What’s Wrong with War for Oil?

RUSH: Listen to this. This is Joe Biden last night with Chris Matthews on Hardboiled. Matthews says, ‘Why did we invade Iraq? Senator Biden, we were we threatening World War III with Iran, why did this administration, Cheney and the president, keep pushing the war? Why do they always want to fight or scare somebody? What is it about if it’s not weapons?’

BIDEN: I can’t prove it. I think it’s about our ability to try to dominant that region of the world to control oil. The only thing I can fit together with Cheney and his gang is that they went to war, they are smarter than they are acting. They went to war in the hope that they would be able to do two things. One, have a government that sat on a whole bunch of oil that would still exist in the world that would be indebted to us. Two, have permanent military bases in Iraq to dominate that part of the world, to be able to control oil, not to go steal it for American oil companies, but to be able to control the price and control the access of it, a very Machiavellian view.

RUSH: I have multiple reactions to this. He’s very deft here for Senator Biden, starts out, says he can’t prove it, says I don’t think they’re trying to get the oil for Big Oil. Can I give you a real simple reality? It may be controversial, but it’s inarguable. This is a world that runs on fossil fuels, folks, and it’s going to run on fossil fuels long after you and I and your grandkids are dead. Wind, solar, all pipe dream stuff, as we sit here and speak now. Would somebody explain to me what is so immoral about the leaders of this country attempting to maintain a supply and access to the fossil fuel that runs the world and runs our economy? It is the fuel. I’m not suggesting Biden is right. What I’m suggesting here is that even if a part of all of the strategy here is to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices, what in the name of Sam Hill is wrong with that? What’s the crime? Where’s the immorality in it?

What’s wrong with having a friendly nation in the Middle East allied with us? What’s wrong with this? Biden said all of this as though he’s indicting Cheney and Bush as criminals over oil. Now, I know this kind of thing plays well with these nut bins that make up the Democrat Party base, but I ask you a serious question of human being to human being, what in the world is so immoral, or wrong, or irresponsible about trying to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices for the purposes of the US economy and its growth — that’s jobs, that’s people’s lifestyles, that’s people’s lives, what is so wrong with this? I am not conceding that that’s what this is all about. I’m only reacting to Biden and his attitude here that somehow a nation that thrives, and lives, and depends on, and requires the free flow of oil at market prices is somehow criminally disposed if it seeks to maintain the free flow of oil at market prices. Hell’s bells, folks, somebody’s gotta do something to protect us from liberals and Democrats.

We can’t drill for our own oil in Alaska; we can’t drill for it in the Gulf, while the ChiComs and the Cubans and the Mexicans are and the Brazilians are, but we can’t. We can’t open our capped wells — they were capped back in the eighties — and get that, we can’t do that, we can’t use our own. Where are we going to get it? This attitude that these Democrats have, it’s like I said yesterday, we get up every day, come in here, and what this job has become in large measure is defending this country against these people and their screwball ideas. Senator Biden takes a train home to Delaware every day. He doesn’t have a place in Washington, when he has to stay, chums with somebody. What does he think his Amtrak train runs on? What does he think the lights and the air-conditioning in his Senate office run on, or the restaurants that he goes to out there, what does he think powers all this? This is just the height of irresponsibility, this answer about oil. He tried to indict Bush and Cheney as only caring about that, all the rest of this was just a sideshow, they actually want to get their hands on the oil supply, the Middle East’s oil supply. Somebody has to do something to get around the obstacles posed to growth and freedom in this country by liberal Democrats and the Democrat Party in general today.

Here is Steve in Saginaw, Michigan. Steve, I’m glad you called. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, Merry Christmas. I got one question. Why don’t we let neighbors around Iran worry about the nukes they may or may not have? They have more to lose than we ever thought of losing. It’s their oil field that they’re going to lose. That’s if they don’t have the ability to get it out of, you know, range of their — the real tight neighborhood. I mean, we could implement Star Wars and protect ourselves. Forget the crap about them and their oil? Merry Christmas, though.

RUSH: Who gives a crap about them and their oil?

CALLER: Well, I mean I want their oil, sure, but I mean we worry about Ahmadinejad so much. Why? Who cares? It’s the neighborhood that’s going to get damaged more than we are. I understand nuclear is not a good thing, but give me a break. We protect our own borders, which George Bush doesn’t want to do, but anyway.

RUSH: Are you going to vote next November?

CALLER: Well, hell yeah.

RUSH: Oh, no.

CALLER: Why? (laughing)

RUSH: Oh, no.

CALLER: (laughing) It’s that bad?

RUSH: It’s that bad.

CALLER: Oh, my God.

RUSH: It’s that bad. Have you ever heard of the concept of leadership?

CALLER: Of what?

RUSH: Have you heard of the concept, and do you understand the concept of leadership?

CALLER: Leadership.

RUSH: Leadership, yeah.

CALLER: So the Saudis don’t need to take control of their own neck of the woods? We gotta do it for them? We gotta police their world? Why?

RUSH: You were on hold. Did you hear what I just had to say about the importance and relevance of oil to this country?

CALLER: I didn’t. But I know we do have to have oil. I know that.

RUSH: Really?

CALLER: I’m not stupid. Come on, Rush. I’m not going to — I’m going to vote —

RUSH: Then you need to open yours eyes.

CALLER: Why? We gotta take charge of everybody?

RUSH: The Saudis cannot. They do not have an army.

CALLER: Well, they could buy one.

RUSH: The Iranians do.

CALLER: Can’t they buy one?

RUSH: The Iranians are slowly and surely surrounding them. Have you heard about Hezbollah? Have you heard about Hamas?

CALLER: Sure, I have. They got more money than we have.

RUSH: Guess who’s funding them? The United Arab Emirates don’t have a military.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: But it’s more than that. We’re the United States of America. We are the lone superpower of the world. The things that are being discussed here regarding Iran have to do with our self-interest, our own national security, and protecting the free flow of oil at market prices is clearly in the top ten of US national security, maybe in the top five, and it may be even number one. We cannot farm out our national security. We cannot farm out our national interests to others who have really no interest in ours because they know we can take care of ourselves. I really don’t understand the idea, let them handle it, let them take care of their own — we’re talking nuclear here! If Iran gets hold of, say, the Saudi oil supply and its own, do you want to live in that world?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: One thing about this last caller that we had, Steve in Saginaw, Michigan: This is not a neighborhood problem over there! I think that’s the thing people can’t get their arms around here. This is not a neighborhood problem. Pshew! Look, I understand. You know, a little knowledge is okay, but you know what the biggest problem is? It has a huge cost. I’m not making a joke here. Ignorance is the most expensive thing this country pays for in so many ways. Ignorance is what allows this global warming hoax to be believed by a bunch of people who simply are ignorant. I’m not saying stupid. They just don’t know, and yet they think they do. It’s like the example from yesterday. In the last 50 years, CO2 levels in the atmosphere are up, so are global temperatures. ‘Ah! Well! See? CO2 is causing it!’ We don’t know this. We can’t prove it! It has yet to be established. Yet people believe it because, in a linear way, it makes sense. But it’s total ignorance that allows the belief to happen. Same thing here with the situation in the Middle East, be it Iraq, be it Iran, be it Al-Qaeda, be it the war on terror, free flow of oil at market prices, ‘Let ’em handle it. It’s not our problem.’

It’s ignorance, and we pay a huge price for this. The biggest price we pay for ignorance is electing so damn many Democrats, which is one of the biggest obstacles to progress and success in this country for the individual human being that I have ever encountered. It is ignorance. Devotion to ignorance, bliss, blissful ignorance, is the only explanation for the election of Democrats. If people actually sat down and thought about this and learned what the differences in the two ideologies are, conservatism and liberalism — see, liberalism, you don’t even have to think about it, because it’s all feelings. It’s the most gutless choice you can make. All you have to do is be a liberal and you’re a good person and you care and you have tolerance, all this rotgut that’s not even true, and it’s just easy, and your ignorance allows you to believe a hoax. It allows you to believe, you know, a bunch of propaganda. Ignorance, the most expensive thing we pay for in the United States.