1945 v. 2005

Kelly writes:

I read your “1945” comic on my Yahoo home page. I’m every bit of a “liberal” or “thinking” person as you. But I must say, to portray the soildiers in Iraq that way is BS. Any population has idiots in it, including folks that write commentary as you know. Should people throw you in the same pot as Rush or a similar writer? I know, Rush doesn’t write commentary but you get the point.
I have a good friend there now who is also a thinking person and knows the war is bogus. He just wants to come home. I would fell awful if he thought that’s how we think of all the troops there. To put all the soldiers in the same vain as your recent strip did does nothing but to alienate the people that need to be reading your column. It also alienates people like me who love your column and email it to all their right wing friends. Just a thought.

One of the interesting aspects of cartooning is that people project their personal biases onto images to an extent that they might not in other media. Take a look at the above-referenced cartoon. There are soldiers, yes, but nowhere does it say that these solders represent all soldiers, or even all US soldiers, or even all US soldiers in each time period. What the cartoon does, or attempts to do, is contrast the shock of US troops upon discovering the death camps and torture chambers of the Third Reich at the end of World War II with the dispassionate, blasé, and yes–even gleeful–attitude of our soldiers upon learning of the abuse, torture and murder of countless (literally) Muslim detainees in American concentration camps at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc. Kelly assumes that I tarnish all 2005 soldiers with torture while failing to realize that this would require me to paint all World War II-era US soldiers as benevolent. In fact, as educated people know, US soldiers were guilty of countless atrocities, including torture and murder, during World War II. Had I wanted to indicate that these troops represented ALL soldiers, I would have indicated that somehow–but I didn’t.

The harsher issue, however, is that when ONE soldier is guilty of abuse, torture and/or murder, they all are by extension. The first time an Iraqi was insulted or injured without good cause, the war lost its moral imperative. But let’s get real. The abuse of Iraqi civilians and detainees (who are, by definition, all innocent until placed on trial) is widespread, normal, typical. Entire towns have been cordoned off. Night-time raids are usual. Rent the documentary “Gunner Palace” and you’ll watch US troops, relying on “intelligence” that a house is a bomb-making lab, break down a family’s door in the middle of the night. The men are taken away to Abu Ghraib, never to be seen again, despite the fact that no evidence was ever found of bomb-making on the premises. If Iraq war veterans are honest with themselves, they’ll admit that they treated Iraqis disrespectfully–for example, yelling in English at people who only speak Arabic.

But back to the cartoon. The fact remains, America has changed. We, as a society, now condone and accept torture as acceptable. We are not the America that liberated Europe and Asia, but rather something closer to those powers that oppressed them.