The Washington Times op-ed page isn’t known for being classy, but Ted Nugent‘s op-ed today, flagged by the folks at Media Matters, reaches another level of ugly:
There is no country in Africa that truly respects freedom or the rule of law. The majority of countries in Africa are in economic ruin because of political corruption and a history ugly with cruel despotism. That’s why starvation and disease are rampant. AIDS is projected to kill as much as half the populations of some countries. Genocide is a way of life. There is little light in Africa.
[…]
Africa is an international scab. Bono of the band U2 advocates that if we forgive debt African nations owe, peace and tranquillity will sprout up mystically. The real problem is murdering, corrupt thugs and punks like Col. Gadhafi. Once we swat one of these African cockroaches or intervene in their civil war, where do we stop?
Aside from the general sentiment here, which is sort of par for the course, “cockroaches” was the term Hutus in Rwanda used to describe Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide in which somewhere around a million people were killed. I suspect Nugent was using the term out of ignorance, but some editor really should have been paying attention.
