AUDIO — Rush Limbaugh Rejects Obama Administration's Uganda Mission to Remove Lord's Resistance Army

Here's the audio on YouTube (transcript here):

Rush does not mention that L.R.A. is a gross violator of human rights. See Human Right Watch: "CAR/DR Congo: LRA Conducts Massive Abduction Campaign." And again at New York Times, "Armed U.S. Advisers to Help Fight African Renegade Group." And from March 2010, "Fleeing Rebels Kill Hundreds of Congolese." No doubt L.R.A. is a pretty atrocious outfit. The Bush administration had been supporting the Uganda army's campaign against the group. And here's a scholarly source as well, from Frank Van Acker, at African Affairs, "Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army: The New Order No One Ordered."

But listen to Limbaugh. His argument is internally consistent: He opposes sending more troops to the region in what may escalate to an open-ended commitment. Rush compares Obama's authorization of force in Libya. The administration promised the mission would be measured in "days, not weeks." That was 7 months ago. No president in the post-Vietnam era has been this reckless on war powers. See, "Obama's Illegal War." And Rush Limbaugh's reference to Christians is an attack on the administration's hypocrisy. We've done nothing to help Christians in Egypt, so Limbaugh snorts:

Lord's Resistance Army are Christians. It means God. I was only kidding. 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.

So that's a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda, and -- (interruption) no, I'm not kidding. Jacob Tapper just reported it. Now, are we gonna help the Egyptians wipe out the Christians? Wouldn't you say that we are? I mean the Coptic Christians are being wiped out, but it wasn't just Obama that supported that. The conservative intelligentsia thought it was an outbreak of democracy. Now they've done a 180 on that, but they forgot that they supported it in the first place. Now they're criticizing it.

That's the context.

But idiot progressives are spinning this as backing terrorists. See Matthew Yglesias, "Rush Limbaugh Endorses the Lord’s Resistance Army." Well, no he does not. He's not endorsing any action in Africa, actually. He's arguing a realist position that our interests aren't threatened. He's attacking this administration's ad hoc foreign policy, which is classical wag-the-dog interventionism. And he's attacking the euphoria over the "Arab Spring" in Egypt early this year, which has now deteriorated into ethnic cleansing. But radical progressives hate Limbaugh so much they refuse to place his commentary in the proper context. Typical.

Added: From Blake Hounshell, at Foreign Policy, "Rush Limbaugh on Lord's Resistance Army: "Obama Invades Uganda, Targets Christians."