"MODERATE" RUDY'S LIMBAUGHESQUE MEME

But here's the reality of it: We're at war. And we're at war because they're at war with us.

--Rudolph Giuliani, interview with Sean Hannity, 2/5/07

They are at war with us, they've been at war with us for a very long time. I see September 11 as the event that woke us up to the fact that they were at war with us.

--Rudolph Giuliani, interview with Dennis Prager, 12/5/06

*****

[Chuck Hagel] says we are perceived as a nation at war with Muslims? Senator, you are an elected senator. You are one of 100 special people in the world's greatest deliberative body. It is Muslims who are at war with us!

--Rush Limbaugh, 3/28/07

But Democrats refuse to comprehend that Islamic extremists were already at war with us before we attacked Iraq....

--David Limbaugh, 10/26/06

****

Well, right-wingers have long argued that if you want to withdraw from Iraq, that means you don't believe in fighting any enemy of Americans anywhere. But this is something new, and rather Orwellian: As Bush leaves the stage, Giuliani and the Limbaughs want us to start thinking that "war on terror," the quintessential Bush notion, is actually a notion concocted by liberal Democrats who "blame America first" and therefore believe the U.S. is responsible for Islamicist terrorism. They're arguing that Bush's term is our term.

It's been suggested that Giuliani is implicitly criticizing Bush whwn he makes this assertion -- see, for instance, this CNN story. He isn't, and the Limbaugh's aren't. They're just moving the language goalposts.