November 1, 2004
Ladies and gentlemen, I have avoided throughout the whole year declaring this the most important election in our history. I mean, we've had crucial elections before during the Civil War, during World Wars. We had numerous crucial elections during the Cold War, and we've had a divided electorate before. This isn't the first time that we have settled national arguments or even a single national argument over several election cycles. Well, that having been said, this time there is one high stakes issue that makes domestic concerns pale in comparison, and that is the growth of international terrorism -- and this is the prelude to getting into the bin Laden tape that came out on Friday.
International terrorism, which claimed over 800 American lives in what I guess could be called "nuisance" attacks before September 11th, 2001. The growth of international terrorism is a real clear and present danger.
I mean, not just to us, but to all of Western Civilization.
Only since September 11th has this threat been met with the full projection of American power, and just as important, American political will. Now, despite the claims of one candidate and his party and his allies around the world, we have friends in this struggle. We have friends that include East European nations who were oppressed under communism for almost 60 years and do not want a return to anything like that. We have friends in support from Pacific Rim nations, from nations in Africa and western powers like the Brits and the Aussies who have been steadfast allies throughout.
But the truth of the matter is, America is the dominant power and economy in the world today. We determine the course of freedom throughout the world, not just here in the United States of America. It is something that has to be fought for on a daily basis. It's something that far too many people take for granted. It is something that far too many people think that can be purchased with appeasement of enemies. You can't purchase peace with appeasement. I heard over the weekend, "You can only rent it for a while," but eventually you're going to have to make the buy. You're going to have to purchase peace. You don't get it because you want it. You don't get it because you bury your head in the sand and ignore it. You don't get peace, you don't continue the lifestyle of freedom and liberty that we in this country too often take for granted simply by wanting it more than the other guy.
You have to back it up and you have to defend it, and to defend it you have to recognize when it's under attack, and recognizing when it's under attack takes courage. Recognizing when we are under attack takes wide open eyes, takes honesty. Because once you admit, once you come to the intellectual decision, not emotional, once you come to the intellectual decision to admit, to understand that our way of life, that our freedom that, our daily existence as we've always known it is under attack, once you come to that conclusion, then there's only one option you have, and that is to defend it. We are under attack. The truth is that we have been under attack for many years by the same type of people who think in the same way fanatic Islamists have been attacking freedom and Americans for over 20 years.
It's only in the last three years that we've decided to do something about it. We now find ourselves at a crossroads. Are we going to continue to do something about it or are we going to rent peace for awhile and allow Osama bin Laden at the end of the day tomorrow to go ahead and claim that he and he alone influenced the outcome of the United States elections? Are we going to have a victory for Osama bin Laden tomorrow and give him bragging rights across the Middle East and in the worlds of the left and in the process create a whole new generation of terrorists? Here is a man who is so incapacitated because we've made the decision to fight and defend our freedom that all he can launch as an October Surprise is a tape that appears to come right out of the text of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11.
Osama bin Laden cannot launch an attack on the United States of America. Osama bin Laden can only deliver a tape, and on that tape, bin Laden appeals to the very appeasers in this country who would allow him to gain strength by agreeing with what he says and voting for the man who is being quoted by bin Laden. John Kerry, as much as Michael Moore, was quoted by Osama bin Laden in that video that we all saw Friday and over the weekend, and I have eight audio sound bites here that I'm going to get to later in the program to prove this to you. You can say it came out of Fahrenheit 9/11, but so did the Kerry campaign. Michael Moore is not on the ballot; John Kerry is. Osama bin Laden parroting John Kerry in his tape on Friday. We have a unique responsibility to lead the world in confronting and defeating this evil threat. It's not just ourselves that we are defending, and this is despite nations who oppose us.
Many of these nations that oppose us do not face the threat that we face. Many of the nations that oppose us are doing so in part to protect their financial ties with terrorist nations. We have never in our history relied on others to defend us. We have never in our history turned over our defense to others, either an institution of nations or a single nation. It is they who come to us.
Therefore, it is us who must come to us, or we who must come to us. We must rely on ourselves in this battle. For over three decades, 30 years, terrorist organizations grew wealthy, they grew more deadly. Despite increasingly brazen attacks, American deaths were brushed off, and those years are now being referred to by the Democratic presidential candidate as the nuisance of terrorism that he would like to return to, where for three decades American deaths were brushed off.
Returning to the days of appeasement, trying to meet a "global test" of world opinion, ignoring threats from hostile nations and groups is a deadly mistake we simply can't afford to make. Those are the stakes in this race, but it goes beyond simply ignoring threats from hostile nations and groups. It's gotten to the point now where the Democratic Party is actually echoing the words of a man who happily murdered 3,000 Americans on September 11th. The Democrat Party in this country is eager to point to the things bin Laden said and suggest that he is right -- a man who happily murdered 3,000 Americans and is eager to do so over and over and over again! You say, "Rush, I haven't heard the Democrats say that." Oh, you can find it on their websites. You can find people who are going to vote for John Kerry who have said this. You can find people on various Democrat websites who are excited bin Laden said what he said. They're hoping for an Osama smack down of Bush if I may quote one of the things I saw.
But the point is you haven't heard anybody in the Democratic Party renounce this for three years. For the last nine months, you haven't heard anybody in the Kerry campaign, not one voice, not one reasonable, responsible voice from the Democrat Party reject any of the slanderous, libelous, vicious, totally made-up lies and attacks about George W. Bush, as "the next Hitler," as "worse than Saddam." You know the list of things. They have encouraged this thinking. You might say, "Why?" The acquisition of their power is crucial to them. They care more about that than anything else, and they are in their minds because they have a superior attitude over America. They have an arrogant, condescending attitude to those they live with and live near. They believe that it is their entitlement, that they are born to power. It's their right, and that right has been interrupted since 1994 and it's time for them to get it back. And they, in their minds, are permitted to lie for "the common good," as they define it.
They are allowed to attack and cheat and do whatever because in their minds they are doing it for "the common good" so they are not lying; they're not cheating. They're doing what's for "the common good" as they see it from their position of superiority. It's amazing. We have, in this campaign, we have George W. Bush, who has a record, a four-year record. He had to make decisions about life and death and war and peace, and he made them. He made them and he has stuck to them, and there are demonstrable pieces of evidence all over the world of the profound success of those decisions.
His opponent has run on platitudes, promises, mysterious plans that you either have to go to his website to read or, when you go there, you'll find that many of them don't even exist.
We have a man who even today, in an AP interview, said something along the lines of, "Well, I'll tell you again what I'm going to do in January. I can't tell you now." John Kerry, on the eve of the election: a man who doesn't want to be pinned down on anything, a man who doesn't want to have to offer a solid position on anything for fear of what that will do to him in the polls. He is free to Monday morning quarterback; he is free to use hindsight. He's taken every decision that has been made and said, "I would have done it different or better or smarter," but never define how. The fact that this race is as close as it is, is what befuddles me when you get right down to it.
In the America I thought I knew, John Kerry wouldn't be within 30 points, nor would anybody in the Democratic Party, using their campaign, their rhetoric, their mean-spirited bile. There's no candidate in their party using this campaign and using the allies they've used that would be within 30 points of George W. Bush. It may not be the America I know, so we have to fight for that, as well as our liberty at the same time -- and that's what it takes, folks. You have to fight, even for the people who are wrong. The people are too blind or too uninformed or too uneducated or too ignorant or too whatever to see the threat that faces them because they refuse to take a look at it. That's the job that we all have. That's what you do when you fight for your country: You fight for everybody in it.
