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Motormouth Limbaugh Meets the Machine Gun Preacher
If you blinked, you might have missed a recent movie called Machine Gun Preacher. The film hasn’t burned up the box office and the title may have kept you away from your local picture palace in the mistaken belief that it was some kind of exploitation flick or the latest Quentin Tarantino exercise in post-modernism and ironic bloodbaths. In which case, who could blame you?
In fact, Machine Gun Preacher is the improbable but true story of Sam Childers (played by the improbable but true Gerard Butler, the shiny, muscle-bound Spartan king of 300 fame). After a misbegotten life as a violent biker/drug dealer/ex-con, Childers had a come-to-Jesus epiphany and became a born-again Christian with his own congregation in rural Pennsylvania. But it was when he heard a missionary speak about church work in East Africa that he found his true calling, building an orphanage in the Sudan and protecting the kids there by becoming a vigilante fighting alongside the ill-equipped and undermanned local militia. That’s where the machine gun part comes in.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh didn’t see Machine Gun Preacher either. If he had, he might have known a thing or two about the enemy Sam Childers was battling against: the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rabid rebel group that for some 25 years has made simple, day-to-day existence a living hell for civilians -- especially children -- in Uganda, Southern Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Instead, as is his usual way -- in other words, not having any idea what he’s talking about -- Old Motormouth Limbaugh recently defended the Lord’s Resistance Army on his radio program because they "are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan."
His defense came solely because anything or anyone Barack Obama is against must ipso facto be okay. President Obama has sent 100 military advisers to Africa to try to help end the LRA’s atrocities once and for all. But in the Gospel According to Rush, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if said friend engages in murder and mutilation.
"That’s a new war," Limbaugh declared, "a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda." Yet just last Thursday the Lord’s Resistance Army was described by the evangelical Christian Post as "East Africa’s greatest evil... the region’s most malicious militia group." The paper quoted Jedidiah Jenkins of the non-profit group Invisible Children: "The LRA is an abuse of the Christian religion… a small, vicious cult."
The New York Times has called the LRA "a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity," and Reuters reports, "Over the years the LRA became known for chilling violence including what human rights groups say were the abductions of thousands for use as child soldiers or sex slaves, [and] brutal club and machete attacks on victims."
Just ask former Bush White House chief speechwriter Michael Gerson. "The LRA is a brutal rebel group headed by a messianic madman," he wrote in The Washington Post. "Its victims... have been the focus of activism by Christian organizations and human rights groups for decades."
Presented with the inconvenient facts, Rush harrumphed, "Well, we just found out about this today. We’re gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it." A couple of days later Limbaugh admitted that he had been "misinformed," then proceeded to laugh the whole thing off.
This lethal combination of ignorance and abject dismissal typifies the Republican right’s current approach to foreign policy, as evidenced by everything from Michele Bachmann’s suggestion that the Iraqi people reimburse the United States for the privilege of having had their country invaded to Herman Cain’s declaration that, "When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, 'You know, I don’t know. Do you know?' ... Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world I don’t think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going."
That jobs and the economy should be our first priority is a no-brainer, but in its zeal to simplistically reject all things governmental, the GOP is turning its back on decades of the experience, craft and skill essential to an effective, bipartisan foreign policy. Nowhere is that more evident than the dilemma currently confronted by five-term Republican Senator Dick Lugar of Indiana, a venerated and respected, conservative expert on global affairs now facing a serious primary challenge from Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock, the state treasurer. Mourdock’s making political hay over Lugar’s mentoring of Barack Obama in the world of international relations when Obama was a freshman senator, a partnership brayingly portrayed in a Mourdock campaign video titled, "Dick and Barry: The Unforgettable Bromance."
Jacob Heilbrunn, senior fellow at the public policy Center for the National Interest (formerly The Nixon Center) wrote on the website of Foreign Policy magazine, "It isn’t just the career of the Senate’s senior-most Republican that is at stake here; it is an entire tradition of Republican foreign policy that is being repudiated by the party faithful."
This, he continues, "should evoke apprehension in anyone who thinks that America's leading role in the world has, by and large, been a force for good."
Whether you agree with the decision or not, it is that perception of the American role as a force for good that partially informs Obama’s dispatch of military advisors to East Africa, a move that not only is consonant -- so far -- with Congress’ 2010 passage of the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, but also the Bush administration’s Operation Lightning Thunder in December 2008, when American military intelligence assisted African troops in an unsuccessful attempt to corner LRA leader Joseph Kony in eastern Congo. (According to Human Rights Watch, in retaliation after that failure, "the LRA attacked villages and towns in northern Congo and southern Sudan, killing more than 865 civilians during the Christmas 2008 holiday season and in the weeks thereafter.")
President Obama’s new move in Africa jibes with the National Security Strategy he presented last year: "The burdens of a young century cannot fall on American shoulders alone,” he wrote, but “democracy does not merely represent our better angels, it stands in opposition to aggression and injustice, and our support for human rights is both fundamental to American leadership and a source of our strength in the world."
Yet as Adam Serwer of Mother Jones points out, “The atrocities committed by the LRA aside, nations don't use military force out of altruism. Uganda provides a substantial number of troops for the African Union Force in Somalia, where the al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabaab has control over a significant part of that country. I have no doubt that Barack Obama believes that the world would be better off without Kony and the LRA. But although it hasn't been explicitly said, it's a good bet the Obama administration feels obligated to assist Uganda because Uganda is helping the US fight a proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate, a mission that hasn't been without cost for Uganda."
Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and his right wing cohort emptily natter on, chattering, as my old man used to say, just to hear their heads rattle.
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42 Comments so far
Show All>> President Obama has sent 100 military advisers to Africa to try to help end the LRA’s atrocities once and for all.<<
There must be natural resources there that the elite wants. Why else would obomber be the least bit concerned ?
That kind of exploitation has never stopped (just went covert with "economic hitmen", a sprinkling of commando-types, & the local dictator's local "muscle"). My older brother used to have an old globe of the world. Africa was carved up amongst various euro-empires (mostly British and French, with Spanish, Portugese, and Belgian representation). They've (ie. the oligarchy, NOT the people themselves) always opposed development for African nations-for-Africans. They've wanted to keep it as a dismal, defacto colonial "resource piggy bank" for "1st world" use only. The thinly disguised desire to reduce world population to a "more managable" 1 or 2 billion is mostly aimed at non-euro-empire peoples (U.S. and Russian people are included on the hit list, for attempting to dethrone the oligarchy, in their own, differing ways. the "ollies" tried to get us to eliminate each other with the cold war. We both saw through that ruse). Needless-to-say, the "ollies" have willing accomplices in every society.
From quotes found in Wikipedia:
"Yes, we are fighting for (Democracy)," "Is it bad? It is not against human rights. And this commandment was not given by (me). It was not given by (the leaders of the USA). No, this commandment was given by (the American people); by God."
"We don't have any children. We only have combatants. (It is a volunteer army)"
Who said it? No, not Limbaugh or Bush or Obama, but Kony (somewhat added to and altered by me to make the relevance clear).
Question: What has this country in the Americas with the self-appointed identity, 'AMERICA', come to?
Answer: The USA (amongst others) has always been like this.
And yes, what we are witnessing now is the USA planning and working towards the eradication of a vast swathe of the world's people. The current sequestration of oil bearing lands by means of strategically placed military bases and perpetual war shows clearly that, at the highest levels in the USA, Global Warming is being seen as the weapon that will achieve this, by God!
It's called oil...black gold, Texas tea.
The U.S. empire has no business sending in troops to Uganda for any reason. Does anyone believe for a second that this is a 'humanitarian enterprise'?
Apparently we're being allowed to believe it's a humanitarian save-the-children mission .. or that O's doing it to protect us from al queda.
.
To Rush, they're all alike.
Sending in 100 military advisers is so wishy-washy. We should either do nothing or completely carpet bomb the nation. Half measures equals half assed thinking. Fish or cut bait.
Hey Greg R, I hope that was a facetious statement. Calling for the carpet bombing of a country, any country is some sick shit.
Pinchway
Agreed. It is way past the point that the average American as well as the mainstream media finally come to the realization that there is very little difference between the GOP and The Savage Mules [which is also the name of a finely written book by Dennis Perrin].
Good analysis, pinchyway.
And one of the most insidious elements of Winship's apologia is the suggestion that old warhorses like Richard Lugar labor to establish an "effective, bipartisan foreign policy", predicated in part on the "perception of the American role as a force for good".
I can't dispute that "stooge" is as good a synonym as any for "progressive-liberal Establishment-serving Democrat".
Thank you. I cringed when Winship began to bemoan the threat to "bipartisan foriegn policy", which includes endless support for the military industrial complex, and support for US imperialism everywhere.
This oiece is a shitty little apology for imperialism in the form of the typical liberal interventionist arguments.
No! At this point it is criminal to spread the lie of "humanitarian intervention."
What a f-cking twit Winship turns out to be.
"Why is it that DP voting liberals seem so at home with US militarism?"
Because lefties are just as stupid as righties. They only need to be fed the right kind of BS. For lefties, all they have to be told is that the warmongering is for something they say they support, like "protecting the children." Right or left, most of them are too dumb to realize that American foreign policy has always been, currently is, and always will be, about money and resources.
I agree Caleb Abell, Those on the Left are fooled time and time again. Most on the right are just stupid or lying. Militarism is theft and murder and that is the truth!
Let's not pretend O is doing this to save the children and spread the gift of democracy around Africa ... or to protect the american "homeland" frrom al queda.
President Wallstreet has as yet shown no compassion for children, why would anyone believe he suddenly cares about anything other than keeping his massers happy? No house slave has every helped a brother in the field.
"This lethal combination of ignorance and abject dismissal typifies the Republican right’s current approach to foreign policy, as evidenced by everything from Michele Bachmann’s suggestion that the Iraqi people reimburse the United States for the privilege of having had their country invaded to Herman Cain’s declaration that, "When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, 'You know, I don’t know. Do you know?' ... Knowing who is the head of some of these small insignificant states around the world I don’t think that is something that is critical to focusing on national security and getting this economy going."
Cain is revealing as a quintessential poster character for corrupted assumptions of narrow acquisition of economic power based on the premise of 'derivative' methodologies. Though time consuming to document, these, from my perspective, represent the nubbin of the change that we have to deal with. Questions that come to mind are:
- Are the vast amounts of tomatoes used in his pizza business extractive in terms of a living wage; are they GMO extractive of essential diversity; what costs are "externalized" (creating long term public and human debts in health of migrant workers, local economies, their right to earn a living wage and the dominoes set in place by the practices)?
- What mindset compels him to extractively colonize, in public speech, other peoples regarding their right and natural necessity to be who they are, where they with an utter lack of humility, deriding the dignity of those whose lives have been used to produce his material "wealth" and human spiritual poverty?
- Where and when does accountability and conscience by corporate institutionalists become devoid of fundamental spiritual and conceptual integrity?
- Why and how has the wisdom of humility become so conceptually degraded that these practitioners of acquisition cannot see?
I observe the scrambling of discourse being practiced by those in political power and the anticipated acquisition of even greater "control", even if subconsciously, by those engaging it. It is a cynical naivete that is increasingly revealed to be based in willful ignorance.
The non-violent presence of we the people is well based when faced with the plethora of lies, deceit, manipulations and are derided for being present without detailing demands. What an incredible mirror of the terrified snake pit that power acquisition is.
Once again - I am reminded of Dr. King: ...............
"Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, (Speak, speak, speak) plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, (Speak) and truth bear it?" (Yes, sir) I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, (Yes, sir) however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, (No sir) because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (Yes, sir) because "no lie can live forever." (Yes, sir) How long? Not long, (All right. How long) because "you shall reap what you sow." (Yes, sir)"
"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Long,_Not_Long
[This, he continues, "should evoke apprehension in anyone who thinks that America's leading role in the world has, by and large, been a force for good."]
That is a line that made me think. Even if you think, as I do, that the USA has not been a force for 'good' * then the rise of the unthinking heralds a rather nastier outcome. The people that the writer is talking about have no idea about what's 'good' or not, they don't even know what's 'good' for the USA. That's the reason that Limpballs has always been more of a danger than a joke.
*(I think the USA - like every other nation - is a force for itself. Whether or not that is a good thing depends...)
Agreed. Much of the opinion voiced in other comments is that whatever the US does/has done is 'bad'. How much 'worse' will US foreign policy become if self-admitted ignoramuses continue infiltrating every level of government. Running on a platform of 'I'm proud to be dumb' is shameful and will accelerate the decline of the US.
The fact that Rush is nothing but a $32,000,000.00 a year presstitute, stooge, and a water carrier for the Fascist Right and has the #1 rated talk program in America; tells you what America has become.
Paul: Would you happen to recall a film entitled, "Joe" from the l970's? The premise was that of a blue collar guy upset that his daughter took up with a hippie type boyfriend. The theme song runs, "Hey, Joe, don't it make you want to go to war, again..."
A lot of people are EXTREMELY frustrated by all the fees they're forced to pay. Many blame government for these costs as they don't recognize the degree to which lobbyists, whoring for their corporate masters, set up these cost structures. My point is that the visceral waves of anger have to go somewhere, and that's where the likes of a Rush Limbaugh come into play. He makes it OK to feel hatred and anger. He normalizes the angst, and then conducts it at all the wrong targets.
EZEflyer has posted certain data on Conservatives in this forum. They like things that are black or white, and do NOT do well with empathy, shades of gray, or nuance. It's much easier for them to be offered targets for their angst and/or hatred.
When Rush Limbaugh joked about the torture (calling it something akin to fraternity pranks) going on in off-shore US prison camps, that said all that needs to be said about his level of moral purity. Nonetheless, the creep is a regular lightning rod to all the evident hatred in our land. Much of it was drummed up after 911, with this idea of vengeance masquerading as justice. And as the pie left fewer and fewer crumbs to go around, the hatred was amplified in a manner that ran parallel with the upping of the ante on the make-war, fear-of-terrorism state. People view others with suspicion; and technically one is now guilty until proven innocent.
We're all living in an undeclared dictatorship, an inverted totalitarian system spiraling out of control. Thankfully more and more people are joining protest movements...and that's a very healthy START... to what's next.
"presstitute, stooge, and a water carrier for the Fascist Right"
Are you talking about Limbaugh or Obama?
Yea good one!
Both!
I didn't realize Limbaugh was still alive. So, he still has that show, then?
They briefly thought he had passed away. He overdosed on his blue pills and his whole body went stiff.
If he suffered from brain damage, how would we know?
- a proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate -
Ah, the DAFT war rears its ugly head again, providing legal cover and justification for the war-mongers to insert American violence wherever yummy resources are to be found (all in the name of humanitarianism, of course).
Somalia is strategically important (a form of resource - location, location, location) and as for the DR Congo next door, look up 'coltan'.
Southern Sudan has oil.
Public Law 107-40.
I mention it yet again because otherwise it will be ignored and this insanity will continue to get worse (when will 'al-Qaeda affiliates' be found in South America? Perhaps before next year's election).
Hey when you hold a Nobel Peace Prize, you have to save a few poor children from evil. It balance's out for all other children you accidently killed with your drone attacks.
"The New York Times has called the LRA "a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity," and Reuters reports, "Over the years the LRA became known for chilling violence including what human rights groups say were the abductions of thousands for use as child soldiers or sex slaves, [and] brutal club and machete attacks on victims.""
Sounds like they work for us.
"President Obama has sent 100 military advisers to Africa to try to help end the LRA’s atrocities once and for all."
Another steaming pile of BS from a CD Obama apologist. Obama would be happy if they hacked every child in Africa to pieces as long as his corporate bosses got the oil.
As a president, once you get your Nobel Peace Prize, you are free to kill all the children national security calls for, oh I mean save the children. Gosh I hope no one got confused.
Ok, we can withdraw from the world because our actions might be viewed as duplicitous. Or we could totally annihilate a nation if we did not like their actions. Of course there is a third option. Many posters here do not believe in a measured response to evil. Sometimes I think it is the better choice.
Well Greg if what you say is the case, we seem to have a strange concept of "measured response" (like the carpet bombing you recommended earlier) and deciding which "Evil" to respond too.
The US empire is evil.
How do you suggest that we respond?
I truly wish I knew how to stop all this brutal immoral killing and terror being done around the world,in our name. It makes me sick to my core.
Michael Winship -- Apologetics from the Obama 2012 campaign:
Winship parades the usual collection of stale, warmed-over, Evil GOPer Villains -- Rush Limbaugh and some semi-fictional "Machine Gun Preacher" and Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain and Tea Party candidate Richard Mourdock (whom no one has ever heard of) -- to remind us that they are really stupid and ignorant and isolationist, too! Plus, these malevolent baddies hate Obama and want him to fail (probably because he's black!). Are you feeling manipulated yet? No? Try this:
Winship dishes up some graphic but highly selective atrocity porn to wear you down --this time it's the Lord's Resistance Army and al-Qaeda linked group al-Shabaab! Now, you must be shaking in your shoes and thanking your lucky stars that Obama has the urge to surge in Africa with "advisors" equipped for combat to corner and capture or kill LRA warlord Joseph Kony. It's a purely "humanitarian" mission. RIght? What could possibly go wrong?
Alas, Winship neglects to tell the reader that the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is a corrupt dictator whose government (helped by Washington) has also perpetrated horrendous massacres against civilians. Obama's targeted LRA warlord Joseph Kony may even be an amateur compared to Museveni -- a sort of dictator for life -- who has just supervised the displacement and mass murder of at least 20,000 Ugandans on behalf of British corporations. Plus, Museveni stole the Ugandan elections early this year for the upmteenth time. Yes, he's a vicious bastard, but he's Obama's vicious bastard!
Pepe Escobar delivers the inconvenient and nasty truth behind Obama's latest military intervention into Africa, and "humanitarian" it's not.
"Obama, the king of Africa"
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/MJ18Dj06.html
"Any student of realpolitik knows the US doesn't do "humanitarian" interventions per se. Africom's surge parallels the real name of the game; precious minerals - and mining. Uganda - and nearby eastern Congo - happens to hold fabulous quantities of, among others, diamonds, gold, platinum, copper, cobalt, tin, phosphates, tantalite, magnetite, uranium, iron ore, gypsum, beryllium, bismuth, chromium, lead, lithium, niobium and nickel. Many among these are ultra-precious rare earth - of which China exercises a virtual monopoly."
But wait! There's more! It's about...oil!
"Then there's the inescapable Pipelineistan angle. Uganda may hold "several billion barrels of oil", according to Heritage Oil's Paul Atherton, part of a recent, largest-ever on-shore oil discovery in sub-saharan Africa. That implies the construction of a $1.5 billion, 1,200 kilometer long pipeline to Kampala and the coast of Kenya. Then there's another pipeline from "liberated" South Sudan. Washington wants to make sure that all this oil will be exclusively available for the US and Europe."
Pepe Escobar notes the duplicitous Obama brand of hypocrisy:
"And compare it to the thunderous silence of the Obama White House as racist eastern Libya "rebels" round up, harass, torture and even snuff out sub-Saharan Africans. "
Glen Ford documented the atrocities perpetrated by the Obama and NATO-backed "rebels: against Libya's sub-Saharan African populations back in April 2011:
Lynch Law and Summary Executions in Rebel-Held Libya
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/lynch-law-and-summary-executions-rebel-held-libya
The "thunderous silence" of the Obama White House about well-documented war crimes perpetrated by the Libyan "rag-tag rebels" and by the brutal tin-pot kings of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is matched only by the equally "thunderous silence" among Obama's "liberal" and "progressive" apologists in the leftish think tanks and among the Obots in the "liberal" and "progressive" media and blogospphere.
But don't be distracted by fact-based critical analysis from the likes of Pepe Escobar and Glen Ford -- they will only make you feel uncomfortable. Quick! Look over there! It's the Evil GOPers and Teabaggers! Be afraid. Be very afraid! AIEEEEEE!!!!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks for this, Mr. Winship, but please allow the same tip I've been suggesting for quite some time now: Call shit like Limbaugh to his face, or at least in print, what he is: a pestilence, a toxic boil on the arse of America. Perhaps Mr Childers could take time out of his schedule and lance that boil. And while he's at it, rid us of the likes of the O'Reillys, the Hannitys, the Becks, the Coulters et. al. - the Imbecile Class - on that extreme right branch. The trouble, of course, is that these parasites only keep it up because they know there's a living, a killing, to be made off the ignorant and the stupid in America. The Palin imbecile trumpeted stupidity when it was still getting a lot of press, working itself into a lather over the hatred meme that the intelligent, the educated, the liberal were all treasonous socialists/commies/fags/abortionists/fuck-knows what else, and it was time someone stood up for the mouth-breathers of America. Of course, like every other spurt of shit oozing out of its lying ignorant mouth, the Palin moron was late to that party: There's NEVER been a shortage of idiots, and the idolatry of idiocy and the constipated hucksters who cater to the idiots just to extort a buck, in America. I do not expect to live to see it, and I think the U.S. will sink back into the primeval muck before it happens, but maybe one day there will exist on the real estate currently called the U.S. a people who honour and cherish education and intelligence, whose education budget outspends its military budget, and who will not allow garbage like Limbaugh to get a public hearing - will in fact stone to death anyone who comes along and tries this kind of ignorati-baiting bullshit.
Yes, I know one would rather not descend to Limbaugh's level, but I would like just once to hear Bill Maher or someone literally say on air: 'Hey Fuckface Limbaugh - you're an imbecilic shitbag. Unfortunately, the stupid people who think you have anything of value to say haven't yet wised up to your game - that you're exploiting them, and are every bit as contemptuous of them as you are of everyone on the left. Now fuck off, you little inconsequential tapeworm. And I hope that when you get home tonight, the shithole you call home has burned to the ground.'
If Obomber wanted LRA leader Joseph Kony dead - he would send in a drone to blow Kony and any men/women/children within a few hundred meters of him to bits and puddles of puree.
Nah -- anyone as evil as Kony would be very useful to the American empire - if for no other reason than to play the 'evil leader' card and get the UN to sanction a US?NATO invasion.
Rush Limbaugh is a drug-addled, drug-addicted buffoon. Why does he have any credibility with anyone? I guess this says a lot about his listeners, too.