Now all of a sudden a moral line has been crossed. The people of Russia are not going to take this and they’re demanding something being done about it and there’s a little bit more restraint in this country. We didn’t protest, we memorialized and did a number of things, but I’ll tell you what, this shows exactly who and what we are dealing with. And I’m going to tell you this, I think we need to see pictures of what happened over there just like I think we need to continue to see pictures of 9/11 so people will know. We are a picture driven society, we don’t believe it till we see pictures. We’re not emotionally affected, at least not profoundly, unless and until we see pictures. And this was absolutely horrible, children or not. And what happened, you can argue with the way the Russians dealt with this. There’s any number of ways policies, plans that you can deal with terrorist attacks. You know what the Russians did though? The Russians went down to Chechnya, and the Russians went to the homes of the terrorists, and they went in and kidnapped their kids, and they went in and kidnapped their families. And they said, “If you’re going to do this, how does it feel?” You know, and this is now, you can argue about whether or not that accomplishes anything, serves any purpose, but I’ll tell you what, in just human terms, the aggressors set the rules in any conflict. And if they have any idea that they’re going to get away with what they want, even if they die, if they think they’re going to get away with impunity, if they think they are be succeeding in terrorizing, they’re going to continue. Most of the time a show of force back is far better, we know this, this is fundamental. You don’t talk to them, you don’t try to appease them, you don’t try to reason with them, you deal with them accordingly.
Now, I think that to a certain extent the Russians — I have no idea what the future is going to be over there regarding this — but I know Putin is out there blaming us for our coddling of the Chechen rebels in one sense. But Putin isn’t going to sit there, and there’s not going to be any Jamie Gorelick memo in Russia, and there isn’t going to be any wall saying that law enforcement can’t talk to intelligence, and there’s not going to be a whole lot of restrictions on what Special Ops people can do and where they can go. The Russians are going to go in and take out whoever did this, if it means taking out some innocents as well. What do you do? What do you do, do you sit around and just let the kids die at the hands of the terrorists? Which is going to happen anyway if you don’t do anything, or are you going to go in and take the terrorists out and make them go along for the ride themselves. It’s a tough call, but the people of Russia, I found this protest on TV today just fascinating. They’re not going to put up with it. They’re demanding action and if they don’t get it I guarantee you they’re going to take it themselves. You can say, “Oh, we can’t have that Rush. Why that would be vigilantism.” Tell that to them, it’s their families that got blown away and their kids that were killed and they don’t understand timidity in dealing with it whatsoever.
END TRANSCRIPT
