After posting the “Stop Kony” story on another blog, several readers mentioned remarks defending the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) allegedly made by none other than Rush Limbaugh when President Obama announced the deployment of 100 military advisers to combat the LRA in central Africa.
Incredulous, I checked the record.
There are many accounts of Limbaugh’s defense of the LRA during his “show” on October 14, 2011.
Here is one such account in the New York Times:
Apparently sensing an opportunity to tarnish President Obama’s standing with listeners who were unaware of the suffering caused by the African rebels who call themselves the Lord’s Resistance Army, Rush Limbaugh responded to the president’s deployment of 100 military advisers to combat the group in central Africa on Friday in a segment of his radio show headlined, “Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians.”
According to the Times Limbaugh said:
Now, up until today, most Americans have never heard of the combat Lord’s Resistance Army. And here we are at war with them. Have you ever heard of Lord’s Resistance Army, Dawn? How about you, Brian? Snerdley, have you? You never heard of Lord’s Resistance Army? Well, proves my contention, most Americans have never heard of it, and here we are at war with them. Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. It means God.
And,
Overlooking the detailed record of their brutality and bizarre practices, Mr. Limbaugh then added: “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. So that’s a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda.”
After suggesting that Mr. Obama “supported” violence against Coptic Christians by Muslims in Egypt, Mr. Limbaugh then read aloud what he called the “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 L.R.A. ideology.” Those are the objectives of the group that we are fighting.
The conservative radio host, who is right 99.8 percent of the time, appeared somewhat confused at the end of the radio segment and attempted to backtrack:
“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.”
Read more here.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.