Who had the most egregious response to President Obama’s decision to send 100 US troops to Africa to aid regional forces in the hunt for Joseph Kony, leader of the brutal and murderous Lord’s Resistance Army?
a) Rush Limbaugh, who– in a world-class display of ignorance– said on his October 14 radio show:
…Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That’s what the lingo means, “to help regional forces remove from the battlefield,” meaning capture or kill.
…..
Lord’s Resistance Army objectives. I have them here. “To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people.” Now, again Lord’s Resistance Army is who Obama sent troops to help nations wipe out. The objectives of the Lord’s Resistance Army, what they’re trying to accomplish with their military action in these countries is the following: “To remove dictatorship and stop the oppression of our people; to fight for the immediate restoration of the competitive multiparty democracy in Uganda; to see an end to gross violation of human rights and dignity of Ugandans; to ensure the restoration of peace and security in Uganda, to ensure unity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity beneficial to all Ugandans, and to bring to an end the repressive policy of deliberate marginalization of groups of people who may not agree with the LRA ideology.” Those are the objectives of the group that we are fighting, or who are being fought and we are joining in the effort to remove them from the battlefield.
Later in the broadcast, someone less ignorant apparently got through to El Rushbo, and he said:
Is that right? The Lord’s Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We’re gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys — and they claim to be Christians.
More than a week later, we still await the result’s of Limbaugh’s “due diligence research,” which, as Stephen Colbert notes, is apparently different from “pre-search.”
b) Republican Congresswoman and Presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, who said:
“Now with the president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa. We already were stretched too thin, and he put our special operations forces in Africa.”
Can somebody please send her a map of Africa?
c) John Pilger, who acknowledged that Obama was right to say the LRA “has murdered, raped and kidnapped tens of thousands of men, women and children in central Africa,” but who of course hastened to add that this evokes “multiple atrocities administered by the United States…”
Pilger claimed that “an American invasion of the African continent is under way” and concluded:
That this is now the gift of Barack Obama, the “Son of Africa”, is supremely ironic. Or is it? As Frantz Fanon explained in “Black Skin, White Masks”, what matters is not so much the colour of your skin as the power you serve and the millions you betray.
Evelyn Apoko is a 22-year-old Ugandan who was kidnapped and enslaved as a child by the Lord’s Resistance Army. She was disfigured when she attempted to shield an infant with the group from a bomb blast. She recorded this video as a response to Limbaugh. I hope that somehow her message gets through not only to him, but also to Bachmann and Pilger.
Dear Mr. Limbaugh: Evelyn’s Appeal from Strongheart on Vimeo.