JeffKirvin.net

Warning: The following contains a description of an obscure medical condition that may lead to uncomfortable visualizations of… Rush Limbaugh’s butt.

Rush Limbaugh got into some hot water this week. Agreeing with a caller, he referred to soldiers against the war as “phony soldiers,” implying that disagreement with our mad policy in Iraq makes a soldier somehow unfit to wear the uniform.

Which struck me as odd, since Limbaugh himself never served. He was of age for Viet Nam, but got himself a medical deferment. He has an obscure condition in which the skin at the base of his spine doesn’t completely close, making a tiny hole at the top of his butt crack in which lint and other material can collect. This, apparently, was enough to avoid the draft.

The reason I know about this condition is that I live with it myself, and in fact didn’t even know there was a name for it until I learned how Rush got out of Viet Nam. The difference between me and Rush, though, is that I’m a veteran.

Despite the extra hole in my ass, I signed up and served in the US military, and was on active duty during the Gulf War. I was never deployed to Iraq, but I could have been. Poppy Bush had the good sense to stay out of Baghdad and the first Gulf War ended quickly. Had he been as bone-headed as his son, desk jockeys like myself could be been ordered to drive trucks in Iraq, as they do today. And I would have gone, because I, unlike Rush, swore an oath to defend my country against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

It’s just that domestic enemy chickenhawks like Limbaugh have become. The war in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, has cost over 4,000 American lives and driven up a debt that will cripple the economy of our children and grandchildren. War vets like those in IAVA.org have been there, and know what they’re talking about. Maybe we should listen rather than dismissing them as insufficiently jingoistic.

I’m not suggesting that only veterans are qualified to have an opinion. This isn’t, thankfully, Heinlein’s Starship Troopers where only military service elevated a mere “resident” to a “citizen” allowed to vote. But maybe guys like Rush who went to such absurd lengths to stay out of Viet Nam should think twice about dismissing those of us who actually did serve.