RUSH: They just never stop. Every day there is an assault on a tradition on the truth or some other valuable institution in this country. ‘President Barack Obama’s advisers plan to remove terms such as ‘Islamic radicalism’ from a document outlining national security strategy.’ We’ve eliminated the word ‘terrorism’ from government usage. ‘They will use the new version to emphasize that the US does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say. The change would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, ‘The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century.” Obama doesn’t like that. He’s pulling it out.
‘The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document is still being written and is unlikely to be released for weeks, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document is the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on US foreign policy, as with his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used. The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the US talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business start-ups and education.’ Do you believe this? We’re going to talk to Muslim nations about health care, science, business start-ups, and education. Yes, I certainly can believe it and we certainly need to talk to them about all those things don’t we? Oh, yeah, we need to be talking to Muslim nations about health care, science, and business start-ups.
‘That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo and promised a ‘new beginning’ in the relationship between the US and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terrorism and winning the war of ideas.’ May I ask a question? Maybe somebody can help me with this. What are we doing having relationships with the Muslim world anyway? Do we have a relationship with the Catholic world? Do we have a relationship with the Buddhist world? Do we have a relationship with the Jewish world? Well, if we did, Obama’s taken care of that. But we don’t have relations with religious worlds. What is this? ‘You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, ‘We’re building you a hospital so you don’t become terrorists.’ That doesn’t make much sense,’ National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy said.’
So this is it. Obama and his idealists, young whippersnappers, think the United States is the problem. We are attacked because we deserve to be. We have been imperialists, we’ve overstepped our bounds in the world, it’s totally understandable why they would attack us and commit acts of terror against us. So what do we need to do? We need to go in there and build them schools, and we need to get them health care, and we need to talk to them about science. Meanwhile, we do not have the money for this. Our own school infrastructure is not in good shape. Nor are the highways and so forth that are supposed to be rebuilt and maintained and built up by the stimulus. None of that has happened because that was just a slush fund for Obama to pass out as rewards for people supporting him in his campaign and for supporting his legislation during his presidency. A slush fund.
So the premise is we deserve it. We should have been hit. It’s time we face the facts, and to prevent them from hitting us again, we have to acknowledge that. Stop calling them Islamic radicals, stop calling them terrorists, instead build them hospitals. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in a family who lost someone in 9/11 to hear about this guy’s plans for the Muslim world. I can’t imagine what it was like when they found out that this government was willing to spend $200 million a year in security for the people who blew up the World Trade Center in a civil trial. I can’t imagine the anger they must have felt. ‘Where was the security for my family member?’ they must have been asking? Where was the effort to protect Americans? Why are you willing to spend $200 million to protect the people who blew up the World Trade Center? Why are you willing to give them constitutional rights when these terrorists didn’t care about any of our family members’ human rights? And now we can’t call ’em what they are. Now we can’t call ’em Islamic radicals. Now we have to have a relationship with the Islamic radical world — sorry — Muslim world. Well, I’m waiting for the outreach to the Catholic world and the Buddhist world. Tiger Woods would be interested in that.
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RUSH: If we can’t call Islamic radicals ‘Islamic radicals,’ we shouldn’t call rapists ‘rapists.’ We should call them ‘uninvited perpetrators,’ or ‘penetrators,’ if you wish. Murderer? Do you think people like being called a murderer, even if they are? Do you think that’s going to forge a decent relationship with murderers? All we do is put ’em in prison, we make ’em even angrier. And calling them murderers is even worse. We just need to call them something vague, like a ‘carbon footprint reducer.’ That covers all kinds of political correct ground.
Serial killer? Who wants to be called a serial killer? Doesn’t that offend people? We don’t want to have an outreach to serial killers, do we? ‘Global warming warrior.’ Call a serial killer a ‘global warming warrior’ ’cause that’s a massive carbon footprint reduction. So you call them a ‘global 
warming warrior.’ A thief? Nobody wants to be called a thief. How we gonna build up outreach and have good relations with thieves if that’s what we call ’em? It’s going to offend ’em. We just call ’em an ‘income redistributionist,’ or call ’em ‘Obama.’ Kidnapper? Now, that’s vile. Nobody wants to be called a kidnapper. How are we going to have outreach with kidnappers? How we going to build up decent relations with kidnappers to see to it they don’t kidnap anymore? Very simple: We stop calling it kidnapping. We call ’em ‘unpaid baby-sitters.’ Unpaid baby-sitters. That’s what a kidnapper is. I mean, why stop at being vague over Islamic radicalism? And the unemployed? You know, there’s no greater stigma. Of course the stigma of being unemployed is somewhat less now since there are so many, but it used to be if you’re unemployed, outta work, that was embarrassing. That was something about which people felt shame. We need to rename the unemployed, such as calling them ‘victims of capitalism.’ This is all from the regime’s perspective.
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RUSH: Also, isn’t it interesting the Obama regime can call me any name in the book — they can call me ‘troublesome,’ say I’m ‘filled with vitriol’ — and yet you can’t call Muslim extremists ‘troublesome’? You can’t call ’em ‘Islamic radicals.’ Isn’t that interesting?
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RUSH: I was up very late last night, and I don’t remember who I was even chatting with. I had four or five different chats going on, and whoever it was asked me, ‘Hey, by the way, what do you think of Obama targeting this cleric over in Yemen with a drone attack? What do you think of that?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s an easy call for Obama. This guy’s an American. It’s easy to wipe him out.’ So I get up today and I read this piece by Andy McCarthy, National Review Online: ‘Obama OK’s Targeted Assassination of Awlaki, a US Citizen.’ This is the imam that counseled the Fort Hood shooter and some of the 9/11 hijackers. ‘This is obviously the right call,’ McCarthy says. ‘We are at war against al Qaeda under an authorization from Congress. Anwar al-Awlaki, a purportedly American-born Islamic cleric, who is now operating in Yemen … probably directed the would-be Christmas bomber, and is believed to be orchestrating and recruiting for violent jihad operations against the United States. The president is the commander-in-chief with primacy on questions regarding the conduct of war. Even if we were to accept for argument’s sake that at issue is a legal rather than a political judgment, Supreme Court precedent (the World War II era Quirin case and the 2004 Hamdi decision) hold that American citizens who fight for the enemy in wartime may be treated as enemy combatants, just like aliens.’
So exactly what I said, easy call. The guy’s an American. So of course we can wipe him out. ‘The only reason for calling attention to Obama’s targeting of Awlaki is its demonstration of the illogic of the left’s position on treatment of the enemy. According to the report, a US official told Reuters that ‘Awlaki is a proven threat,’ and therefore someone who could properly be targeted for killing. But by leftist standards — including those urged by Attorney General Holder when he was in private practice … Awlaki is most certainly not a proven threat. He has not been convicted in a court of law.’ This administration says they haven’t done anything until we’ve convicted them. Well, this guy hasn’t even been charged, this guy hasn’t even been read his Miranda rights, and we’re going to kill him! Yet the guy and his henchmen who blew up the World Trade Center are gonna get a civil trial. Originally it was going to be in New York City at $200 million a year for security costs. So you tell me if you’re outraged because I said, ‘Oh, this is an easy call for the regime. This guy’s an American.’ Well, American citizens who fight for the enemy may be treated as enemy combatants, bammo! So you send the drone over there and you wipe the guy out. But if he’s not an American, why, you gotta Mirandize him; gotta charge him, and you have to give him a trial in court.
As McCarthy writes, here’s the regime’s position: ‘If an alien enemy combatant, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mass-murders 3,000 Americans and is then captured outside the US in wartime, we need to bring him to the United States and give him a civilian trial with all attendant due process rights. If an alien enemy combatant is sending emails from outside the US to an al Qaeda cell inside the US, the commander-in-chief needs a judge’s permission (on a showing of probable cause) to intercept those communications. If an American citizen terrorist outside the United States — say, Awlaki in Yemen — is calling or e-mailing the United States (or anyplace else), the commander-in-chief needs a judge’s permission to intercept those communications. If we capture an alien enemy combatant conducting war operations against the US overseas, we should give him Miranda warnings, a judicial right to challenge his detention as a war prisoner, and (quite likely) a civilian trial. But, if the commander-in-chief decides to short-circuit the whole menu of civil rights by killing an American citizen, that’s fine — no due process, no interference by a judge, no Miranda, no nothing. He is a proven threat because’ wait for it ‘the [regime] says so.’ Now, interestingly, McCarthy says this is the way we ought to be doing it with all these guys. So he has begrudgingly giving the regime credit here while at the same time pointing out the hypocrisy of it all.
New York Times has the story: ‘The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.’ So that’s the story. That’s the backstory to it all. So, yeah, kill him! He’s an American. No problem. It’s what the law says we can do. He’s not a native Muslim, you see. He was born in America, but he’s not a Muslim out there. He became a Muslim when he left the country, supposedly. I don’t know why that’s the reasoning, but nevertheless.
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RUSH: East Lansing, Michigan, this is Curt, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: How you doing, Rush?
RUSH: Very well, sir. Thank you.
CALLER: As a student in the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies, I think I figured out why they’re targeting the American cleric in Yemen.
RUSH: Tell me.
CALLER: Well, if they arrest him and put him through a civilian trial, and the terrorist act that he’s associated with happened under Obama’s watch, it would only embarrass Obama. It wouldn’t give them a chance to embarrass Bush.
RUSH: Well, that’s an interesting thought. This is what happens to you if you’re a daily student here at the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. The reason why we’re not going to try this Awlaki guy is because his testimony would rip into Obama, the regime. Of course they could handle that. I mean, they could take care of that. They could bring the guy in and say, ‘Look, if you want a lighter sentence, you just do what all the others do and blame Bush. Just do that and we’ll look the other way at sentencing time.’ I find it just hysterical that we even come up with these kinds of theories to explain the regime. But make no mistake — I’m not being facetious, I’m not even really being cynical — the law says we can kill an American citizen who joins the enemy. We can’t do that with an enemy who did not leave America.
We have to give them trials.