Pretty Much Says It All

Jason writes stuff I just haven’t seen anywhere else:

Dear Ted,
I’m a big fan, read your articles and comics, blah blah blah, hehe. I just wanted to drop you a quick note in response partially to your last article about “support the troops not the war” slogan, or whatever it is. Personally have served in the military and even in Iraq I would prefer supporting the troops and not the war to not supporting either one. Life is hard over there, it is very difficult to be isolated from family and friends, and the support of my family and friends helped me endure some very difficult times. I realise that the slogan is somewhat of a fallacy. It is true that without troops the war wouldnt be fought, so by just supporting the troops does in fact support the war.
I thought long and hard before I went to Iraq, not because of cowardace, but I like you thought the war was illegitimate, with no declaration of war, false, because I knew all the rhetoric from Bush was crap, and most importantly I thought the civil war after the regime change would be consuming long and arduous. It is true that I voluntarily joined, but after you say yes as a free person your not free till the contract has ended, I think endutured slavedom is a good mental picture of the US military. Most importantly tho was that I like many others dont just have myself to think about, its hard to take your wife and baby of 12 months on a journey to Canada. Not to mention as messed up as this country is, I love it and desertion to Canada didnt seem the best option, not to mention its pretty fuckin cold up there.
The issue of a lawfull order stuff is a bunch of crap too. Existing in the military is existing in mediocrity. To survive in the military you have to not make waves, do as your told, and basically not be creative for your entire stint. Saying to your Captain or Gunny in combat “I dont think thats a lawfull order” will definitely get you court martialled, might get you beat up, or worse might get you killed. That law looks great on paper and is great for civilians and generals to wave around, but the legitimacy of not having to obey an unlawfull order is pure fiction.
I hated the idea of going to Iraq, but the casualness you portray leaving the military is just false. Walking away from the US service is hard in peace time, worse in war time, and never ever easy, getting progessively harder from a single private fresh from boot camp to Master Guns with 20 years in and 5 kids to feed.
Couple more thoughts before I go. I think a more liberal stance that would help the antiwar movement than “support the troops not the war” would be to portray the deaths of kids for what they really are. There is an american conception that the people who die are soldiers, and who were trained to fight and die. Thats just not true. You know who the soldiers that die over seas are? Kids, they are that kid that sat next to you in Spanish class, the quarterback of the football team, the nerdy
girl in the corner of the library, they’re real people. Changing their clothes doesnt change that they will never return to their family or ever start a family of their own. I think the best thing that we can do to stop the war is stop flashing numbers across the screen but pictures of Johny and Jane who they left behind, the high school sweet heart they’ll never see again, their high school teachers who thought they would be something great, or their grandparents who have now lost an husband, son, grandson and greatgrandson in every war.

I never meant to suggest that going to Canada would be an easy decision. Just the right one. Still, otherwise, this letter still blows me away upon the third rereading.

So There Were Assholes

Mike points out that there were jerks in the antiwar movement of the Sixties:

Good morning Ted,
I enjoy your editorials and cartoons regularly, and I support your point of view, which very closely represents my own. I’m a 57 year old Marine veteran of Viet Nam, Jan ’67 – May ’68. War caused my disillusionment of war: murder, torture, and atrocity was not my thing. I joined the Marines to “save America from communism”, as the propaganda of the time persuaded us.
Afterward, I marched with Viet Nam Veterans Against the War, carrying the front line banner, reading names of the dead on the state capital steps (in the rain), and I barged into Ronald Reagan’s office and laid my Purple Heart Medal on the marbled floor. After all, it was mine to do as I pleased, since I earned it the hard way: shot by a .51 caliber machine gun during operation Pike on my 19th birthday.
It has been my unpopular opinion during this particular illegal American corporo-fascist war, that the military and it’s individually content to commit crimes against humanity volunteer soldiers should not be supported. Therefore, I agree
whole-heartedly with your subject editorial. However, Jerry Lembcke and yourself are wrong that it was pure fiction regarding Viet Nam vets being spit on and called baby killers.
During rotation home, I was sitting on a bench in LAX, waiting for my father to pick me up. On either side of me was an Army helicopter pilot and an Air Force airman. Four “long haired, hippie, dope smoking, commie scumbags” walked up and confronted us boisterously, the mouthpiece wearing a dress blue Marine jacket with ribbons affixed. He began by spitting at our feet, calling us baby killers, and hurling epithets. I was anti-war then and embarrassed by their misguided attack.
The Army Warrant Officer and I exchanged a knowing look and stood to confront the punks, whom immediately withdrew in fear, I’m sure. We followed them to the baggage area. which was empty at that time of night, and began to issue them
some good ‘ol article 69 justice. A security officer broke up the melee, sent us on our way with a supportive smile, and ushered the young miscreants off.
I’m not proud of a few things I’ve done in this tough ‘ol life, but that’s one memory I savor, even when I let my freak flag fly. Keep the faith, I appreciate your effort.

For the record, Mike was right to kick those jerks’ asses. For this may surprise you, dear reader, but I would even be polite to Dear Leader. Even if he is a genocidal maniac, there’s no reason to be rude.

Support the Soldiers, Not the War?

Some amazingly interesting and enlightening mail came in this week as the result of my column last week, in which I questioned the current assumption among progressives that soldiers should not be considered responsible for enlisting and serving under an unelected dictator while fighting a war of aggression. Here’s one from Andy:

to: chet@rall.com

I’ve calmed down now, but I want you to read this anyway, as I wrote it.

Dear Ted,

Your piece on encouraging military desertion upset me greatly because it reveals a lack of understanding. Every last one of those soldiers is already dead. They died the moment they naively signed on that line believing they were doing the right thing. You don’t need peace protesters spitting at you for your soul to begin dying. First come the dreams. Then come the startle reactions, and you realise that the big brave man you once were has gone the day you find yourself curled up in a ball crying like a baby because a firework went off, or you caught the smell of diesel in the air. You get time to think it through in peace as you sit in jail after you nearly killed some poor fool who bumped you in the street, and you come to love the solitude and protection of jail because it is an institution whos simple rules of power you understand. When you return your family are overjoyed to see you alive, they don’t know you are walking dead. Over time your wife will learn to cover the bruises and live with broken bones because she doesn’t want to turn you in, but in the end she will leave you to protect her children whos lives have already started to descend into neurosis, depression and underachievement. But you thank God if your wife was pregnant before you left, because now your sperm, like your lungs, kidneys and liver is speckled with blood and burns like fire with the DU dust slowly eating your body away. If she left because you couldn’t have sex anymore she doesn’t realise how lucky she was to escape the slow burning death herself, or to push your legless deformed living abortions about in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Then you start to realise how they were the lucky ones who died quickly in action. So now you wander the streets and sleep in an alley, unemployed, unable to get medical treatment. Nobody told you before you went that you can never erase or forget those images and thoughts. If the alcohol doesn’t finish you off then the dope or the heroin or the lobotomising tranquilisers, or maybe a bullet to the head from your own pistol will.

Ted, I’m sure you are a very warm and human person, that your intentions are good. I can see that in your cartoons and other writings, and don’t think your own bravery in standing up and speaking out is lost on me. But you clearly do not speak with the sensitivity that experience would have given you. You quote Hollywood films apparently oblivious that their sick, violent culture of lies and hypocrisy is part of the propaganda problem. I think you don’t understand war, the pressures that make the “right thing to do” to stay beside your brothers and endure duty and sacrifice for what you were told is right by those you trust and respect, even though there is a gun at your back as well as in front of you. Since you have a platform to speak and much to say may I humbly suggest you direct your words against the lying, treasonous bastards who send the innocent to kill the innocent for nothing more noble than dirty profits.
Perhaps I’m wrong about you, but you should realise this phoney war has made cowards of us all. These chaps don’t have the same choices, the same degree of free will that we have sitting here pontificating and rubbing our beards. Most come from the poorest backgrounds, for them service is an escape not an adventure, a chance to feel good about something for once. They fall into the hands of the smartest manipulators, psychologists who know how to unleash the evil in a man, but not smart enough to put the genie back into the bottle. All very sad.
On quite another subject, have you ever heard of the artist Banksy who comes from my home town in England? He is a genius. Something tells me you would very much like him.

I do understand that most enlistees don’t possess the experience or sophistication to see past their recruiter’s slick sales pitch (see the world! bomb it!). That’s why I think the armed forces shouldn’t be permitted to enroll anyone under age 30. Wanna bet what that would do to our leaders’ plans to fight more optional wars, just for fun and profit?
I’ll check out Banksy.

ATTITUDE 3: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ONLINE CARTOONISTS, due out in June 2006, will feature the work of 21 cartoonists who are moving from the world of print into the Internet to produce some of the funniest, outrageous and innovative comics around.

In keeping with the format of the first two volumes in the ATTITUDE series of comics anthologies, ATTITUDE 3 includes cartoons by, interviews with and personal ephemera (like childhood photos) of each creator. Featured are innovative artists who focus on politics, others on social commentary and still more who are out to make you laugh. Find out why webcomics are the hottest new comics around through this primer to some of the medium’s brightest talents!

The featured cartoonists are:

1. Rob Balder: Partially Clips
2. Dale Beran and David Hellman: A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible
3. Matt Bors: Idiot Box
4. Steven L. Cloud: Boy on a Stick and Slither
5. M.e. Cohen: HumorInk
6. Chris Dlugosz: Pixel
7. Thomas K. Dye: Newshounds
8. Mark Fiore: Fiore Animated Cartoons
9. Dorothy Gambrell : Cat and Girl
10. Nicholas Gurewitch: The Perry Bible Fellowship
11. Brian McFadden: Big Fat Whale
12. Eric Millikin: Fetus-X
13. Ryan North: Daily Dinosaur Comics
14. August J. Pollak: XQUZYPHYR & Overboard
15. Mark Poutenis: Thinking Ape Blues
16. Jason Pultz: Comic Strip
17. Adam Rust: Adam’s Rust
18. D.C. Simpson: I Drew This & Ozy and Millie
19. Ben Smith: Fighting Words
20. Richard Stevens: Diesel Sweetie
21. Michael Zole: Death to the Extremist

Coming in a few weeks: pre-order information as well as a special offer for those who order multiple copies in advance.

Tomorrow on the Ted Rall Show

First and foremost: livestreaming! That’s right–now you can listen to the Ted Rall Show online, live, from 11 am to 2 pm Pacific Standard Time every Sunday!

And, if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, tune in live at 106.9 Free FM.

Up first at 11 am: the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the man sent by “rendition” to Egypt for torture and then, under torture, told the CIA that ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Al Qaeda included WMD training. Then–surprise!–once the torture stopped, al-Libi recanted his story, saying he had just told them whatever they wanted to hear to make them stop. This story ties everything together: renditions, torture and lies about prewar intelligence.

At 12 noon: can we forgive people who voted for Bush?

[NEW: Richard Pryor is dead. Assuming we can beep out all the cursing, I’m going to try to do a Richard Pryor homage hour tomorrow.]

1 pm features the Cartoonists Roundtable dishing on the industry and the week’s news. This week: Matt Bors (“Idiot Box”) and Jen Sorensen (Slowpoke).

See you tomorrow!

In my column this week I mentioned a 1998 book by Jerry Lembcke, “The Spitting Image,” which asserts that there was no published evidence that returning Vietnam vets were ever called “baby killers” or spat upon by antiwar protesters. Joe Hotchkiss of the Augusta (GA) Chronicle wrote in response:

Your most recent column included this sentence (emphasis added):
By the way, as Jerry Lembcke found in his book “The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam” (1998), there’s no reason for antiwar types to feel guilty over the treatment of Vietnam vets–there’s no evidence of any kind that anyone ever spat on a Vietnam veteran or called one a “baby killer.”
Not according to nationally syndicated columnist John Chamberlain, who wrote in 1970 about Marine Corps Maj. Richard H. Esau, and the scorn heaped upon him by college-age protesters: “The major gets tired of being taunted with such questions as ‘How many babies have you killed?’ … His answer to the baby killer taunt is, ‘If I don’t kill you, I haven’t killed any.’” (May 26, 1970, The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle). What are the odds that Chamberlain managed to find the only member of the entire U.S. military who had been taunted as a baby killer? There obviously had to have been more.
Soldiers nationwide clearly were branded baby killers by Vietnam-era protesters and others, likely in the wake of the revelations that sprung from the My Lai massacre court-martial. Rock musician Frank Zappa wrote in his autobiography that, during one of his shows at New York’s old Garrick Theater around 1970, he called a young soldier onto the stage, and threw him a prop they used in the show, some sort of doll. Zappa then told the soldier to pretend it was a “gook baby,” upon which the soldier made a sick comical show of stomping on it. (The Real Frank Zappa Book, 1989) Not only were the baby-killer taunts happening back then, they were clearly part of the popular culture (or counterculture, if you want to look at it that way).
Also, in September 1983, Dr. Jack R. Ewalt said plainly, in a newspaper interview, that traumatized Vietnam War veterans were attacked stateside as “baby killers, women killers, the kids that lost the war.” (Chronicle, Sept. 7, 1983) Ewalt was the director of mental health and behavioral sciences in the Department of Medicine and Surgery at the U.S. Veterans Administration, and presumably not someone who just got through watching a screening of First Blood.
And Jerry Lembcke says there’s no evidence of soldiers being called baby killers?

Neither the Zappa anecdote nor Dr. Ewalt’s 1983 newspaper interview did much to change my conclusion that Lembcke was right. After all, Zappa’s memoirs were written in 1989, seven years after the release of the myth-making 1982 film “Rambo: First Blood.” He might have “misremembered.” And even if Zappa’s memory was flawless, the story he tells hardly is the same thing as a returning vet being screamed at or spat upon. And the 1983 Ewalt piece came a year after “First Blood”—while he may not have seen the movie (well, why not?) he certainly could have been affected by the Reagan-era historical revisionism then in full swing that sought to recast the Vietnam War as a noble endeavor that might have succeeded if the troops had been properly supported back at home.

The Chamberlain story, however, was a different matter, potentially disproving Lembcke’s thesis. So I asked him to dig it out of the Chronicle archives. Here it is, and thanks to Mr. Hotchkiss for sending it:

Unfortunately this clipping hardly dispatches Lembcke’s work to the trash heap of history. As I wrote to Mr. Hotchkiss upon reading it:

Dear Joe,
Thanks for sending the page with the Chamberlain column, which ‘ll reference on my blog. I don’t think being asked “How many babies did you kill?” is quite on par with being spat upon and having “baby killer!” yelled at you, though. Yes, there’s a linguistic similarity and the subject is the same–which is why it’s worth noting–but it’s really not the same thing as the post-Rambo myth. It’s like the right-wing hate mail I receive: If someone asks, “Why are you a traitor?” and awaits my response, that’s hardly the same thing as screaming “Traitor!” and spitting on me.

So that remains, well, unsettled. The rest of the editorial page on which Chamberlain’s piece ran back in the dark days of May 1970 includes more evidence that nothing really changes. First there’s the fact that “Dlibert” type humor is nothing news:

Then there’s David Lawrence’s call for expansion of presidential power, so that then-President Nixon would be free to launch new wars, such as the then “secret” invasion of Cambodia, without being required to obtain a declaration of war from Congress. Even back then there were neocons:

And the real humdinger: an editorial cartoon that insults “peace marchers” (at least there were some!) and argues for—yep—the “fly paper” strategy! Gotta beat ’em in ‘Nam before they come here to the United States!

Nothing really changes. By the way, the cartoon I did that will go online tomorrow, which mocks the flypaper argument, was drawn more than a week before I saw this.

Postscript: How offensive it must be to the Iraqis and the rest of the world to hear American politicians say that it’s OK to fight wars overseas but not here—as if the rest of the world was a sort of Fresh Kills to be crapped all over. I just wonder why they wouldn’t hate us.

Information About the Ted Rall Show

My radio station has its website up and running. Check out the Ted Rall show on Sundays, 11 am to 2 pm West Coast time, in San Francisco, at 1069freefm.com. There’s also a livestreaming button that should go live any second.

Refusing Isn’t Easy

“Bob” (real name kept secret by request because he’s in the military) writes:

“Granted, it’s a hard decision. But they could have refused to fight in W’s illegal wars.”
Ted,
That’s easy for you to say. To a soldier, the wars were not illegal. He was ordered to go, and he went. It isn’t his place to question. If he does, he will slow the mission down and could cause damage to the unit effectiveness. If he were to refuse, he would face some serious punishment. To straight out refuse a deployment would destroy not only his career, but his future civilian life as well. A dishonorable or bad conduct discharge can follow someone around like a felony.

Soldiers are not automatons. They are American citizens and, moreover, subject to U.S. military law, a law that requires soldiers to carefully consider the legality of every order before agreeing to carry it out. The wars are clearly undeclared and clearly illegal. It is true that one’s military career would be trashed as the result of refusing. What does this say, one wonders, about our armed forces? After all, as demonstrated in “Hitler’s Willing Executioners,” even members of the Einsatzgruppen roving death squads in eastern Europe were given permission not to participate in raids and mass arrests of Jews and other enemies of the state. And, as the book’s author showed, those who refused–and they were few–were never punished by so much as having been passed over for a promotion. If our system is worse than that, wow. And why would anyone want to remain part of it?

I can’t speak for others, but a dishonorable discharge would in no way, shape, or form reduce the chances of my considering someone as a potential employee. I’m sure many other civilians feel the same way.

That is to not even mention the stupid amounts of bravado and misinformation that goes on. And this is in Military Intelligence, who is notorious for being lack. I can only imagine what it’s like being in the real Army.
Some of the careerists really do care about the country and the Army. They will do whatever it takes to have a HOOAH military career, be it at expense of life, family, or idea’s. It’s a damn shame. Soldier’s should not have to question their leaders. They should automatically assume that their fight is the good one. However, as can be seen in American history, that is rarely the case.
Which is the true shame.
I say this as a current active duty Soldier. I didn’t join to do noble things, kill Iraqis, or preserve freedom. I did join for other reasons, and one of those are my family. It’s easy to say I should have gotten a job, or went to college, but the fact is at my age I wasn’t able to get a good job, and I couldn’t afford college. Keep in mind that when you write things about soldiers in a negative light, the large majority of them could not afford lofty ideas. When I put on my uniform, I’m still a subversive asshole. But when I decide to keep my uniform on, I become someone who was willing to sacrifice a bit of his ideals for
opportunity, college, and his family.

I feel this pain. I remember being 18 years old, coming from a working poor family and growing up in a town with few and unattractive employment prospects, wondering whether I’d ever amount to anything professionally. Fortunately I was a good student and had gotten myself admitted to a good college–but that didn’t even help. I majored in engineering, a field I was neither good at and didn’t enjoy, and ended up expelled after three years. Not only was I unemployed, I was a college dropout with student loans up the ass.

I did consider a military career–twice. I applied to the US Naval Academy and took the US Army’s aptitude test. Man, did the army love me! I take good test. They kept calling and calling and calling…but I didn’t go even though they offered me everything from fast-track to officer to a sweet assignment anywhere I wanted. It was 1981, and while America was not at war and Ronald Reagan was not a batshit usurping fuckhead moron like that twat Bush, he was clearly a dangerous, mentally unstable and intellectually inferior leader. Many Americans worried that his posturing would get us into some stupid war. So, because of Reagan, I didn’t enlist. Better to be homeless than kill people without cause.

Surely it’s an easier decision now.

The Reality of War Bumps Up Against Bumperticker Sloganeering

Andy writes:

Dear Ted,

In September of 2002, as I started my junior year of college I was unfortunate enough to find myself stuck with a U.S. Marine for a roommate.
I’d never felt comfortable around military types. In high school the ROT-Cees were the lowest of the low, degenerates well on their way to jail if not for the saving grace of wanting to shoot something the defence of the country.
Subsequently in college, when I left my home city of Chicago to the boonies of Illinois, I found the Jarheads, Jarhead-Wannabes, grunts, reservists, and even military fan-boys with too many toy warplanes of an even more savage ilk, all too eager to swat down upstart darker-skinned peoples of the world. As I once quipped to a good friend, “If they didn’t have the U.S. military, they’d probably be skinning cats in their parents basements.” You can gather then, that being quartered with a Marine was unenjoyable at best and, especially when the Commandent-in-Chief began his Anti-Saddam sabre rattling, it was completely infuriating.
My roommate specialized in disarming chemical weapons. Not content to do welding at a technical college, he had gone into the Marine Corps with the sole career goal of having being able to retire at age fourty-five. What was he doing in college with this already grand scheme cooked up? A higher pay bracket in the officer corps. Clearly I was living with a genius. This became more obvious to me as the weeks rolled on and the man would sit in our room during the evenings watching CNN and giving his expert commentary. He would surmise how many weapons Saddam had, where they were stashed, and precisely what vicious nuclear and biological terrors Saddam had stockpiled against us. And he would, at length, orate on the legal and ethical reasons that Saddam needed to be removed from power.
Suffice it to say, what this man was selling, I was not buying.
Our arguments bacame progressively more fierce. A cold war had erupted in my dorm room and there was no way in hell I was backing down. Sure, I couldn’t prove Saddam didn’t have Weapons of Mass Destruction, but let’s not forget that the U.S. Government has had it’s own agenda whether the voters liked it or not before, and I could not believe that human slime like Bush and Rumsfeld didn’t have an ulterior motive. (I think we on the Left shouldn’t gloat, but so far we’ve been right about global warming, absence of weapons of mass destruction, and right about now I’d bet money on Peak Oil hitting next year.)
So the semester flew by and there was continued discord in Room 158, and winter break passed, and being away from Private Nimrod was good. Upon my return to campus after break though, he dropped a bombshell. His unit would likely be sent to Iraq.
I know it’s cruel to laugh at someone else’s misfortune, but this? It warmed my heart to see this doofus terrified out of his wits every night as he watched the news knowing that at some point he might actually have to deal with shooting and being shot at.
Suddenly his tune changed; his dissertations on the alleged weapons weren’t about where, what and why we needed to destroy them, all of a sudden, it was about how there was no conclusive evidence of any weapons anywhere, suddenly, Bush had transformed in my roommate’s eyes from brave leader swinging a sword of righteousness to a chimp flailing his wiener.
When we actually started the Invasion in March, my roommate became weird and withdrawn. He even became introspective at points, questioning whether or not his was a wise career choice. Clearly he had never actually expected to do any fighting, kinda funny, with being in the military and all.
By April, the man had hit rock bottom. Already an intensely mediocre student he stopped going to class altogether, broke up with his girlfriend, and often wondered aloud if he would even be alive by this time next year. And always I was there to provide little or no comfort, because this turn of events was comical to me, and I felt, wholly deserved. After the school year ended I lost all contact with him, and good riddance. He was a filthy, loud-mouthed, inconsiderate brute and a borderline sociopath.
Wherever he ended up, whether barracked in north central Illinois, with the perilous threat of sudden deployment hanging over his head, or actually being sent to the middle east, this was what he chose, and he faced the consequences of his choice with fear that he should recognize, this is after all what he seemed to want to do to poor people all over the globe, scare them into submission.
Periodically, I check news from his hometown to see what became of him. If he came back either a hero or a corpse, this would be front page news in Will County, Illinois, so far, nothing. I truly hope he comes back and decides to drop his vocation of destruction and get a real job, but I don’t think it likely, his type never learns easily, if ever. After all, if all the standard bearers and flag-wavers had a lick of sense they might have recalled the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, or that FDR had some advanced warning of Japan’s coming attack on Pearl Harbor and realized that a lot of times politicians will lie to advance their own agenda.
The voters, the Senators, the Representatives, the soldiers who were “duped” can claim hindsight is 20/20 all they like, but I think these last terrible five years under Bush should just go to show that a little well-placed skepticism can go a long way.

Thanks, Andy, for a point of view widely articulated throughout the country’s living rooms, but rarely in public.

Republicans Make Their Best Argument

Terence writes:

Ted,
Can you give me you address, I want to come over and kick the living shit out of you.
Regards
Terence Gallagher
XXXX Minerva Ave
LA CA 90066

He’s at sailwest3333@yahoo.com.