to trying to be everything somebody you respect wants you to be, or somebody you don’t even know wants you to be.
In this case, Senator Hagel is concerned about a bunch of small fry countries who depend on us for much of what they have and much of their progress. He’s concerned what they think of us. He’s concerned what they think of him. This is a recipe for disaster. It’s a recipe for failure. In individual terms, it’s a best-guaranteed way to make sure you never amount to who you really are, because you’re going to spend your whole life trying to meet the expectations of others, make others happy, make others not angry, not offend them or whatever. This is embarrassing that somebody who apparently has this degree of intelligence, to be elected to the United States Senate, has this kind of an outlook and worldview.