Via the already-indispensable
Media Matters, here's yet another example of Rush making a pathetic attempt to minimize the Abu Ghraib photos--and falling flat on his face. From the May 10 Rush Limbaugh Show:
And the picture caption "Dog attacks Iraqi." No, the dog isn't attacking anyone, the dog's on a leash. The dog is scaring an Iraqi prisoner. [gasp] "No! We're scaring them, too? Is that allowed in the Geneva Convention?! We're scaring then with dogs?" Yes, my friends we are. The dog didn't attack anybody. The dog's not attacking anybody. The dog's on a leash. Both of them are. I've seen the pictures. ...
Wow, just a dog on a leash? Maybe those liberals ARE making too big a deal out of this quote-unquote scandal. But then, 35 minutes later, Rush has a little correction to make:
Apparently -- there's not a picture of it -- but apparently uh, well, there's another picture later where the nude Iraqi prisoner no longer cowering, um, in the corner against his cell, he's writhing on the floor with a pool of blood. Apparently, the dog did bite his leg, but there's no picture of that. I have just been, uh, informed of this.
(The rest of the Media Matters post is worth reading, by the way, for a glimpse into how Rush's mind thinks about the abuse photos.)
I think that the little excerpt above illustrates the dilemma that right-wing hacks face with the torture scandal. They write, blog, and do radio on deadlines, so they can't hold back and see what develops before commenting. They can't talk about some other topic, because this is dominating the headlines. And they can't say anything that blames the military or the Bush administration for what happened, because, well, they're right-wing hacks. So they're forced to fall back on a variety of memes, many with limited shelf-life. I think that you can put these memes into five categories:
- It's just a few bad apples, not a systemic problem.
- What we're seeing isn't so bad--just a few naked guys, like a fraternity prank.
- Torture is good; Iraqis are savages and they deserve what they're getting.
- This is bad, but it can somehow be blamed on liberals, because they put women in the military, or because they fill our culture with pornography and Farrelly brothers movies.
- Who cares what's in the photos? The fact that the treasonous liberal media keeps talking about them is the REAL scandal.
Meme #1 should have died within the first few days, when it became clear that this was more than a few soldiers. Nonetheless, I still see it repeated on forums, by right-wingers who apparently haven't been paying attention to the news.
Meme #2 is also outdated, since there is apparently much worse on the way, as even Rumsfeld admits. Like Meme #1, however, we still see this one repeated; Rush's attempted dismissal of the dog photos is one example. But much of the Right has to come up with spin on a day-by-day basis, and apparently some of them are more concerned with controlling damage in the present than coming up with arguments that will work in the future. Once evidence of murder, rape, and child rape hits the headlines, this meme SHOULD die, but you never know.
Meme #3 is rarely expressed explicitly among "respectable" right-wingers, but you hear it a lot from the Freeper/LGF types. But it is definitely an undercurrent in right-wing thought which sometimes surfaces, as in the Limbaugh excerpt below (same link as above):
How many of you went out to social occasions over the weekend and this subject, this story came up? And how many of you wanted to really say, "I don't see the big deal here. This is war. These are people who tried to kill Americans." But you didn't say it or some variation of that because you were afraid because you were with a bunch of people who were start yelling at you that you for being insensitive or coarse or crude or whatever, so you said what you thought you had to say in order to get along during a controversial situation if this conversation came up wherever you were.
...
I think most peo --that's where my optimism and faith in the people of this country remains steadfast. I don't think most people are that outraged by this.
Okay, so Limbaugh doesn't quite use the "Iraqis are savages" line, but he is implying that the torture victims are all people who "tried to kill Americans," and thus whatever happens to them is okay. Meme #3 can last forever, in theory, as long as you're willing to argue that no matter how bad the torture gets, and no matter who the victims are, it's okay because all Iraqi men, women, and children are collectively responsible for the sins of any of them. Some LGF'ers and Freepers would make this argument. But most people are going to draw the line somewhere. When it becomes clear to all that the events went beyond fraternity-style hazing, and that the victims were sometimes women and children, then the "they all deserve it" line will have a limited audience.
Meme #4 is another that can last forever, in theory. It probably will last a long time, because it kills two birds with one stone--shifting blame from the military, and sticking it to "liberals." But this meme is threatened by two factors. First, the Right can't seem to get its story straight--what element of the culture should we blame? Women? Feminists? The academic Left? Crude humor like that in Farrelly brothers movies? Or just the overall violence of American culture? The second problem is that the meme becomes weaker as it becomes clearer that these acts were approved by higher-ups in the military, and were not just the result of rogue soldiers imitating what they saw in the movies. The thing that ties together these torturers from America and torturers from other regimes is not feminism, or Hollywood movies. Instead, it's a military structure that allows and even encourages this kind of thing to go on. The "blame the liberals" approach simply isn't convincing, and I doubt that it will win over many people who don't already see liberals as the source of all evil.
Thus, I think that Meme #5 will be the one with the most traction in the long run. Even if you acknowledge that the torture was every bit as bad and systemic as it seems, you can still make a credible allegation that it's undermining support for the war and increasing anger at the U.S. From the Right's perspective, it doesn't matter that the allegations are true, or that they are important--what matters is that they are inconvenient. This argument can last forever, as demonstrated by the fact that right-wingers still use it when talking about the Vietnam war. On the occasions right-wingers can bring themselves to admit that there were any atrocities at all in Vietnam, they save most of their vitriol for the people who reported them (like a certain Democratic presidential candidate). I predict that we're going to see right-wingers pushing this argument harder and harder in the coming weeks. Some of the more honest ones will acknowledge that the torture photos are an important story, but the hacks--the Limbaughs, the Coulters, the Townhall crowd, the LGF'ers and Freepers--will treat this as a liberal plot to destroy America. As they demonstrated when protesting the decision to show the war dead on Nightline, many wingnuts see truth as a dangerous weapon, and the people who dare to report it as the real enemy.