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RUSH: I just was watching Fox. I just saw Brit Hume on there. You know what Brit Hume said? Brit Hume said, “You know, I don’t think Obama is taking ISIS seriously.” Really? He says, “I don’t think Obama…” (laughing) I am going to endeavor today, as a special treat for all of you, to explain exactly why this is. (interruption) What are you…? You’re having a conniption in there. What’s the…? (interruption)

So Obama isn’t taking it seriously. He doesn’t care. This is all political for Obama. We’ve had the sound bites from the past. They’re the JV team; he doesn’t have a strategy. This is pure, pure politics. The motivation for this is pure, pure politics. The problem is, it is really serious, and some inside the Washington establishment who do take it seriously are very, very troubled.

(interruption)

You think I did that? Ah, you have an inflated sense of my importance, here. (interruption). All right… (interruption) Snerdley… (interruption) No way I’m gonna play what sound bite? (interruption) All right. Snerdley’s in there… (interruption) All it took for me was to say that Brit Hume says that Obama’s not taking seriously ISIS.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It appears to me that Leon Panetta is throwing Barack Obama overboard in favor of Hillary Clinton. I’m sensing a lot of this begin to happen. I think serious players in the Democrat Party are now beginning to shape up, retool, and refocus on 2016, and that means it is time to protect and build a case of protection — a wall, if you will — around Mrs. Clinton.


“On Sunday, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen told NBC’s Meet the Press that the media had ‘blown way out of proportion’ a supposed rift between President Barack Obama and his military commanders over the administrationÂ’s plan to roll back ISIS. Those comments, however, did little to combat the notion that Obama and those in the defense establishment do not see eye-to-eye on the threat posed by the Islamic State.”

Now, it’s natural that Mullen would try to do this, but we made mention of this Thursday or Friday, that Obama and his generals are in the middle of a huge rift over this because he’s not taking their advice. They are not listening. It’s all about boots on the ground and who the boots are gonna be, versus jets.

Do you have that Brit Hume sound bite, Mike? (interruption) I have it here, and I’ve already misplaced it; I don’t know where it is. But I told you earlier that I saw Brit Hume on Fox, and he’s very concerned that Obama’s not taking that seriously. Here is that sound bite.

HUME: Consider the difference between the president’s response to ISIS and his response to the Ebola outbreak. He’s sending a large force — much larger that ISIS is getting — to deal with this Ebola outbreak. And why is he doing that? He’s doing it, I think, because he believes that the United States is uniquely capable of mounting this effort against this disease. The United States is indisputably uniquely capable of conquering ISIS, but he’s not putting a full effort into that at all. Which is why I think that the majority who doubt the efficacy of the strategy do so. They can see that this isn’t a full-hearted effort, and so, as has been suggested earlier, do the coalition partners, or would-be coalition partners.

RUSH: Right. Okay. Now, I think Brit Hume, the value there is who he speaks for. He speaks for a body of thought inside the Beltway. Call it the establishment or whatever. We here have made the observation last week that Obama seems far more serious about Ebola than he does ISIS. Everybody’s curious why, and the answer is simple; it’s just not easy to face. Particularly — this is not true of Brit Hume.

But if you are one of those who back in 2008 and 2009 started praising Obama to the hilt, one of the brightest guys you’ve ever known, one of the smartest, it’s tough to now admit the reality he’s an empty suit in those regards, but it’s clear that the establishment is very, very worried about ISIS and they very much believe the military commanders are the ones to listen to here.

And it’s clear that Barack Obama simply isn’t into this because it’s all politics. He really doesn’t care about this stuff. He doesn’t. He’s okay, I guess, with being the world’s doctor, but he doesn’t want to be the world’s policeman. He doesn’t think it’s any of our business. He doesn’t want to get involved with it, really, and there are other concerns besides that. It’s in the midst of all of this, that Leon Panetta and others are beginning now to, in a way — you’ll hear the sound bites to support this along with the news stories — beginning to… I don’t know.

“Throw Obama overboard” is a bit strong, but you’ll see when we get to it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: If you want to understand this, folks, let me give you just a simple comparison. ISIS is to the establishment as spousal abuse is to the NFL. Meaning: The establishment is singularly scared to death and worried about ISIS. The NFL is singularly scared to death and worried about, “Oh, no! What are we gonna do about spousal abuse?” But the level of intensity and fear and thinking problems exist are on par with one another.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT


RUSH: I mentioned earlier Angelo Codevilla. We originally brought him to your attention some years now. He had a piece, I believe it was in the American Spectator, in which he posited… He’s a political scientist and professor, and he posited the divisions in the country to be “ruling class,” which is the establishment Inside Washington and all of their allies, and the “country class,” meaning us, average, ordinary Americans.

Country class, ruling class, country class.

We’re the country class, and the ruling class is the elites. He uses the terms frequently in this piece called “Washington’s Ruling Class Is Fooling Itself About the Islamic State.” But it’s loaded with insight. given that we have now learned that inside the Beltway, the establishment there is very worried that Obama’s not taking this seriously. We just heard the sound bite from Brit Hume, and he speaks for a lot of establishment types.

They see Obama clearly willing to send troops to fight Ebola. The thinking is, “That’s something that’s clear and definitive and easy, that we can have a very noticeable and maybe relatively quick victory there.” That’s the thinking. I’m not sure, but that’s the thinking. But ISIS, the establishment thinks, that’s hard to do, and Obama himself has said they’re never gonna be wiped out.

He said he didn’t have a strategy. He’s referred to ’em as the “JV team.” Now all of a sudden a couple of polls have come out and he’s in gear on it, but now he’s not listening to the experts in winning wars — which, like them or not, are the US military. They will tell you that, if you really want to decisively beat an enemy into surrender and submission, it requires a ground component in the war.

Air strikes alone are not gonna do it, particularly this bunch, when they hide in mosques and hide behind women and children — their baby factories and cooks, in other words — and with the rules of engagement as they are. I had a story last Friday that I didn’t get to, but I remember it. I’m not making this up. It was a story that said US troops may fire back if they are fired on right now in Iraq and elsewhere, and it was a heart stopper.

You mean to tell me that that is a newly instituted policy, that troops can fire back if they’re fired on? It was mind-boggling that we’ve gotten to this point, that it required an affirmative policy from somewhere in the Pentagon, “Oh, yeah, you can fight, and you can return fire if you’re fired on.” So Codevilla is of the opinion that the ruling class really doesn’t know how to deal with a threat like ISIS, that they’re not prepared to.

Therefore, they fool themselves into believing they’re actually doing something substantive when they aren’t. “The American people’s reaction to Muslim thugs of the ‘Islamic State’ ritually knifing off the heads of people who look like you and me boils down to ‘let’s destroy these bastards’ — which is common sense.” That’s what you and I say: Let’s destroy these bastards.

“But our ruling class, from President Obama on the Left to The Wall Street Journal on the Right, take the public’s pressure to do this as another occasion for further indulging their longtime preferences, prejudices, and proclivities for half-measures in foreign affairs — the very things that have invited people from all over the planet to join hunting season on Americans.”


So essentially the premise here is that while you and me in the midst of an attack like this say, “Let’s just kill the bastards,” the ruling class “indulg[es] their longtime preferences, prejudices, and proclivities for half-measures,” in other words, winning things with words, which only invites people like ISIS to ratchet up because the actions taken by the ruling class to stop them don’t stop them, and they can’t.

They’re words!

They’re speeches.

They’re pontifications.

“This indulgence so overwhelms our ruling class’s perception of reality that the recipes put forth by its several wings, little different from one another, are identical in the one essential respect: None of them involve any plans which, if carried out, would destroy the Islamic State…” That’s why Brit Hume’s concerned. It’s why a lot of people are. They look at Obama’s policy, and by his own admission: We can’t wipe ’em out!

I mean, they’re like cockroaches. They’re gonna pop up no matter what we do. So the ruling class now has itself believing that there isn’t any way to “destroy the Islamic State, kill large numbers of the cut-throats, and discourage others from following in their footsteps. … The WSJ’s recommendations, like the Obama administration’s projected activities, are all about discrete measures — some air strikes, some arming of local forces, etc.


“But they abstract from the fundamental reality of any and all activities: He who wills any end must will the means to achieve it.” You can’t just say that you’re gonna wipe out ISIS. You can’t just call a speech and tell the country that you’re finally gonna get in gear and wipe ’em out if you don’t wipe ’em out. You can’t say you’re gonna do it and get it done. But you can say you’re gonna do it and make people think you’re gonna do it and perhaps reap political rewards in the short term just by stating your intentions.

But if your intentions don’t have any will behind them, any action behind them, then all they are are intentions –which pretty much sums up the War on Poverty, which sums up pretty much every liberal leftist program. They’re a bunch of good intentions, a bunch of wasted money, but never, ever any calculable results.

Now, “Our Constitution prescribes that war happens subsequent to votes by elected representatives. By debate and vote, presumably they reconcile the war’s ends with the means to be employed. But to reconcile ends [i.e. to define victory] and means is to banish illusions and pretenses.” If you’ll gonna actually devise victory and an exit strategy, what that means in this case, then you had better get rid of any “illusions and pretenses.”

Get rid of speeches and words.

“Yet because these are what our ruling class lives by,” speeches, words, intentions, pretenses, illusions, “leaders of both parties have joined to preclude such debates and votes,” because they don’t want us to know the degree of inaction they will take. “They granted congressional funding for the one part of Obama’s venture with regard to the IS that required it — arming some of the Sunni rebels against Syria’s Assad regime — while avoiding votes on what precisely that or any other part of the venture means.

“This is textbook irresponsibility.”

Okay, so we’ll fund Obama’s venture by giving some of the Sunni rebels some arms and so forth, but we’re not gonna debate for the American people to hear us. We’re not gonna vote on what victory means. Again, “to reconcile ends and means is to banish illusions and pretenses.” Now, “Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA), a Marine veteran, objected [to all of this]: ‘We need to crush ISIS and not work on arming more Islamic radicals.'”

What the hell are we doing? Arming more Islamic radicals either in Iraq or Syria?

“‘Just what would arming these people accomplish?’


“To prevent massive numbers of Republican congressmen from joining this common-sense question, the House Armed Services Committee’s bill requires the [Regime] to answer it in a report to Congress [way down the road] some time in the future, but not now. The fact that the administration and the leaders of both parties — the ruling class — did not make reasoned answers to the key questions the primary premise of their request suggests not so much that they are hiding these answers,” as they don’t have them.

In other words, the reason why there isn’t any debate in Congress or with the White House about the actual definition of victory… What are we doing and how are we gonna do it beyond arming Syrian rebels and the Iraqi army, beyond arming Islamic radicals, what the hell are we gonna do? Well, that’s to come in a report down the road, just like the budget gets kicked in a can down the road via every continuing resolution.

“In the Senate, the ruling class avoided any vote at all by placing the money for arming the Sunni rebels into the Continuing Resolution for keeping the government open.” The Senate didn’t even vote on whether to arm the Sunni rebels. The House did, but there was no corresponding debate as to what that’s gonna accomplish, what is the avowed stated purpose here, what are we gonna tell the American people is the objective.

This is not a demand to give up strategy. This is a retirement to state objectives. Okay, we’re gonna beat ISIS how? We’re gonna ask uniformed military men and women to go into impact. We’re gonna ask people to fly jets and bomb these people. How are we gonna define victory? They’re not defining it. In the House they simply voted on whether or not to send money and arms to the Syrian rebels and the Iraqi army.

“In the Senate…” This is key now, folks. “In the Senate [there was not] any vote at all by placing the money for arming the Sunni rebels into the Continuing Resolution for keeping the government open,” and also in the continuing resolution was more money to fund Obamacare. Practically everything needed to keep the government running is in the continuing resolution, but there’s no vote on any individual item.

You just vote on spending the big pile or you vote against it. But there is no vote on the specific expenditure of any money in a continuing resolution. “This device,” the continuing resolution, “which reduces the senators’ choice to funding everything [or nothing] has become the principal way by which the ruling class dispenses with the Constitution.” You have a continuing resolution, and every time we do, there is what?

The accompanying threat of the government shutdown if the Republicans don’t go along with the spending that the Senate Democrats and Obama want. There is no debate on individual budget items and the spending in those items, and there hasn’t been for years, by the way. In the Senate. This is how the Constitution is ignored or gotten around. This is how everything the left wants gets funded.

There’s no debate in a CR — you either spend the money or you don’t — and because the Republicans have been cowed into thinking if they oppose the spending, the automatic result is a government shutdown, “Oh, and nobody wants the government shutdown, because people depend on the government to much.” If the Republicans shut down the government, it’s: Oh, there they go again!


See? The Republicans shutting down the government leads to massive Democrat victory in elections. (This is the theory.) So the Republicans are always saying, “Oh, we’ll get ’em next time. Yeah, okay. We’ll give ’em the CR, but we’ll fight ’em next time on X,” whatever it is, but they never do, because X always ends up in the next continuing resolution. Again, items in the continuing resolution…

By definition, you’re continuing to resolve to fund the government so it doesn’t shut down, with a lump sum of money but no debate on any specific item money’s being spent on. That’s how the Senate dealt with the funding for the arming of the Sunni rebels in Syria and Iraq. “Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)’s … objection to arming the Sunni rebels might as well have been voiced by any ordinary citizen for all the effect it had:

“‘Our past experience, after 13 years, everything that we have tried to do has not proven to be beneficial, not proven at all. So what makes you think it’s going to be different this time? What makes you think we can ask a group of Islamists to agree with Americans to fight another group of Islamists, as barbaric as they may be?'” We tried it over and over and it hasn’t worked. “The answer” to the question is: It isn’t about what works.

It’s about illusions. It’s about trying to make as many average Americans think that Obama cares, using words and using speeches and using stated goals. We’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do that, we’re not gonna let this happen, we’re gonna make sure women and children are protected, blah blah blah blah blah. Never spell out how, never assign specific sums of money to how.

Just rely on the illusion that your words and your intentions are all that is necessary, and then everybody can go on their way. “Hey, did you hear Obama’s speech? He said we’re gonna finally go get ISIS!” “Okay, good. Now, what’s on TMZ?” That’s the way it works. (Has UPS shown up, by the way? (interruption) Damn. Okay.) “The answer is that our ruling class [the establishment] does not think, as much as it indulges its imagination and believes its own spin.

“A prime example of which is the Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial of September 17. Never mind that the Islamic State’s Sunni subjects welcome the ritual beheaders who rule over them because these are Sunni as well. ‘The brutality,’ writes the WSJ, ‘has created conditions similar to those that preceded the Sunni Awakening in Iraq in 2007 — the revolt by ordinary Sunnis and their tribal leaders in Anbar province against al Qaeda.'”

But, no.

Incorrect.

It didn’t happen as it’s stated and won’t again.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let’s cut to the chase here. From Mr. Angelo Codevilla: “While Obama limits himself to unexplained confidence that Sunni Arab states will join in fighting the IS, the Journal supposes to know why they have not done so yet, and why instead they have been helping the jihadis…” Are you ready for this? This is stunning, by the way, to find that something like this is in the Wall Street Journal.


Again: “While Obama limits himself to unexplained confidence…” In other words, he’s convinced the Sunni Arab states would join us in fighting ISIS, but he doesn’t say why. Bt the Journal says they know why it’ll be different this time. It’s “because our aid to the right Sunnis in 2012 and 2013 was ‘microscopic and half hearted.'” In other words, our welfare, our financial assistance this time is gonna be much more.

It’s gonna be full-hearted and well-intentioned, whereas the last time we gave ’em money but we didn’t give ’em enough and we didn’t really care. “This was the aid being brokered by the US consulate in Benghazi and cut off by mortar shells expertly aimed by we know not whom. But the WSJ knows who’s to blame for the Sunni Arabs’ failure to meet the ruling class’s expectations: ‘Some Conservatives.'” (interruption)

How do you get there? Well, the ruling class or the establishment thinks that the biggest obstacle they face in achieving anything is the Republican base, which is conservatives. Whether it’s open borders or whether it’s facing the music on Obamacare, or, you name it. But, anyway, this has never worked, but it’s gonna work this time. See, it’s the same old thing with liberals and socialism.

“Yeah, it’s never worked around the world, but we are the people we’ve been waiting for! We are finally the smart ones, and we are gonna spend enough money this time to make it work.” Well, we’re not talking about socialism. We’re talking about giving enough money and showing really full-throated intentions to Sunni “moderates” who, because we give enough money and arms — because we really care, we show we really care — this time they will help us fight other Islamists.

Like Joe Manchin and Duncan Hunter asked: Wait a minute! We’ve never done it before; why do we think it’s gonna happen now?

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, just to illustrate what I just said, in sharing with you parts of the latest piece by Angelo Codevilla in which he points out that the establishment — and that includes Obama and most of the Democrats and like-minded thinking inside the Beltway. It starts here with Brit Hume committing on Fox today that he is worried that Obama isn’t serious about ISIS, and he doesn’t quite get it, doesn’t understand why.

Professor Codevilla has the answer as to why. It’s that he doesn’t really mean it. (interruption) That wasn’t it? (scoffs) How dare you tease me that way? Snerdley’s looking at me with a forlorn look like, “Yeah, it was UPS, but it wasn’t that.” He didn’t say that, just had that look on his face, then he holds ’em up, and it’s what I’m looking for. Okay, cool. Anyway, so Codevilla… (interruption) No, I never lose my place.

Codevilla tries to answer. He says, look, the establishment never — and, by the way… Well, not never, but for the vast majority of times they get involved in things, there never is a solution. There’s just claims of a solution. There are speeches, words, which state great intentions — speeches which are supposed to convince people that there is a lot of engagement on the issue, a lot of people care.

“We’re on this! We’ve finally seen the light. The JV team no longer accurate. ISIS is a real bad bunch of guys, and we’re gonna go get ’em now.” But there’s never really any seriousness to it. It’s political, and on the left, politics is speeches. Now, that’s not to say they don’t implement their policies; they sure as heck do. I’m talking about the way they persuade, the way they gain support for what they want to do.

I mean, if they actually were honest about their intentions, they’d never win a national election. But the point here is, Obama’s in political trouble, so he goes out and makes a speech. He looks tough, tries to. Looks resolved, tries to. He spells out, “All right, I’m gonna take these guys out! Here’s how we’re gonna do it.”

Then immediately after that the general’s pop up and say, “Hey, wait a minute. You can’t do this without ground troops,” and Obama gets mad at ’em for insubordination and sticks to his plan. Well, if you’re gonna do this without ground troops, you aren’t serious, there’s no two ways about it. Now, to prove… Well, maybe not to prove, but to further illustrate Professor Codevilla’s point that this engagement is only words and illusions — and in some cases delusions.

The secretary of state, John Kerry, has today proven that the establishment or the ruling class isn’t taking ISIS seriously. He just told a bunch of foreign leaders (he just said this today), quote, “When you think about terrorism and poverty — and, of course, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — all of these are challenges that don’t know any borders, and that’s exactly what climate change is.”

The secretary of state then said, “Importantly, climate change — without being connected in that way to everyone’s daily thinking — ranks right up there with every single one of the rest of those challenges. You can make a powerful argument that it is the most serious challenge we face on the planet because it’s about the planet itself.”

So just today, if you had any doubts… I don’t know how many of you in this audience do. I mean, yesterday we have this march for the climate or whatever. They’re retooling it, by the way. They’re turning this over to Occupy Wall Street. Occupy the Climate is now basically the group that’s been handed this responsibility of making this all happen.

Here’s Kerry who tells a bunch of foreign journalists and leaders and so forth, foreign leaders, that global warming/climate change may be even more challenging than ISIS because it’s about the whole planet itself, not just Syria or Iraq. Now, that is delusional. It’s comical. It is silly, stupid. It is entirely wrong. But it is perfect politically for where these people are. Climate change is important for all the reasons that we’ve mentioned.

It’s like Obamacare. It’s a quick way to gain control over the way people live, for your own purposes. But to lump climate change — which isn’t even happening! There isn’t any warming. It isn’t even happening. To lump that in with journalists being beheaded, with the threats of more people being beheaded, with the stories that ISIS may be in America, that they are converting Americans in prison to join them, that Americans are leaving America to join ISIS?

With all this going on, with the president making speech saying he finally gets it, we’re gonna get ISIS, here comes the secretary of state now claiming climate change is actually more challenging than ISIS!

Of course, it’s interesting. This comes right on the verge of another UN conference in New York at which climate change will be prominent, even though there isn’t any!

If Brit Hume heard this, what Kerry said, he’s gotta be really worried now.

Climate change is even more challenging than ISIS?

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