RUSH: Somebody asked me this morning if I could remember a general or a high-ranking military officer ripping into President Bush like this, like McChrystal has ripped into Barack Obama. Well, to the best of my memory, I can’t remember a general doing it on active duty, but I can remember a whole bunch of them when they left, either resigned or retired or what have you. I can remember a whole bunch of them piling on George W. Bush, and I remember the media making heroes out of these guys. Greetings, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, it’s Rush Limbaugh. This is the EIB Network. Great to have you here. Our telephone number if you want to be on the program is 800-282-2882. The e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.
Well, once again, once again, ladies and gentlemen, it falls to me to put the ring of truth and the proper analysis on this McChrystal-Obama dustup, McChrystal’s interview with Rolling Stone magazine. So many people are out there, including critics on our side, ‘You just don’t do this. Obviously McChrystal wants outta there, obviously he doesn’t like having to work for Obama, but to go on Rolling Stone, I mean, if he can’t figure out Rolling Stone’s the enemy how is he ever going to figure out the Taliban?’ That’s one of the arguments that I’m hearing from people on our side. There’s certain credence to that. I mean of all places to go do this, Rolling Stone? And guess who’s on the cover of this issue? Lady Gaga is on the cover with McChrystal’s story in the lower-left hand corner of the cover in terms of its being highlighted.
Now, this is very tough because in the normal ebb and flow in the chain of command, civilian versus military, what McChrystal has done here is not defensible, but the fact that he has done it is interesting. I know he’s apologizing and he’s been summoned up there to talk to Obama. He’s going to bend over forwards and backwards, whatever, apparently he has issued an apology. So it’s interesting to me on a number of levels. When I heard about this today I got hold of some people I know who are very much more expert in military matters than am I, and I sought out their opinion on this and particularly just who McChrystal is, what kind of guy he is. And these generals fall into two camps. You have the corporate generals and the warrior generals. The corporate generals act like Fortune 500 CEOs, and they will often remind you of someone running for office. They are very much concerned with what everybody thinks of them. They’re very much concerned with their image and their public relations. They are constantly concerned about their image, and they are often criticized for caring more about how things look than the results they get.
And I can give you an example. This is just a personal observation example. This is not something passed on to me by one of these well informed experts. But if you look at General Casey after the Fort Hood bombing when Abdul, whatever his name was, went nuts and started firing and shooting, killing a lot of people, what was the first thing General Casey said? We are not going to tolerate a backlash against Muslims. And that’s an example I would analyze on my own here, I’ve not been told this, as a corporate general, first and foremost concerned with the politics of something, the political correctness of something, the image of something rather than the results. Now, these corporate generals are needed for certain things, logistics. These guys are needed, but sooner or later if you’re gonna wage war, you need a warrior general, and that’s the other kind of general that you have.
And the warrior generals know that no matter how you try to spin this thing you eventually have to go kill bad guys, you have to kill people and break things. That’s the mission. That’s what it is. I’m told by people who know, that General McChrystal is a warrior general. He’s a former Special Ops guy who ran the joint Special Operations Command team that tracked down all the high-value targets in Iraq, including Saddam Hussein. I’m told that his men are fiercely loyal to him, that he has had some major closed-door sessions at the Pentagon trying to get the corporate generals and Obama’s people to back off these new restrictive rules of engagement. I’ve also been told that the restrictive rules of engagement are his. So I’m hearing different things.
These rules of engagement are what’s leading to this medal for restraint that we’ve talked about. The medal will be yellow, and this is somebody who gets a medal for not firing their weapon because civilians might be killed. And, of course, this enemy happens to put civilians in front of them at every place they happen to be, even on the battlefield or in a village, town or, or what have you. And we have very restrictive rules of engagement and I’m told that McChrystal resents them, I’m also told (Byron York has a story) that he’s the author of them. So I remain conflicted and not quite certain of just who is the author of the rules of engagement, whether it is McChrystal or whether it’s coming from the White House. It may be both. I don’t doubt that some of it is coming from the White House. We have a bunch of liberal theorists who hate the military orchestrating a war, and they’re doing everything about it wrong. Timelines for withdrawal? I mean Taliban and Al-Qaeda just have to sit there, twiddle their thumbs and bide their time. I mean the Obama bunch hasn’t the slightest idea how to wage war. They don’t even like it.
This is all being done because Obama made a big deal about it as a Senator and as a candidate that Iraq was the wrong place to go, that Afghanistan’s where we should have been. So he really doesn’t want to be there, it’s a political inconvenience for him, gets in the way of his other agenda items. What this incident points up to me is there’s obviously a lack of respect, lack of confidence from the warrior guys in the military relating to their commander-in-chief. And this is an interesting aspect of this. This kind of discord, this kind of internal squabble, which is huge, this is the kind of thing we ought to be causing among the Taliban. Instead it’s happening to us. We’re the ones that appear to be un-unified. We’re the ones squabbling amongst ourselves over theory, policy, strategy, and all of this. Meanwhile, our enemies around the world sit there and are laughing themselves silly over all of this. Make no mistake about that.
Now, McChrystal, again from what I’ve been told because I don’t know him, McChrystal is a man of deep principle who puts the men and women under his command first and understanding how this administration works a lot of people are surprised that it’s taken this long for McChrystal or anybody else to hit the destruct button. And make no mistake about it, despite the apology and despite the attempt here to go, ‘I wish I hadn’t done it,’ many people that I talked to think it was purposeful and this is exactly what he’s doing, is to hit the destruct button to try to alert people that we have a mess here and that we have a regime that hasn’t the slightest idea what they’re doing nor do they actually really care about it. This guy McChrystal has gotten almost no face time. It took 70 days for Obama to meet with him. They met twice. They met once over at the Pentagon in some room and apparently McChrystal’s first assessment, I think this is in the Rolling Stone piece, McChrystal’s first assessment of Obama was somebody who was intimidated by the military, uncomfortable, didn’t really want to be there, was not inspiring confidence, came unprepared, had no idea what he was talking about.
Most of these quotes from the Rolling Stone piece are from McChrystal’s aides, not from him. This is something that needs to be pointed out. You can also say, ‘Who works harder?’ McChrystal runs seven to eight miles a day, eats one meal, and sleeps four hours a night. Compare that to Obama. Playing golf, watching baseball, playing golf, going bowling, shooting hoops, playing golf, walking the beach looking for tarballs. So he’s got no face time with the press, one meeting in the Oval Office, one meeting with Biden, and clearly these aides who have been quoted, ‘Biden? Bite me?’ is how they reacted to Biden, McChrystal’s aides. He’s gotten not only no face time with Obama, but very little face time with the top people in the administration. His requests are either cut in half or ignored. He wanted X-number of boots on the ground to make this thing work out in Afghanistan. Look how long it took, Obama’s has to go to West Point, make all these public comments, public hand-wringing and so forth.
Now, a corporate general keeps his mouth shut. A corporate general says that it’s his job to follow orders, but in reality they want one more star. The corporate generals are looking for the fourth star, maybe they’re dreaming about the fifth star. And then they behave in political ways in order to get it. Maybe they want the top job at the Pentagon, secretary of defense, so they go along with whoever is running the show, even if it’s a bunch of inept leftist, socialist theoreticians who hate guns and who hate the Second Amendment, they go along with them because that’s the path that they’ve carved for themselves. The warrior general cares too much about the men and women under his command to sit silently while amateurs and incompetence in Washington undercut the effectiveness of his fighting force. So McChrystal is there in Afghanistan on the ground, he sees the price we’re paying on a daily basis, sees it. He cares too much about his troops. They mean more to him than one more star on his uniform.
So the people I’ve talked to say, despite his apology today and whatever else he will say when he meets with Obama, that he is the kind of guy who knew exactly what he was doing when he gave this interview. And he did so only after being ignored by the White House for over a year. And don’t forget, Jonathan Alter has a book out there and in this book various unnamed White House people take shots at McChrystal and some of his people in Jonathan Alter’s book. Wesley Clark is a great example of a corporate general. Wesley Clark, Ashley Wilkes from the great movie Gone with the Wind. Now, Byron York’s piece in which he claims that McChrystal’s real offense is the rules of engagement, I’m told that for the most part Byron’s piece is accurate and that there is no denying that fighting a counterinsurgency can be very frustrating for the trooper in a specific area.
Now, McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategery is to hold and pacify the population centers and villages, but he wasn’t given the number of boots that he wanted. And people tend to forget this. While his combat troops pacify, he sends out the hunter-killer teams to whack the high-value targets at night. So the public perception is that we are following along with Obama’s dictates on this but at nighttime we are going out and kicking butt. The Predator strikes are part of this as well. And then the final big piece is the spring and summer push into areas where the Taliban is congregated or is trying to reconstitute. So you have somebody on the ground and a general who is actually trying to win this. He’s a warrior general, and he just finds no compatibility whatsoever with this crop of civilian leaders, not just at the White House, but over the Pentagon.
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RUSH: From the Rolling Stone piece on rules of engagement. I’ve heard two conflicting things today. Byron York is reporting that McChrystal’s real offense is the restrictive rules of engagement, and we’ve talked about these. Again, these rules of engagement are what’s leading to the creation of this new medal for restraint for not firing your weapon. In a war! That’s the rules of engagement? Well, here’s the Rolling Stone version of it in their story. ‘The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they’ve been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground,’ who we know are frustrated by the ROEs, rules of engagement. Here’s another passage from the Rolling Stone story. We got the PDF of it here. It doesn’t hit ’til later in the week.
”[W]hen I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our [f-ing] gun on,’ says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. ‘I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird [airplane], and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they’re all [screwed] up — either because somebody is trying to cover their [rear end], or because they just don’t understand it themselves. But we’re f[rig]ing losing this thing.” Again, many of the comments are not from McChrystal. They are from his aides and others in this Rolling Stone piece. Now, from earlier in the piece, the Rolling Stone piece on the rules of engagement: ‘From the start, McChrystal was determined to place his personal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laboratory for a controversial military strategy known as counterinsurgency.
‘COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops’ which McChrystal did not get. Remember all the waffling over the numbers of troops and Obama split the difference? So you send ‘huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government — a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve.’ It’s a slow, messy process, and Obama’s put a time limit on all this. Of next year! Now, there are all kinds of criticisms of McChrystal out there.
Jim Geraghty at National Review Online: ‘Many people I know think highly of McChrystal, and he has earned his accolades. But a general in the American armed forces cannot, on the record, mock or deride the vice president and the U.S. ambassador, much less the president of the United States. You and I can; we’re just some schmoes; we don’t report to him in the chain of command. I’m sure many 
generals have thought many colorful expressions of criticism toward presidents over the years, but they cannot blab them to reporters.’ Now, the exact same things that are being said about McChrystal today were said about Patton, and they have been said about pretty much every great battle general we’ve ever had — and that’s the point here in corporate general versus warrior general.
The Special Forces people love McChrystal — and the ‘spooks,’ the spies over at CIA love him because he sends his guys out to kill bad guys, and we’ve got a little guilt trip on about killing bad guys. Because, you know, we think the bad guys are bad guys ’cause of us. We have a regime that believes the bad guys were really good guys at one time but because of our oppressive worldwide policies and our siding with Israel that we’ve turned good guys into bad guys so we gotta be politically correct with them. There’s a line about the former general being surprised at McChrystal’s contempt for civilian leadership. How do you expect these men of honor to feel when they’ve given it all to the United States Army, they wake up one day and they’ve got a community organizer running the show? See, the dirty little secret here is that what he said is true — and critics here are not accepting the danger we face with this president and commander-in-chief in military circumstances such as Iraq, Afghanistan (or, pray tell, wherever else we might end up having to go).
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RUSH: All right, now we’re getting to the meat of this, ladies and gentlemen. I just have a question. How do we expect men of honor — like McChrystal, Petraeus, you name ’em — to feel when they have given it all to the US Army, the military, and they wake up one day and they got a community organizer running the show? A community organizer who won’t even sit down with them! Instead, the community organizer sends his ’60s, radical, Ivy League educated intellectuals to go talk down to these warriors and lecture them on how to run the war — and let’s not forget, these people have memories. President Obama was part of the Democrat Party cabal hoping for defeat in Iraq. President Obama was part of the Democrat Party cabal that was doing everything it could to demoralize the US military in Iraq, all for political advantage over George W. Bush. These guys know this.
Barack Obama was part of the Democrat Party cabal which was insulting US troops. Murderers, rapists, terrorists, thugs they were being portrayed as. These people remember all this, and they wake up one day, and this guy happens to now be the commander-in-chief. Now, the Drive-By Media, as is already happening, are gonna try to make this about a rogue general when the real story is staring them right in the face: We have an amateur in the White House who’s surrounded himself with people who have open disdain for the military. He himself does, too. This rift, folks, I’m telling you, it’s been brewing for a long time. This started back in Iraq. This started in 2004, 2005 when the Democrat Party decided for the first time in history to break with the United States of America and hope for defeat, all for the express purpose of political advancement of their own party.
Some of the critics, I fear, even on our side are focusing on the wrong thing, which is: Should the general have spoken like this in public? Well, apparently the general — and the general, I want to stress again, did not do all that much speaking, if we are to believe what is written in Rolling Stone. For example, McChrystal did not mock Biden. One of his staff did in a bar. This is what McChrystal said about Biden: ”Are you asking about Vice President Biden?’ McChrystal says with a laugh, ‘Who’s that?” It was a top advisor who then added, ‘Biden? Did you say, ‘Bite me?” We don’t know if McChrystal even heard that. According to the Rolling Stone story, a lot of these exchanges took place very casual settings, bars, and over a long period of time. They were not official press releases like Douglas MacArthur condemning US policy in Korea and Formosa, Taiwan.
Now, the wrong thing is being focused on. ‘Should he have spoken out in public like this?’ This really isn’t the issue. See, folks, we face a big problem, and that is that the war in Afghanistan is not going well. The troop level that this general had originally asked for was denied to him. The politicians are calling too many of the shouts, as they did during Vietnam. End dates are announced. End dates! This is pure sophistry. Do you know where the end dates are being announced? So Obama can pacify his far-left, fringe base. No responsible military leader or commander-in-chief announces when we’re gonna stop something! Especially if we haven’t achieved victory. But we’ve done it twice now, this administration has, with a timeline for exit in Afghanistan.
We have young men and women over there fighting while our president’s unfocused, inexperienced, and motivated by his leftist base instead of being motivated by the right things. This is an extraordinary story, my friends, because of what is being said about Obama and most of it is true — and once again we face the same circumstance that we faced with Barton. Barton said things that were true, but his timing was not wise. Democrat National Committee already has this ad, this TV commercial featuring Barton’s words. I don’t think it’s going to help ’em ’cause everybody knows it’s true. And what McChrystal’s aides here in this Rolling Stone story say is true. Most of it’s true. And this is why the left is having conniption fits again today because, as I said yesterday: Those who control the language control the agenda.
We can’t have these kind of truths out there about our Boy Wonder president. That’s why the left and the media are going nuts. They want this to be about the general and his staff, not about Obama and his staff. This is about Obama and his staff. This is about the United States military sent to combat with ridiculous rules of engagement, and now timelines. So what are we faced with here at the end of all this? Joe Wilson: You lie!’ and Joe Wilson should go. Joe Barton should go, and now McChrystal should go. Meanwhile, Obama, Pelosi, Harry Reid and all their cohorts, they’re the ones that ought to stay, the architects of so many disasters? Have you seen the existing home sales stats for May? Once again the Limbaugh Media Tweak: ‘Unexpected plunge of 2.2%…’ What the hell’s unexpected about it?
What the hell is unexpected about a plunge in existing home sales in this economy? So the architects of this nation’s demise should stay. Everybody else should either shut up or speak in hushed tones. I don’t know, folks. It’s a dispiriting thing. You would rather this not happen at all. You would rather the circumstances that caused this to happen did not exist. You would hope that this is the kind of discord that we would be promoting amongst our enemy, causing them to unravel and become dis-unified with no sense of purpose. Unfortunately, it’s working the other way around. Anyway, let’s go to the audio sound bites. I want to start here with me, on this program, back in October 6th of 2009. Well, just listen to it. It speaks for itself.
RUSH ARCHIVE: I’m convinced now that this guy, McChrystal, leaked to Bob Woodward at the Washington Post. I think that’s how it got out, because I think McChrystal — I mean this is deadly serious stuff what’s happening over there. This is not just Afghanistan. We got rolled over there and it’s over, and I think this guy, trained general takes it very seriously. I think he’s scared to death of what he’s dealing with, folks, I really do and I think that’s why he leaked his report. I’m just guessing, wild guess, but I think this general is scared to death of what he’s dealing with in a commander-in-chief who has no foreign policy.
RUSH: Remember what I’m talking about there. Remember McChrystal has already been summoned by Obama once. Obama was in Great Britain at some economic meeting and they had McChrystal in a helicopter, an airplane to go meet Obama, because McChrystal had put some out other report. This is not the first time that this has happened, and I don’t believe that there are coincidences. Now, the State-Controlled Media is just out of control. Remember, now, if Bush was presidentMcChrystal would be a hero, a whistle-blower. But listen to this montage.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: They need to fire him. He needs to go today.
MARK HALPERIN: If he gets to that meeting at the White House tomorrow without having resigned, I will be stunned.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: …cost the general his job.
GRETCHEN CARLSON: Can the president fire the top general in Afghanistan?
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Go off and fire him for insubordination.
JIM MIKLASZEWSKI: …the end to McChrystal’s tenure as the command in Afghanistan.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: Is he self-aware enough to know that maybe he should resign?
ANDREA MITCHELL (NBC NEWS, WASHINGTON): It crosses the line of insubordination and the military code of justice. He has challenged the commander-in-chief — legally, morally, ethically, professionally — and he ought to be canned.
JONATHAN ALTER: I’d be amazed if this wasn’t it for General McChrystal. It threatens civilian control of the military.
RUSH: Okay, so there’s-your-average-run-of-the-day mainstream media, State-Controlled Media montage. Andrea Mitchell (NBC News, Washington): ‘It crosses the line of insubordination, the military code of justice.’ Okay, fine and dandy, it may do that, but look at what’s behind it. This guy have a history of speaking out like this or his aides? Remember, now, McKiernan was the general that first went off the path, Obama had to get rid of him and replaced him with McChrystal. Can the media experts cite one example from the Rolling Stone piece where McChrystal challenged the president? His aides do. His top advisors make it very clear, but can they find one example where McChrystal it D? My point is still, though: McChrystal’s gotta go, Joe Barton has to go, Joe Wilson has to go but all the architectures of the destruction of this country? Oh, they get to stay! They have to stay. The State-Controlled Media is up in arms that McChrystal with personally insult Obama. Good Morning America today George Stephanopoulos spoke with Martha Raddatz. He said, Martha, ‘It’s not the first time McChrystal has had friction with the White House.’
RADDATZ: This Rolling Stone article is really different, George, and I think it’s why the administration is so angry. This is personal gossip. This is personal laundry. It’s not about policy, it’s not about troops, and we’re in the middle of a war.
RUSH: Don’t think that’s really true. Personal laundry? It is about policy. It’s about the rules of engagement. It’s about one of these aides said, ‘We’re losing!’ One of McChrystal’s aides said, ‘We’re losing over there!’ It is about policy. I dare say most of these media experts are opining here without even having read the Rolling Stone article, which only became available an hour ago. Until that time everybody being reacted here is based on leaks and innuendo. How many of these wizards of smart in our punditocracy have actually read the Rolling Stone piece? Here is newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin speaking with the Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr at CNN about McChrystal. Question: ‘A lot of people thinking: What was he thinking? Top commander, general, overseeing what’s happened in Afghanistan. Why?’
STARR: Yeah, I wish I had an answer to that. I think that that’s, uhh, what everyone is asking. You know, we’ve… Uhhh, like most of the Pentagon press corps, I’ve covered General McChrystal for many, many years. He is one of the most serious-minded individuals I have ever met. He rarely publicly has a sense of humor about much of anything. He has taken this job to heart.
RUSH: Exactly my point earlier. ‘He has taken this job to heart,’ and he wakes up one day and the commander-in-chief is a community organizer from Chicago!
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RUSH: In addition to describing generals as either corporate generals or warrior generals, there is another way to differentiate generals and actually people in general. There are womanly words and there are manly deeds. It is pretty clear which category McChrystal falls into, and also pretty clear which category fits Obama. Womanly words and manly deeds. Let me read something from this Rolling Stone article, which, again, is just out a little over an hour ago. I have the PDF file here. ‘He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander…’ Remember he ran Special Ops there. ‘… and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. ‘The lads love Stan McChrystal,’ says a British officer who serves in Kabul. ‘You’d be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like ‘Who the [heck] is that?’ And it’s Stan McChrystal.’ This is something leaders don’t do. They stay safely behind the lines to stay alive to be the leaders.
Now, would it be cynical of me to question the timing of this article, an article which wasn’t even supposed to come out until next Friday but it’s clear it could have been written at any time. What a great way to get BP off the front page because, you know what, Obama is losing that one in the polls, folks. The vast majority of the American people think he’s not doing the right thing or good thing or has no strategery at all. The Democrat Party thinks they’ve got a winner here in the whole BP thing, especially with Joe Barton, but they don’t. Obama is not getting majority support anywhere. And you look at this, I mean the military is just as hated as Big Oil among the left-wing fringe base that Obama has to pander to.
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RUSH: Well, this one takes the cake. Old Gibbs up there, the White House press secretary, just said about this McChrystal incident that Obama really feels bad to be distracted from the mission by this. Ha! Feels bad to be distracted from the mission because of this? Has he ever been focused on the mission? I mean, you gotta be focused on it to be distracted by it or from it or what have you. Anyway, folks, this Rolling Stone piece, when you read it, it almost appears as though these damning quotes were leaked first because it was available so they would be much more sensational they turnout to be when you read the entire article. Even so, the quotes are not really all that sensational no matter how you look at them. It’s just some staff people letting off steam — and a lot of these comments are made while the staff is holed up in a bar consuming adult beverages, maybe to excess, which explains some of this.
Before we go to the phones, here’s an example of one of the most supposedly damning sections of the Rolling Stone piece — and again, note that it is Team McChrystal here, McChrystal’s staff, who are reportedly talking in private. ‘In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a ‘clown’ who remains ‘stuck in 1985.’ Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, ‘turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.’ Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. ‘Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,’ says an adviser. ‘She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.”’ What staff people don’t talk like this? You can bet Obama’s staff talks like this about people Obama has to work with. I’ll bet you they’re just probably more obscene than these guys are, since Rahm Emanuel is present in these meetings. But Hillary Clinton stands up for McChrystal in this piece. So it would be interesting. When you read this compared to all the sensationalism with them these so-called comments have been leaked from the story, you might agree that this story is not nearly as incendiary as it’s been portrayed to be. It still doesn’t mean that there’s not a contretemps going on out there, dissatisfaction with the way the whole program’s being run, particularly the Afghanistan strategy. All right, to the phones as I promised. Jay in Jacksonville, Florida, thank you for waiting. You’re up first today on the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. Good afternoon.
RUSH: Hi.
CALLER: It’s a pleasure to talk with you. I’ve been trying to get through since last November. Listen, your comment about there being two types of, you know, officers in the military, you’re spot on. My father having been in the service for quite a long time, I have met both types of general officers, those that are the warriors. And again, you are spot on.
RUSH: Yeah, the corporate generals —
CALLER: The corporate types.
RUSH: — and the warrior generals.
CALLER: Yes. One being more concerned about politics, the other being more concerned about getting the mission done. The comment that the general made, usually the warriors… (cell garbled) Obviously there are some exceptions. Like in his apology. I have a very hard time believing that he actually meant what he said in his apology. I don’t know how a man of his caliber could actually have ‘extreme admiration and respect’ for the current president.
RUSH: Well, we’re going to have to wait for what McChrystal says. The one thing we want to avoid doing is assuming what’s in his heart and mind. I’ve gone a little bit farther than I intended to in that ’cause I don’t think any of this is accidental. I think there’s a genuine disconnect between the warrior side in the Pentagon and this administration. These staff people, I just refuse to believe they don’t know who Rolling Stone is. I refuse to believe they don’t know that they’re talking to a pop culture, leftist icon publication. I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe they’re that stupid. Therefore I don’t believe that these comments were not intended for public dissemination. Now, McChrystal has apparently apologized and wants to do so in person.
So what we’ll have to wait and see what he actually says about this. (interruption) No, Snerdley, I don’t know if the staff thought they were talking off the record. We’ll wait and see on that, too. Nah. People are not that stupid. You got reporters from Rolling Stone and you think you’re off the record? That doesn’t compute. I mean this does not hide the fact that the real story here is: There is a huge split between the warrior side in the Pentagon and the administration and the regime. Clearly they understand they’ve got, you know, sixties anti-war, anti-military people running the show now, community organizer. They wake up one day, community organizer is a commander-in-chief. These guys have devoted everything to completing the mission. Here’s Kevin in Columbus, Ohio. Great to have you on the program, sir. You’re next.
CALLER: Yes. First of all, I think, being a veteran, I am highly offended with this general. No matter what he thinks or feels, he has sworn an oath to that office. He has sworn an oath to this president no matter what he feels about him, and to me that is borderline treasonous. Have you ever seen that move Branded where they stripped the guy down? That’s exactly what should happen to him: Strip this guy down and boot him out of the military because when I was in the military we weren’t allowed to do that. You could not say anything, especially during a war. Now, that is very undermining. You gonna get who knows how many people killed just by his comment because he is uplifting the enemy. They hear these comments and they get very excited because they see that we’re divided. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they wouldn’t mount some type of attack on our troops just because of what this stupid general has said.
RUSH: Oh, now, wait a second. Kevin, let’s try to be a little reasonable here. There are —
CALLER: No, look, I served in the military, so I do need to be reasonable.
RUSH: They’re already mounting attacks on our troops! Our troops aren’t allowed to fire back, for crying out loud with these stupid rules of engagement.
CALLER: Whose fault is that? That’s not Obama’s fault because they can’t fire back. He didn’t make that rules of engagement. That’s Geneva Convention. And you —
RUSH: No, they’re not!
CALLER: Don’t tell me that our guys are being fired on —
RUSH: No, the rules of engagement are not —
CALLER: — and they’re not allowed to fire back now. Come on.
RUSH: Kevin? Kevin, we don’t have time for sophistry here on this program. You’re ignorant. The rules of engagement have nothing to do with the Geneva Convention. What about all these Democrats who were demoralizing the military during the Iraq war? Well, I guess now we know. That’s the Obama defense sector, that’s how they’re looking at this. So this McChrystal ought to be stripped and branded and fired. Okay. I wonder: How many of you think Obama’s going to get rid of McChrystal? The conventional wisdom is that McChrystal’s gone. He’s going to go in there and he’s going to explain himself and Obama’s going to say, ‘You’re gone, buddy.’ But I wonder. I wonder if The One actually will fire McChrystal. ‘Cause there’s some negative downside if he does that, not to mention blowing up the whole Afghanistan policy. But he might also be creating a Republican presidential candidate in the process. I mean, you gotta consider all kinds of things here. West Chester, Ohio. Joe, welcome to the program, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Sir, it’s an absolute honor to speak with you. I’m a retired Army guy. I’d like to make three comments. The first comment is: When you get a staff at high level, these guys are handpicked. So if they’re saying something, they’re speaking as one voice. The second thing I’d like to say is that there’s a certain level of trust between the commander-in-chief and the generals they send out to do the job, and if you don’t trust the general to give you an accurate assessment and you don’t support him, then that level of trust is broken. And then the third thing is that the liberals have always been anti-military. This whole Afghanistan thing, I believe the liberals are not in it to win it. It was just one of those campaign things where Obama, he lashed out at Bush.
RUSH: Yeah, ‘We’re fighting the wrong war. We should be in Afghanistan! We shouldn’t be in Iraq,’ and so, yeah, window dressing, face saving, and so forth. Here’s another thing to consider — and thanks, Joe, very much. Another thing to consider: If Obama does fire McChrystal, then McChrystal is free to launch. And that, believe me, will be a major factor as they mull this over at the highest levels of the regime, because McChrystal would then be free to speak his mind if he were cashiered. Whether he would is another matter, but he would be free to if they cut him loose, and that may be something the regime doesn’t want to deal with. We’ll see.
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RUSH: Here’s Burt in St. Louis. Burt, welcome to the EIB Network, sir. Great to have you here.
CALLER: Hey, thank you, Rush. A real thrill. Listen, this is what I think about the McChrystal development. From what I understand, the analysts and strategists and generals say the most important thing to do in Afghanistan is to find and build reliable partnerships, dependable partnerships and mutually beneficial partnerships. And the way I read this McChrystal revelation is this: McChrystal and Karzai are now in the same boat. They both have no one to build a reliable partnership with, namely, the Obama administration and the Democrats.
RUSH: Well, now, it’s interesting you say that because Karzai has come out and defended McChrystal today. Karzai came out and said, ‘I enjoy working with McChrystal. I think we’re on the same page here. We’re making good progress here.’ So…
CALLER: Well, Rush, look at it pragmatically from historical record. When Obama took office and the Honduras tragedy happened, who did Obama side with? He didn’t side with the legitimate government of Honduras. He sided with the lone communist insurgent.
RUSH: That’s true.
CALLER: In Israel, who did Obama side with? He did not side with the legitimate government of Israel but with Hamas. Now, if you’re in a struggle and you want a reliable partner, look at the track record. Can you depend and rely on that partner?
RUSH: No. No.
CALLER: I don’t think so.
RUSH: Speaking bluntly, you can’t. If you’re any of our allies — I made this point earlier — you can’t trust the guy. He’s lost their respect. Let’s not forget, Obama tried to destroy Karzai during these elections. Remember our guys, Carville or whoever, went over there to support system insurgent candidate and we tried to oust Karzai. Karzai. Whatever you think of him, Hamid Karzai says the best commander the US ever sent to Afghanistan is McChrystal. So you may have a point out there, Burt, I’m glad you called.
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RUSH: John, Indianapolis, welcome to the EIB Network. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, I just had a few quick comments regarding General McChrystal. My first point is I think the honorable thing now would be for him to meet face-to-face with President Obama and resign on principle and then challenge him for the presidency or at least give speeches opposing the president and his policies, and we should never forget when we elect a president, we are first and foremost electing a commander-in-chief, and this time we elected a man who doesn’t want badly enough or at all to win a war against an enemy he won’t even name. My last point is, if General McChrystal doesn’t resign and Obama doesn’t fire him, civilian control of the military will be weakened, and Obama will be shown to be weaker than he already appears to be now.
RUSH: Well, that’s interesting. Now, I’ve been watching television today, and supposedly McChrystal has apologized and will do so again tomorrow.
CALLER: He shouldn’t do that. He should resign.
RUSH: It’s too late. If he has apologized it’s too late, of course, not to. Resign, I don’t know. Look, I’ll go long here. I actually don’t think Obama will fire the guy. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. You know, trying to explain this guy rationally just doesn’t work.