Why isn’t Limbaugh muzzled yet?
Current Affairs, Politics 05/07/2004 |Why does this man still have a radio show when he spouts off crap like this?
On Limbaugh’s Tuesday radio show, titled “It’s Not About Us; This Is War!”, one caller likened the stacking up of naked Iraqi prisoners to a college fraternity prank — Limbaugh was eager to go along, calling the behavior nothing more than “a good time” and healthy “emotional release”:
“Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?”
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p>I could hardly see straight when I first read that, let alone come close to forming a coherent response.
Thankfully, Kirsten did much better than I…
…I feel that Americans should find a way to apologize to Iraqis personally. We financed this, in essence. We drive around with flags on our cars and think we’re the fucking saints of this backassward world. It’s time to show our humility and our shame at the actions of the men and women who represent us abroad and fight for our freedom. Not being the greatest of activists, I wonder at how to do this. All I have is this blog and the ability to stand on a street corner in Fairbanks Alaska with a sign. I don’t even know what I could say that would make a difference. Perhaps it would be right for humane Americans everywhere (ie. Rush Limbaugh not included) to pick up a sign and march, not in anger or protest or support of our rights, but to march for forgiveness for our actions abroad. If the leader of our country won’t do as much, won’t face a camera and speak directly to the Iraqi people and apologize for the atrocities we’ve committed, it seems the only way to get that message out is to get out and do it ourselves.
Count me in. Not that I really have a lot of ideas — like Kirsten, all I’ve got is this blog and the ability to stand on a street corner in Seattle with a sign — but count me in.
I’m going to steal one last bit of Kirsten’s post, as again, she says exactly what I believe:
…consider these pictures when you go to the voting booth. Consider who is responsible for this fucked up war, for putting our soldiers into situations where this is normal and they are turned into barbarians, for destroying what little was left of our reputation in the world community. If you vote for Bush after seeing what he and his administration have done, you are subscribing to the actions they have taken. You are subscribing to more of the same, in essence, you are signing a big ‘A-OK Dubya!’ for the next four years. Remember each picture you’ve been shown, look at that ballot, and decide whether or not you can stand to see more of the same.
iTunes: “Union Man” by Shaking Family from the album Rubáiyát: Elektra’s 40th Anniversary (1990, 3:56).
[See also: Saying what you feel | US priorities in Iraq | Gonna need a really big mop… | Following in Lott’s footsteps | Rush Job ]
10 Responses to “Why isn’t Limbaugh muzzled yet?”
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fpz
Gavriel
medhat abbas
Ryan Waddell
Sponge Bob
May 7th, 2004 at 8:28 am
On the news we hear stories about child and/or spousal abuse. In school you learn about other countries that treat prisoners bad. You would think the soliders would have known better.
What were those soldiers thinking when they did this? What were their comanders doing during this time? And if the Pentagon knew about this back in January, why did they not take action right there and then.
There is no excuse for the actions of those soliders. That caller and Limbaugh are both idiots. In frat initiations, the people who are getting initiated are doing it voluntary. Yes, initiations are stupid but it is voluntary.
Depending on how severe this situation increase, I can see Bush losing the election and a events leading to a withdrawl from Iraqi.
May 7th, 2004 at 8:32 am
One last thing.
I still support our troops over there, but not the idiots involved with this prison fiasco.
May 7th, 2004 at 9:06 am
One should not support our troops because they are being led by Generals, Secretaries of Defense and State, and a President who are basically liars, evil-doers, hypocrites, and worse. This is an abstract from the Department of Defense report on SYSTEMIC abuse in the prisons in Iraq:
6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts: a. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet; b. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees; c. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; d. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time; e. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s underwear; f. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped; g. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them; h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture; i. (S) Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked; j. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a picture; k. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female detainee; l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee; m. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
To ChristianWDP: How can you support your troops when they are acting like criiminals. Personally, I don’t support any of them. They all enlisted. They wanted to do this. They are acting illegally. And, no, I don’t think these criminal acts are being perpetrated by a small band who don’t represent the Military presence - I personally believe it IS the military presence who think like this. Pity for the wounded - hardly. Sympathy for the lonely soldiers - hardly. These are criminals representing you in another part of the world - do you really SUPPORT that. You should instead be ashamed of your government, ashamed of its actions, ashamed you helped to create this, ashamed you are not trying harder to get this Administration out of power,
Support?? No, this is dispicable behaviour being performed on behalf of you. As an American citizen it is actually your duty to express outrage and work to change this government before these acts are performed on you because your civil liberties have been completely removed.
I don’t think I could be more against what is going on. How anyone can conscience this activity is completely beyond belief. If you support these actions then you represent a lower form of life than what we think of as civilized human.
I pity you and all who think like you.
May 7th, 2004 at 9:55 am
i think it’s a fine line to walk, chas, between condemning people who commit atrocities and acting like them.
one of the worst things done by these soldiers - and i understand, as mr. hanscom (john) has elaborated on before to my benefit, that war causes people to change in ways they never would in a civilized society - is to begin to view iraqis as less than human. as categorically inferior. this is clearly shown by the fact that the soldiers who worked in abu ghraib referring to prisoners as ‘it’ rather than ‘him.’
you are doing the same by pointing the finger at all enlisted men and women and saying they are the same.
furthermore, for you to accuse christian of supporting this behavior when he obviously condemned it (“There is no excuse for the actions of those soliders.”)is just fucking stupid. if you want to get mad at someone, get mad at limbaugh, who has condoned the actions of this select group with his words on national talk radio.
You can read my blog, you can read many blogs of people who have condemned this war on the behalf of Americans, on the behalf of Iraqis, and furthermore on the principles and precedents it sets up for the world and for history, and you will see that nevertheless, they do not condemn the troops who have been forced to fight this war. Enlisting in an Army that you believe represents a highly moral nation is nothing to be condemned for, even when a smear on your nation’s, and your military’s reputation occurs. The politicians who brought this war upon our forces are to be condemned. The soldiers who commit atrocities must be punished, but more importantly, the system that breeds those atrocities must be changed.
Finally, if you think all Americans are sitting on their asses, eating big fat cheesesteaks and watching the last episode of friends instead of doing something about what is happening in this country, it’s obvious you haven’t really been reading this blog (or many others) for long.
Stop pitying and insulting Christian and quit being a jerk. Supporting people who are trying to do the right thing in Iraq while condemning those who are not, or condemning the war in general, is not an impossibility. Strangely, that’s been the problem the anti-war movement in America has faced all along, though it usually comes from the likes of Limbaugh. >:|
May 7th, 2004 at 10:28 am
Actually, Chas, this is one instance where I have to disagree.
Quite simply, I cannot condemn every last member of the armed services for the actions of a few. While I never went into the service, having grown up in a military family (I’m the son of a retired Air Force Major that finds the reports of abuse just as abhorrent as you or I) in a city that supports two major military bases (Anchorage is home to both Elemendorf Air Force Base and Fort Richardson Army Base) I’m no stranger to military attitudes, both good and bad, mature and immature.
Yes, everyone currently in the military are there because they enlisted. However, I’d be willing to bet that many, if not the majority, enlisted at times when we weren’t actively involved in a major conflict such as we are in now. There are many, many benefits — financial, personal, social, and educational — to military service, and in more peaceful times, I had more than a few friends who decided that those benefits were worth signing up for. All of them hoped that they’d be able to do their time, serve their country, and then move on to other things with the knowledge and skills they gained.
Now they’re being sent overseas to risk and possibly lose their lives for Bush’s vendetta.
Most of the people in the service are good people, trying to make the best of a bad situation. There are definitely some who are going to go far, far overboard, and there is no excuse for the actions that they are taking. However, I cannot condemn the rest for the actions of those few.
I had a conversation with a friend the other day who had just gotten done with a disturbing IM conversation with a friend of theirs who is currently serving in Iraq. He’s support personnel, a truck driver, not involved in front-line combat. One day he was with a group of soldiers who were practicing ranging their mortars, and was given the opportunity to fire one off, which he took advantage of.
Later that day, he found out that some civilians had blundered into the area that the soldiers were using to practice, and purely by chance, the round he fired had wounded one and killed two others.
Do we now condemn this man for what he has done? After all, he just killed civilians! He’s an evil, power-mad, gun-crazy bastard! Or do we recognize that because of an incredibly unfortunate accident, this man now has to live his life dealing with the knowledge and the horror of what he did, accidental though it may have been? Personally, I think that for him, and for most of the soldiers over there, that in itself will be “punishment” enough for a lifetime.
I’d like to point out some thoughts on this from my dad, which he wrote in response to the Beliefnet article Torture and Responsibility in Iraq:
Hate this war, hate the reasons behind it, hate the power hungry government that is dragging America into the muck, and hate (though I cringe at applying that word to individuals) the people who are directly involved in the abuses at the prison. I’m okay with that. But please don’t transfer that hate to the many good people out there who happen to don a military uniform at the beginning of the day. Most of them really don’t deserve that.
May 7th, 2004 at 11:52 am
Chas - Not all the soliders are acting like those idiot soliders at the prison. I still support all the tropps, except those soliders who were involved.
Do you really belive that everyone who enlisted said ‘I enlist so I can go and stip people naked, take photos at them, and do what I please with them’?
Am I outrage by the actions of those soliders in the prision? Yes.
You are stereotyping individuals based upon the actions of a few.
Friends of mine from High School or in Boy Scouts joined the military. Some of them are stationed in Iraqi or Afganastan. I support them.
Do I think their leaders are making mistakes, yes.
May 7th, 2004 at 4:31 pm
Okay, so I went to far. I was drafted in the US Army in 1969, my brother enlisted in the Marine Corps and was sent to DaNang (he’s alive, so this is not a bad story). He committed many atrocities at the time he was in DaNang - he admits now that at the time they were not thought of as atrocities but proper justice for a people they were fighting - including the civilians because the civilians were helping “the enemy.” He now regrets his actions at that time but he did not regret those actions when he first returned to the US.
In the meantime I was stationed in Korea at a time when the DMZ was a relatively “hot” place for a peaceful assisgnment. The base I was stationed at was a supply base for Korea and VietNam. I was an administrative assistant for the battalion commander and therefore was an insider so far as having access to military actions - both above and beneath board. From what I could see the US Military is a very well oiled machine, it has centuries of history and precedence and a very good base of administration, tactics, supply, discipline, and even internal investigation and punishment.
But, I also saw that the military jurisdiction in Korea was operating “in situ” and took liberties with orders from the US Western Command as well as liberties from what Washington and the Pentagon were stating officially. It was a time of great political turmoil in Korea as well. From my tour of duty with the Army and from my brother’s recounts of his enlisted time in the US Marine Corps, I concluded that the US Military was as apt to be corrupt as any large organization; as apt to disavow its principals in action and in thought as any large organization; as apt to be filled with conniving and undercutting individuals at high rank as any large organization.
That was no surprise - it is a large organzation. However, the attempt by individuals to correct a systemic diversion of moral code or US Military Code is impossible. There is simply too much momentum on the side of the organization. If the organization is corrupt - mildly or wildly - that corruption seeps down into and becomes a part of every individual within that organization.
I do not for a minute believe things have changed dramatically or even a bit in regard to this aspect in the last 30 years.
I also do not underestimate the importance of a career to the many score thousands who have enlisted and would make the military their life’s work. Nor do I impugn the high ethic “ascribed” to be the US Military academies, their subscription to those ethics being counter in lots of instances notwithstanding.
What I am saying is that anyone who decides on their own to enlist and make the Military a career must be aware that this is an organization which is going to change their internal makeup. This is an entity to which one basically pledges full faith - their are certain Civil Liberties which are suspended for active duty military personnel - including the right to speak out about your condition or situation.
All this is part of the gig when one enlists. When one enlists in the US Mililtary there is also the accepted notion that at some point in one’s career one may be required to travel to a non-domestic location and place one’s life in danger because that’s what one is ordered to do. In a word, these individuals, whether they “actually” realize it or not, are enlisting in an organization which will tell them what to do and when to do it and will actively place their lives in jeopardy.
I cannot imagine that there is someone in the US Military who does not understand that line of thought.
Consequently, they are responsible for the actions of their peers whether or not they accept that responsibility. Do they have an opportunity to effect a change in the actions of their peers? Probably not. So, again we must conclude that individuals who enlist in the military will accept being told to do something which may be against their moral or ethic and that they will also expect to carry out that order and not try and effect a change. That is what the Military is. Whether you accept that or not.
So, more to the point, if I say I don’t support any of our troops it is because I understand these conditions and accept that all the troops, whether they are individually guilty of crimes or violations of the Geneva Convention or not, they have accepted a conditiion of employment - of their life - which will put them in a position to be a criminal or be a violator of the Geneva Convention.
That being the case - how can I in good conscience support them? I can’t.
You may disagree with me as may many who read this board. I am a long way from being politically naive and I’m a long way from not caring about other people. But when individuals deliberately put themselves in harms’ way and deliberately allow themselves to abrogate their own ethic and moral code by signing up to follow some other dictate then how can we hold them “not accountable” simply because they did not commit an actual crime.
Do I hold our politicians responsible - only partly, they should have never signed off on the US Patriot Act. Do I hold the military brass responsible - you bet I do. It’s their system and its their soldiers.
Are these soldiers caught in an ultimate Catch 22 situation - you bet they are. They cannot quit for fear of being court-martialed and imprisoned for abandonning their station. They cannot effect a change in the situation for the reasons stated above even if they personally disagree and find the conditions they have been placed in to be immoral or unethical or both. But, fellow Americans, they did do this of their own volition. I did not, I was drafted and still performed my duties as told to the best of my ability. Did I do things which were immoral or unethical - yes. Did I try and change things - yes, I wrote to my Congressman.
So, if we are to hold these other troops as being innocent of wrongdoing and would like to support them as the Good Americans everyone seems to think they are - why have they not written their Congressional Representatives or Senators about these abuses they may have seen? Why indeed.
There are myriad methods to correct wrongs - it seems to me that if these abuses are as rampant as they appear to be that there are more than just the one MP detachment which has been involved. What about the court martials of the Americans who killed Canadians in Afganistan? These were American soldiers (airmen) who were playing their own game and killing innocent co-soldiers. But, why did we stop with the court martials of only the perpetrators when it was the system in place which allowed this to occur.
And, yes, I’m fully aware of all the activities associated with changing the government and have been an active participant in them for the last three years - beginning when I lived in DC and continuing when I moved out here to Seattle.
So - disagree with me or despise me for saying and believing these things but do not misunderstand the personal accountability of the entire US MIlitary involved in the Iraq war - or in any war.
And, don’t underestimate my ability to either serve my country or to hold it accountable. I actually want to be proud to be an American and for the past three years I have been ashamed to be an American.
May 11th, 2004 at 12:13 am
Where did you find these quotes of Rush Limbaugh? They seem kinda out there. Are you sure he was accurately quoted? Or do you listen to his show?
May 11th, 2004 at 12:53 am
Lori — in my original post, I linked to the Salon story that I got the quotes from: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2004/05/06/limbaugh/.
That Salon story points to a weblog called “Media Matters” which talks about Limbaugh’s comments: http://mediamatters.org/items/200405050003.
Media Matters also offers an .mp3 of the quoted section of Limbaugh’s radio broadcast: http://mediamatters.org/static/audio/limbaugh-20040504.mp3.
It’s more than “kinda out there”, and it’s a real quote.
And no, I don’t listen to his show.
May 14th, 2004 at 8:29 pm
You have some pretty special politicians!!