RUSH: Eblon in Melbourne, Florida. You’re next, sir, on the EIB Network.
CALLER: It’s great to be with you, Rush. You’ve been one of my great fans for a long time.
RUSH: Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.
CALLER: The issue — I was just coming back from a late lunch, the issue — of whether we should talk or not to the Syrians is dominating the news, and that’s not really the issue. That’s covering up the real issue. The real issue is the precedent that this Syrian government has set. The precedent is that Colin Powell already went and discussed with the Syrians. In 2003 he got a commitment from them that they will help us in Iraq, and that fell into open ears. That was an empty promise. David Shanker is a leading analyst for Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon. He said recently that the issue of whether we should talk or not is not the issue. We have been talking to them. We’ve had five official meetings with the Syrians in the past couple years about helping us in Iraq and they —
RUSH: Okay, all right.
CALLER: — have failed to help us.
RUSH: You’re absolutely right. So let me ask you a very pertinent, pointed, poignant question: “Why does Powell keep saying, and why do Baker and all these people say, ‘We’ve gotta talk to Syria, and we’ve gotta talk to Iran’?” Because you’re exactly right. The question is we not about “We don’t have to.” We have been. Baker, when he was secretary of state for Reagan, went there 15 times in the eighties, talking to Hafez al-Assad. We’ve talked to them. The Israelis have been trying to talk to their enemies over there for 50 years. Nothing gets solved by talking, and yet that’s what these people claim to do! Now, in the current context of events, what is the point of somebody like Powell, — beyond the fact he’s trying to rebuild his legacy. There’s a personal component to all this. Powell knows that Washington opinion makers and the elite will just swoon if he goes over there and says the right things, or doesn’t go over there but says the right things: “We must talk. There’s gotta be a political process.” The elites love hearing this stuff that doesn’t work and he’s into legacy building. But take that out of the equation, what possible reason for this could there be?
CALLER: My personal opinion —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — is that they are politicizing it. They’re politicizing it for differing reasons. Rush, in Lebanon, the Cedar Revolution, more than 70% of the nation voted for freedom and democracy. President Bush is fantastic in the Middle East. His policies are beloved by each one. Here’s the problem we’re running into in the Middle East. We have made commitments, but the other side, the opposition in Iraq and the opposition in Lebanon are telling the freedom and democracy lovers over there that the Americans are leaving, and they’re saying this because of reports like the James Baker report. We’ve made commitments to people over there that want freedom and democracy. The last thing that they need to hear is, “There’s a possibility that we’re going to cut-and-run, because these people have their necks on the line. Let us remind your viewers that his fallen chief, Nasrallah, said that the Americans are leaving, and those who stood up for them will pay the price, and we saw what happened a couple weeks ago.
RUSH: Right, right. Look, I agree with you, I understand all this. I want to look at the big picture of this. See, I get interested in motivations. You and I are not the only ones who know what’s going on in Lebanon. We’re certainly not the only ones who know that one of the tricks being played is to tell the populations over there that the United States is leaving. The question is: “Why do so many educated, understanding adults in power positions in this country want us to do just that?” You said it’s being politicized, and I assume you mean people are setting up for future elections and so forth. Do you think it might go further than that?
CALLER: Well, Rush, it’s very funny that we were sitting as a family, and we’re of Lebanese culture and heritage, and my parents were born there, and we’re very active. It’s very funny that we were sitting there, and one of my family members came out and said, “If James Baker had relatives in the Middle East, that report would have been a hundred percent different,” and yes, it’s true. We cannot go to the Middle East and impose our will on the people. They’ve told us this a million times. Yet, that is what that report is doing! The leading Kurdish leader in northern Iraq said just that, that this is an imposition on the Iraqi people and it’s a disrespect to the Iraqi people. If he wants to solve the war in Iraq, we need to seal the borders with Iran; seal the borders with Syria. Step up our pressures on Iran; step up our pressures on Syria, and once the people inside Iraq realize that that lifeline is cut with Iran, the lifeline is cut with Syria, and they know that we’re there to stay, they will start to solve their problems themselves. It’s the same thing in Lebanon. If we close the border with Syria and we stop allowing Syria to undermine democracy in Lebanon, we solve the problem.
VIETNAM VETERAN / PROTESTOR KERRY: I think you could put a hundred thousand troops in and you’re going to up the casualties, up the stakes, increase the violence, uh, and not get a resolution. The fundamental resolution that I’ve heard in every country — I went to Egypt and President Mubarak, into Jordan, met with King Abdullah yesterday. We’re here in Syria today, going to Israel from here. I was in Lebanon yesterday, everywhere people are saying, “You’ve got to have a comprehensive political reconciliation process,” and we’re here to explore when that can be broader than it’s been in the past, and we think it can.
The bottom line here is we have a bunch of pacifists who themselves do not have the slighting understanding of how things are actually won. Now, where I take it further than that: when I see somebody like Kerry and others, cohorts of his in the Democratic Party and the things they’ve been saying the last three or four years, I ask — and just as Lynne Cheney asked Wolf Blitzer on CNN, “Do you want us to win? You do want us to win, Wolf, don’t you?” and he was taken aback by the question — I wonder if these guys want us to win. They don’t sound like they want us to win, folks! From Colin Powell to the Iraq Surrender Group, I don’t care who, they don’t sound like they want us to win. Nobody is talking about victory! These people are mired in the attitude of defeat already, and they are conducting these “talks” and these “negotiations” from the context or starting point, the standpoint of, “Well, you know, we’ve lost, we’ve been humiliated, and we need to get out of there! We just can’t stay there anymore. We have to get out regardless the result.”
The success is cutting-and-running. The success is getting out, and these guys are going over and all these Democrats are talking to these people. Now, it may be hard for you to digest, and you may not want to hear it during the Christmas season, but I question whether or not these people want to win, whether they even have the concept of victory as a possibility. See, I believe that there is an inherent distrust and dislike among some — Kerry is certainly one — of the US military, and I think any time the US military triumphs, it presents problems for people like Kerry. Liberal Democrats love it when the military is embarrassed, when they’re ineffective. Oh, now, they go out and mouth and speak the right words about we “support the troops” and “body armor” and all that, but you catch them at a moment when they don’t think the cameras and microphones are on as with Kerry’s dumb joke, and you get the truth out of these people.
They always tell you who they are if you’re just patient and sit and wait for the right time. They will always tell you who they are, and so you call me and ask me, “Powell’s already gone to Syria, and we already know that Syria has promised to help us three years ago and hasn’t lifted a finger.” Of course he knows that! Everybody in the world who’s dealt with this knows that they are not going to help us! They are not our friends. They want us defeated and run out of there, which makes it incredible we continue to talk about bringing them in, or some people do. Bush isn’t, by the way. He’s punting that idea as publicly as he can. So you’ve got personal things. You’ve got Powell, I think, trying to rebuild his legacy, because he thinks he was damaged, when he had to go to the UN and present the WMD report. Who knows the motivations of the Iraq Surrender Group.
I think you’ve got some people that hate Israel in this bunch. I think you’ve got some people, Republicans and Democrats both somewhere, politically, who think Israel is the albatross around their neck. “They’re presenting us all kinds of problems! That’s why the world hates us over there is because of Israel. Well, you know that’s true because Israel is being blamed for terrorism all over the world because people hate Israel and the terrorists are taking action all over the world,” the theory is, “because Israel, a country ten miles wide, is in their midst!” So there’s a lot of factors happening here, and you’re going to make a mistake, any of you, if you analyze this purely on the basis of policy, because the policy makes no sense if applied and analyzed with the basics of intelligence. Why would you continue to ask people who have pledged to help you and never have, to help you again, when you know full well they’re not going to, when you know full well that they don’t want to, when you know full well they actually seek your demise?
Why would you keep doing that? What would you say the national interest is? What would you say the positive result or outcome of this is? It’s hard to name one. So you gotta start looking at, “Well, what’s positive to these people?” There’s a presidential campaign going on, no matter what you think and Bush is still in the White House. Despite the fact the Democrats won the House and Senate, the Republicans still have the White House, and there’s a campaign going on, and if you think just because they won the House and Senate that they’re going to hunker back, “Okay, half the job done…” They hate this president. They hate George W. Bush with a passion that has blinded them, and it has led them down a path that has taken their country’s interests not first. They don’t put them first. These are treacherous times, and these people don’t recognize it. They don’t recognize it and they’re not prepared to deal with it right now. That’s a frightening thing to me.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
One more little sound bite here from John Kerry — who, by the way, served in Vietnam. He was being interviewed by David Gregory on the Today Show today, and the question was, “Senator, our latest poll, it seems like it’s coming up. Look at you’re standing: Hillary Clinton 37, Barack Obama 18, Edwards at 14. You’re way back there at 11%. You look at your standing, does that effect your decision on whether or not to get into the presidential race?”
KERRY: Not. In. The. Least. Ah… You know… Nuh… You know, most of those other people haven’t had several hundred million dollars’ worth of negative framing against them. I’m not concerned about it, and I’m certainly not concerned about it sitting here in Damascus trying to figure out how we’re going to solve the problems of the Middle East.
RUSH: Oh, my heart bleeds! He’s in Damascus, ladies and gentlemen, “trying to solve the problems in the Middle East.” John Kerry, he of the global test! We had to go get the permission of the United Nations. Why don’t these guys just run the UN? That’s what they want to do. They want to invest in the United Nations to run US foreign policy. What did he say, “$700 million of negative framing.” Do you think Mrs. Clinton hasn’t had some “negative framing,” Senator Kerry? And she has survived it. She’s had all kinds of negative framing for many, many moons now, sir. You had one legitimate attack against you by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. This guy is delusional, and I know he is delusional. I know he is. I’ve heard enough stories. I can’t repeat them because I trust confidences and respect them. John in Columbus, Ohio, welcome to the EIB Network. Hi.
CALLER: Rush, merry Christmas, sir.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Your point is that the left doesn’t seem to be too heavily invested in victory. I say it goes much worse, I say they don’t even care about defeat, and the idea is there doesn’t seem to be anybody saying, “What if we don’t check Islamic fundamentalism or fascism right where it is today?” I don’t think anybody’s looking forward to what life could be like in this country —
RUSH: Well —
CALLER: — five or ten or 15 years from now if these people keep winning these battles.
RUSH: This is very shrewd of you, but I have to only moderately disagree with you on just two things. A) A lot of people are asking, “What will the world look like if we lose in Iraq?” and more and more people after the election than beforehand are saying it, including some generals and some people that the New York Times often put forth before the election who said, “We gotta get out of there. We’re just making the things worse.” Now nobody wants to get out, by the way. Everybody wants to send more troops now. People understand that. So people are asking the question. As to this whether the Democrats care about victory or see the results of defeat. Let’s call them liberals in this case. You have to understand — and you’re witnessing it. You just heard Kerry. John Kerry thinks he single-handedly can go over there and figure out the solution to this! Now, he’s against sending any more troops; he’s against a military victory. There are some liberals who think we deserve to lose, folks! We are the big, guilty majority of power in the world, and we steal and rob the world and the people of the world and we pollute the world. We deserve to get a comeuppance! We deserve to lose. We deserve to find out how the rest of the world lives. There are a lot of Americans that think that. The other aspect of the equation is, people like Kerry think they, with their superior intellects and diplomatic skills, can go talk to these enemies and persuade them not to hate us because we’re actually nice guys and we can all live happily ever after — and both things I just told you, make book on.