Reaction to Rush Limbaugh's "Club G'itmo"

Reaction to Rush Limbaugh's "Club G'itmo"

I remember getting angry shortly after 9/11 when I read news articles dealing with toys being sold overseas and in the states which depicted scenes of the destruction of the twin towers. I was saddened that there were people in the world who would sink to such a low level to make a profit.

I did a Google search today and discovered that many of the pictures of those toys that I saw a few years ago are gone now or are only posted on websites promoting politically extreme viewpoints. If there is a slant to any of the websites I am linking here, I ask you to please ignore that and pay attention to the pictures of the toys depicted. Consider what your reaction would have been to these toys during the initial weeks and months following 9/11.

A toy called "Laden vs. USA" (language warning).

Bin Laden and the twin towers toy
(and by the way I'm pretty sure that when I saw pictures of this toy on a legitimate news website, it was reportedly being sold in the Far East and not the Middle East)

9/11 Toy that was sold with candy in the U.S.

A report with pictures of the package that toy was found in.


If you are an American you probably would have felt some amount of anger or irritation when these toys first came out. I think that anger is justified in this instance because these toys are profitting from the suffering of thousands of innocent people and trivializing that tragic day by depicting those awful events in the form of a child's toy. I would hope that many of our fellow citizens of the world would share in our feelings of disappointment when viewing these pictures.

If you are not Muslim, and you are not living in the Middle East, I ask you to imagine for a few moments that you are. You know that there are many fellow Muslims from your part of the world being held indefinitely, without any specific charges against them, (many of whom are probably innocent of any crime) in Guantanamo Bay. You don't know who they all are because the names of all the "detainees" have not been released. You have heard the stories of mistreatment which have been reported around the world and you have no way of knowing what the true story is regarding these prisoners and their treatment. You do not know when, if ever, these prisoners will be charged or released. Imagine yourself thinking about Guantanamo Bay in this way and then check out the following links.

Rush Limbaugh has been doing this bit on his show for a month or two about "Club G'itmo" where he advertises a "Resort for Terrorists" complete with all the amenities... you have to see the website to get an idea of what I'm talking about if you haven't heard the show.

Rush's description of the imaginary "Club G'itmo"

Here are some quotes from the initial show in which the "Club G'itmo" idea was presented:

Limbaugh touted "Club G'itmo, the Muslim resort"

Apparently this "G'itmo Gear" is all the rage on his website now:
(read the phrases on the t-shirts for sale in the left hand column)

"G'itmo Gear" at the Rush Limbaugh Store

An example of the type of thing I wouldn't be surprised to hear on Rush's show:

A transcript allegedly taken from the Rush Limbaugh Show
(I didn't hear this one so I don't know for sure).

Here is another t-shirt that I found while doing a search for "Club G'itmo" on the web. I can't tell from the website whether this t-shirt is in any way affiliated with the bit being done on the Rush Limbaugh Show.

T-Shirt for "Club G'itmo" advertising the following on their shirt: Playing Cards - Flushable Toilets - Arrows Pointing to Mecca - Books - Soft Towels - Dandruff Shampoo - Hot Food - Prayer Rugs - Soccer Balls - Clean Sheets - Fruit Baskets - Warm Showers & a Koran

A close-up picture of that shirt

Earlier I asked you to imagine that you were a Muslim from the Middle East while you were viewing these web pages. I ask you now to react as the real you. Are you angered that these products are being advertised and promoted by one of the most popular radio talk show hosts in the United States? (Rush would probably stop me here and correct me saying that he is THE most popular talk show host in the world.) Do we need to pretend that we're in somebody else's shoes in order to be angered when we hear the flippant way that this topic is being dealt with by someone who is so popular in our country? The thing that angers me is that this is being sold as if Guantanamo were a humorous topic, and it is not.

These items seem to be trying to sell the idea that the real question around Guantanamo Bay is how we are treating known terrorists while they are in confinement... and that (as the good Americans that we all know we are) we are treating them better than they probably deserve to be treated. There is so much more going on with Guantanamo Bay that it is infuriating to me to see that issue trivialized in this way.

My concern is that the Guantanamo Bay issue is not anywhere near that cut and dry. The people being held there are not necessarily all terrorists. As fellow citizens of this planet we should all be concerned that any government anywhere can detain us for more than 3 years without charges and without releasing our personal information to the world because that government has decided that it considers us to be a threat.

I make no apologies for the real terrorists. Terrorism should be defeated and terrorists should be captured, charged, and imprisoned. I am not against the killing of a suspected terrorist in cases where officials are clearly acting in self defense when there is extraordinary evidence that the suspect is planning to commit a terrorist act. Of course I would only support such an action as a last resort after a suspect has reacted with violence while officials are conducting a legal search or attempting to apprehend that individual, or in cases where officials are attempting to save innocent lives by stopping an individual who is in the act of committing a terrorist act. With all of that said there has to be a way to deal with officials who make the wrong decisions about when to take a life while trying to protect others. (This brings up the issue of how to deal with potential "trigger-happy" officials who shoot first and ask questions later, and how to prevent terrible mistakes such as the mistake that seems to have occured yesterday in London where an apparently innocent man was shot 5 times in the head and torso... but those issues will have to be dealt with in another article.)

The last three weeks have shown that terrorists operating all over the world, in major cities where suspects are being closely monitored, are trying to make a statement to the people of the world that they are immune to our efforts to eradicate the threat that they represent to the all of us. It is not a question of if, but when we will see the next attacks in the United States. We are fighting a war against terrorists and in many ways the future of the entire world depends on how we chose to deal with this reality.

In a war that we only call a war when it is convenient for us to do so... we should be concerned that it is possible for any government to say that it is not fighting a real war, therefore it doesn't have to afford those detainees all of the rights guaranteed to Prisoners of War.

At a time when the world is struggling to remember that this war does not have to be about religion against religion or civilization against civilization, but rather that it could be a joint effort against all terrorists worldwide who target innocent people wherever they may be... can we as a society afford to be so disrespectful to members of another culture when dealing with a topic that is such a serious cause for their concern?

Two days after some provisions of the Patriot Act were made permanent and others were extended for 10 years, I have to say that I am concerned as a U.S. citizen that my government is not doing enough to ensure that MY freedoms and privacy are protected. If I have to wonder about how our government's power is being used against ME and MY fellow citizens... how much more concern should I feel about those possibly innocent, uncharged foreign detainees that the government has no constitutional mandate to protect?

(see the following articles for more info.)

House Passes USA Patriot Act Extension

The Patriot Act: Alleged Abuses of the Law

I'm afraid to say what I'm thinking... so what I will say is that I sure hope that we get our act together and figure out who we are and what we really stand for as a people before we destroy ourselves and create more terrorists, while giving up the freedoms that we have taken for granted for too long.