RUSH: Wednesday night on Telemundo, Noticiero Telemundo. The host is Jose Diaz-Balart. He's interviewing Obama, and Jose says, "Would you consider the current Egyptian regime an ally of the United States?"OBAMA: I don't think that we would consider them an ally, but we don't consider them an enemy. They are a new government that is trying to find its way. They were democratically elected. I think that, uh, we are gonna have to see how they respond to this incident. Uh, how they respond to, for example, maintaining the peace treaty with Israel. So far, at least, what we've seen is in some cases they've said the right things and taken the right steps. In others, how they've responded to various events may not be aligned with our interests.RUSH: All right. That's psychobabble, and everybody says so.
See, U.S. foreign aid should only go to allies like Israel who don't need it in the first place and will do what we want anyway. Never mind that we gave $ billions in military aid to Egypt's dicator Mubarak for 30 years because he kept the peace with Israel while he brutalized Egyptians, and they all knew it. Now that Egyptian popular opinion matters, we should cut off all foreign aid to "punish" them, cutting off a major source of U.S. influence, according to Rush. Now we should resort to remote threats and tantrums. Makes perfect backwards sense, doesn't it?
Whereas President Obama realizes that Egypt -- more precisely, its people -- are on the fence with regard to U.S. power, and he doesn't want to cut them off. But Rush and conservatives do. And that would accomplish... what? ... in the most populous Arab country on Earth? What in the world would official disengagement and diplomatic tantrums from Washington do to influence the people of Egypt, who rightly recognize that the U.S. enabled their oppressor for 30 years, and now must decide if the U.S. has really turned over a new leaf? F--k 'em, that's Rush's advice. That's all well and good... if you think we live in a bubble. But 9/11 showed that we don't.
The United States will live or die on its adherence to its cherished values and thus its moral authority to lead the Free World. If we renounce those, if we renounce the idea of America in the pursuit of American interests, then we must rely on naked power to achieve our selfish aims. Yet we don't have the stomach to follow through on all that that entails -- we are not 19th century Britain (thank God). And the world is too transparent and interconnected to submit to neo-colonial tyranny by the U.S. or anybody. We need a new game plan. Rush and conservatives are living in the last century. They are clinging to a dead past and bereft of ideas.
September 14, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show
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