RUSH: This is Anthony, Colorado Springs, Colorado. Hello, sir. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you, sir. I’d like to say the Putin is not invading the Ukraine. He’s ensuring that his 20% pro-Russian supporter base is not dissolved or dismantled before the Ukrainian elections. That way he can ensure that he gets a neutral, non-pro-EU government in this presidential election. He can grow his 20% supporter base to 35% for the next election, and get a pro-Russian government in that election. Every great strategist knows that you first build one’s defenses before you move to take the battlefield. I’d like to compare this to our involvement in Egypt where Obama sent money and guns to radicals in his minority supporter base before the Egyptian presidential election. Or compare this to United States crushing Cuba’s economy just for being a Russian supporter so close to our border. We don’t have the moral ground to stand on and point fingers, sir.

(crosstalk)

RUSH: Here is the problem. And this is exactly who Obama really is. A moral equivalence. This guy from Colorado Springs claims that what Putin is doing in Ukraine is what we have done in Cuba and everywhere else in the world, and why can’t they do it if we do it? But we don’t do what Putin is doing. That’s not who we are.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Another note to seminar callers: You see why we don’t permit people to read from prepared scripts on the program. We want you to tell us what you really think, not read something that you found interesting or influential. Because nobody outside of trained professional with read something somebody else wrote and make it sound compelling. I’m one of the few who can do it. I do it each and every day.

So I’m saying, “Don’t try this at home.” But nevertheless, that caller, “Anthony from Colorado Springs,” is exactly what I am talking about in terms of who it is that is running this country. That is exactly what the American left believes, that we have plundered the world, that we have run around the world and we have imposed our view, and we have imposed our freedom.

We have imposed our system on people, and in the process we have stolen their natural resources. In some cases, we’ve taken their oil and we’ve taken their diamonds. We’ve taken their minerals, and we have enslaved their people. This is what they believe. So, when the KGB decides to rebuild Russia into the Soviet Union again and takes over Georgia, and now threatens to make a move in Ukraine, all of a sudden, “Hey, we do it! Why are we telling them they can’t do it?”

We don’t do it.

That’s the difference.

We don’t conquer. (interruption) Okay… (interruption) Okay… (interruption) The… (interruption) Okay, so you want to ask the question, “Doesn’t Russia have the right to go in and squash a bunch of little bugs who border them, who are engaging in the behavior they don’t like that they might consider threatening?” Have you forgotten that the Ukrainians disarmed? They disarmed after we promised to defend them.

The Ukrainians do not have a military per se. Let me find that in the Stack here. (interruption) Well, they trusted us. They trusted Bill Clinton. They trusted the UK. Let me find the story here. Damn it, I put this the bottom of the Stack someplace. I may have to dig it out. I may have already used it and didn’t get to that part of it. But… Here we go. This is it. It’s in the French News Agency story: “Ukraine Soldiers Vow Defiance as Bases Surrounded.”

Nobody is telling you that Ukraine cannot defend itself. It gutted its army and did away with its nukes. It had a nuclear weapons and it did away with its nuclear deterrent based on assurances by Russia and the US as well as the UK, France, and China that their territory would be inviolate, including Crimea. Bill Clinton signed those assurances for the US, and they were reaffirmed in 2009 by Obama.

So the Ukraine military doesn’t exist, for one thing. They were promised this wouldn’t happen. (interruption) That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing? Well, we’re not doing anything, just like we didn’t do anything in Syria, and just like we’ve told the Israelis, “You know what? You’re on your own now.” Let me repeat this to you, because nobody in the news media ever mentions that Ukraine cannot defend itself.

They gutted their army. They even did away with their nukes. They had a formidable nuclear deterrent. They did this on the basis of promises, assurances by leftists, people running Russia and the United States — Bill Clinton and later Barack Obama — along with leftists in the UK and France and the ChiComs. They believed promises made by those people. Why else would they get rid of their military?

They had been assured that they would not be invaded if they would simply gut the military. They were assured that their territory would be inviolate, and this included Crimea. These assurances were signed for the United States by Bill Clinton and reaffirmed in 2009 by the Obama administration. So even if that exists, if you want to say, “Well, look, the Russians don’t like what these clowns are doing in Ukraine, and they want to take it back and rebuild the Soviet Union,” there is this thing called history.

We fought for years dismantle Soviet communism because of its threat to us and what it was doing to people. It was the ultimate human rights campaign to get rid of the Soviet Union, to bust it up. There has to be an agent for good in the world. There has to be an agent for the influence of what is good and just and right. We’ve always been that. Contrary to seminar callers and American leftists, we do not conquer. We liberate people.

We liberate people from tyranny, bondage, authoritarianism, and then we pay to have their countries rebuilt, as in the case of the Marshall Plan in Europe and Japan after World War II. Putin knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s doing it because he knows exactly he’s not gonna be stopped. He knows exactly who he’s up against. He knows exactly what kind of opposition he’s gonna have. He knows he’s basically got an ally.

Obama tells Medvedev, “Just tell Vlad to wait until I win reelection, and then I’ll be flexible, and I’ll really start downgrading our nuclear capability in the United States so he can follow suit like I know he wants to do.” It was the joint declaration by the Russian Federation and the United States of America December 4th, 2009. That confirmed their commitment. Want me to read it?

“1. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine;

“2. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations;

“3. The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind,” and I’ve got the signatories.

It was signed by Boris Yeltsin, originally; John Major, United Kingdom; William J. Clinton, United States; Leonid D. Kuchma for Ukraine. That is the original. That was what was reaffirmed in 2009. Now, the seminar caller also said that we did to Cuba exactly what Putin is doing to Ukraine. We destroyed the Cuban economy with our embargo because they were a satellite of the Russians, of the Soviets. It was our embargo that destroyed Cuba. No, ladies and gentlemen. You see, this is another predictable lament of the left: The United States is the problem in the world. The United States is the destabilizing agent in the world.

Do you know who destroyed Cuba? His name happened to be Fidel Castro, and the way he did it was to install communism throughout Cuba. It happened when I was a young child, but I remember all the appearances that Castro made. There was a time Castro had the US dangling at the end of a string. He had actually convinced us that he didn’t know which way he was gonna go. He could have picked us or he could have gone with the Soviets. I remember he’d show up on Face the Nation. He’d show up on Meet the Press with the cigar and his military hat and his uniform on. I remember watching, it was a black-and-white TV, when I nine or 10 years old, I remember watching this stuff, eight or nine.

I remember being afraid of the guy, and I remember being afraid of the guy because of the way the media was covering him. I didn’t know Cuba from anything, but I was told that what was going on down there was very, very important. And then I remember when Castro supposedly made his decision and threw in with the communists, as though that were possibly not gonna happen. It turns out it was always gonna happen. Fidel Castro, communism, destroyed and keeps the destruction in place. Cuba. We didn’t. Our embargo didn’t. The Cubans can trade with anybody. You can go to France, UK, go to Canada, go anywhere, you can get a Cuban cigar, Cuban rum, Cuban sugar. You can visit Cuba if you live in any other of those countries.

Our embargo destroyed Cuba? That’s what Castro tells his people. He calls it the blockade, by the way. Half of Cuban people think there’s an actual military blockade in the straits of Florida. They don’t know any different. They think the US Navy’s deployed with a blockade in the ocean. But this is my point. This guy was reading from some script and there’s a column in the Washington Post today by the esteemed Eugene Robinson. “In the Ukraine Crisis, the US Has a Credibility Problem.”

“Let’s be real,” he says. “ItÂ’s one thing to say that RussiaÂ’s takeover of the Crimean Peninsula ‘cannot be allowed to stand,’ as many foreign policy sages have proclaimed. ItÂ’s quite another to do something about it. Is it just me –” do you see, by the way, how I am reading interpretively and making this dull piece sound compelling? That’s what I mean by you can’t do it. I can. Leave it to me. Pick it up here again. “Is it just me, or does the rhetoric about the crisis in Ukraine sound as if all of Washington is suffering from amnesia? WeÂ’re supposed to be shocked — shocked! — that a great military power would cook up a pretext to invade a smaller, weaker nation? IÂ’m sorry, but has everyone forgotten the unfortunate events in Iraq a few years ago?” (gasping)

Oh, Iraq! See, we did to Iraq exactly what Putin’s doing to Ukraine, and so we don’t have any leg to stand on. Who the hell do we think we are? So they immediately establish a moral equivalence, which is we’re no different than the worst bad guy in the world. In fact, we’re worse than the worst bad guy because we’ve got more power. We are the destabilizing force. Who the hell do we think we are? And that’s the kind of people that populate the Obama administration. Do not doubt me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Who else can but us? The Brits? No, nobody’s gonna do anything. Yeah, it always does bounce back to us when things go awry in the world, but why not? That’s what being a superpower is. That’s what leadership is. That’s what being looked up to is. That’s what being looked to for guidance means. That’s why it matters who’s elected. That’s why what they believe matters. (interruption) Build coalitions? To go into Iraq? You mean, why do they have to build a coalition if it’s up to us to do so. That’s just a concession to political correctness and the media. Remember, there are US opponents everywhere, including in this country, and they believe that we are the problem in the world not the solution.

Now, I am not, nor have I advocated military action in Ukraine. That’s not at all my position here. It never has been. All I’m doing is pointing out the reason this is happening is because Putin knows full well he can get away with it. It matters who leads this country and what they believe matters. Kerry can sit here and whine and moan about how it’s a twenty-first century and it’s unfair that Putin is pretending it’s the nineteenth century, but welcome to reality. These guys honestly believe — and nobody will convince me otherwise — people like Kerry and Obama believe their own PR. They really believe that their presence alone sends a signal to the bad guys of the world that we’re not your enemy anymore. You don’t have to engage in the kind of activity you’re known for.

They have no real understanding. We know Kerry doesn’t, his days of Vietnam forward. We know Obama has no experience whatsoever in any of this, ever, doing anything. But we know that there are some universal truths. That bad guys are bad guys, and we know that people who run countries want to control more, and they will invade. It’s the way of the world. Ours is a world governed by the aggressive use of force. Since you don’t want to be at war all the time, what do you do? You have policies and stature that just shout deterrence. We build the B-2 bomber, for example, hoping we never have to use it.

Now, a leftist will never understand that. We build the Strategic Defense Initiative hoping we never have to use it. We hope that its existence alone prevents bad guy aggression. That’s how you deal with this. You deal with it by preventing it from happening, and even then you know it’s going to now and then.