Will Things Change?

Jack writes:

“Why, then, don’t we pull for the Iraqi insurgents?….Where the heck is our sense of empathy? Why can’t we see ourselves in the faces of those kids firing RPGs at convoys of Halliburton trucks stealing Iraqi oil?”
Mr. Rall,
You apparently don’t choose to see us.
True, we are not now, not yet, as numerous as those tens of thousands of us who in the Viet Nam era used to march down Fifth Avenue chanting the name of Ho Chi Minh and calling for “Victory To The Viet Cong.”
That time, with the continued exposure of this government of mad dogs, is now well on the way. So is the time when the poor suckers doing military duty in Iraq will express their understanding of their position in suckerdom by turning on their own officers just as they did with the Viet Nam era fraggings.
Make no mistake, there are many of us who ardently hope for the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Iraq, which situation is likely to lead straight down the rails to Socialist revolution in the U.S. with the British working class in the lead and showing the way.

Today’s military is a far cry from the draftee-heavy Vietnam-era force. These guys are volunteers, hired guns. Make no mistake about their “limited job opportunities”…the military pays less than McDonald’s, and McDonald’s hires even in West Virginia. These troops are there by choice.
It’s hard to hear the radicals when they’re not given airtime–but I don’t see them hanging out in the streets, either.

The Parable of the Bus

Josh writes:

Nice work on this week’s cartoon! Incisive and funny. Did you base the cartoon off of a classic parable or was this an original formulation? In either case i think it’s a great comic, i’d just be interested if you drew on a traditional parable.

I’ve lived in New York a long time. The bus is often late, forcing one into the dilemma described in the cartoon, and I’ve often used that analogy to attack those who say we have to stay in Iraq to “get the job done.” Why throw good lives after bad? This thing is no more winnable now than before…and that’s being optimistic. Hell, Bush is so fucking incompetent that, at this rate, we’ll be living under Iraqi occupation before long.

Don’t Read Immediately Before or After Eating

Here’s one hell of a story.
And yes, it does occur to me that the guy may be lying. But why? Oh, I know: he did it to himself to make a point. Uh-huh. But even if he is lying: Why shouldn’t this dude get the same access to the media as, say, the government? After all, we already know the government lies. This random dude, on the other hand, is still on the up-and-up as far as we know.

God Screw The Queen

Grey writes from the UK:

as you probably know…. Incredibly, under Tony Blair’s new rules, you could be (feloniously) deported from britain (to some hell on earth) for the empathy article. (if you lived there of course) He proposes to make “justifying” (or appeals for empathy?) a deportable offense!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4747573.stm

Since I live here, I’m pre-deported. Hey, that worked out fine.

Saturday New York Daily News

There’s supposed to be a piece mentioning my reaction to Bernie McCarthy’s “100 People” book in tomorrow’s New York Daily News.

Psst…

Guess what’s coming next Spring?

Hint: Good things come in threes.

War Casualties

Jason writes:

Since you are leading the charge in the Iraq/Afganistan editorializing:

Iraq only:

13,189 wounded
1,828 dead
That is a 13.8% fatality rate, roughly. The figure is up from 10% last year as attacks grow more deadly. But that’s not the story. Vietnam had fewer casualties in it’s first 4 years (61-65) at 10,000. And Vietnam’s fatality rate was 24%. Increased medical technology and body armor has allowed more soilders to survive severe attacks. These soilders are not being patched up and shipped home, they are not recieving “million dollar wounds.” Because the typical attack involves blast munitions, soilders are badly mutiliated, save the torso, and will require a lifetime of medical care. Blinding injuries are abnormally high. However, the public is more interested in fatality figures, this is not being reported. If this trend continues, and if the Bush administration continues to resist adequate responsibility for this war of arrogance and hubris, these statistics will come to the public’s attention too late.
Total for Vietnam 1961-73: 200,727 wounded, 47,424 dead
Source; New England Journal of Medicine, December 2004, US dept. of defense online, and icacasualties.org

What Jason says is true, but, as my cartoon coming out Monday riffs upon, the actual number of Iraq war dead, according to internal Pentagon documents, is more than 9,000. Why the discrepancy? Apparently you’re only counted as “killed in action” if your heart stops beating in Iraq. If you are wounded by an IED and die en route to an army hospital in Germany–even if you die during takeoff from Baghdad airport–you’re not counted among the 1,828.

Subway Searches

If the random searches of passengers riding the New York subway were designed to increase security, they’d return that dimebag of pot they found in your backpack, no questions asked. Right?

Instead, several people have already been arrested for non-terrorism-related contraband.

Tarantoad, cont.

John Davies asks:

I admit, I am opposite of you politically. But today you completely suprised me. How can a little twerp such as yourself physically threaten someone? I mean, do you really consider yourself a threat in a dark alleyway? Maybe to Marvin Hamlish or Stephen Hawkins.

“Little twerp”? How do you know if I’m little, big, or medium?

James Taranto, America-Hating Coward

This isn’t the first time that the Wall Street Journal’s most far right editorial writer has targeted me as un-American because I respect the Constitution, decency and U.S. as well as international law–unlike the lunatic Bushites whose ass his tongue gracelessly graces. Now, as part of a retrospective of his heinous “Best of the Web” column–nothing more than a poorly-written cover for his neo-fascist rants–he casually dashes off this gem:

On Oct. 23, 2001, we started a feature called “Stupidity Watch” chronicling such nonsense; it began with contributions from America-hating cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall…

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it now: that turd Taranto had better hope he never encounters me in a dark alley, poorly policed subway station or New York media party, because casually smearing someone as “America-hating” is some serious fucking shit that I won’t sit still for. It’s wrong, it’s libelous and, as my readers well know, it’s exactly the opposite of the truth.

By the way, letters to the Wall Street Journal go to: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com.