22 veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces commit suicide every day.
Enlist! What Could Go Wrong?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I can’t wait until the crimes of Obama go out of style and become disgusting again.
Meanwhile I’ll just have to piss off the herd that eats Obama’s shit like it was steak.
Droner?
Dorner?
Which one do you think speaks (spoke) more truthfully?
And which is a mad killer?
It’s of some interest to me that the internal logic aorund the use of drones breaks down almost immediately whenever they are used. As with other conflicts between empires and colonies. empire actions in the last 2 centuries have been framed as ‘police actions’ against unlawful, unruly elements who threaten peace and order – and pre-emptive measures are therefore justified. Set that against what we would find acceptable as ‘police actions’ in our own societies. If these actions resulted regularly in shooting injuries to innocent bystanders, there would be and has been a public uproar and demands for accountability, and ensuing lawsuits. The danger at the end of the day is not only the deaths of innocents in far away places, but a slow public acceptance of the same within our own borders.
It’s of interest to me that this ‘toon is dated February 20th and is captioned:
“February 13th, 2013
Enlist! What Could Go Wrong?”
.
It looks like *something* went wrong….
I was wondering when the soldier suicide cartoon was going to come out. I noticed you’d doodled some brainstorming ideas about it on the back of the sketch pad I got with the original piece you sent me.
Back in school, I was taught that every Empire inevitably declines into decadence and then falls, but I don’t like ‘inevitable’ as an explanation.
The British Empire needed to keep increasing its net profits, like any economic enterprise, and so kept cutting the costs of maintaining Empire. Instead of the Army and Navy, they sent the RAF with poison gas to exterminate rebellious villages. Unfortunately, the Germans got jealous of the British and French Empires, and poison gas proved a problem against an enemy who also had poison gas, and the ability to use it against the British Army. In 1924, in the essay ‘Shall We Commit Suicide’, Churchill predicted that another war would exterminate life in Europe, as the air forces dropped new, more lethal gasses against which gas masks were no protection (a theme taken up by a lot of other writers, and continued after the development of nuclear weapons). So gas was banned in WWII, and the ban held. But WWI and WWII doomed the British and French Empires, and they were replaced by the US neo-Empire and a short-lived Soviet neo-Empire.
Now the US military is stronger than the rest of the world combined, and most Americans are happy to continue to profit from the US neo-Empire. Killing foreigners is OK, as long as it’s cheap and the US ends up with a net profit exploiting their resources. The US voters strongly oppose wars that cost more than they bring in, but US decision makers chose the Iraq war to disrupt the supply of oil and increase the value of their oil holdings, plus the transfer of about $1 trillion from the US Treasury to the Friends of the Administration like Haliburton.
The US voters were easily persuaded that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, and so strongly supported that war, and the decision makers profited greatly (rather like Goldfinger, plus the no-bid contracts that Goldfinger never thought about).
Net: there is insignificant support for a revolution. Policies the Loony Left calls ‘atrocities’ just because they’re killing innocent foreign women and babies are considered by the average American to be essential for keeping the US safe and rich, and so we must fully support the ‘thin camo line’ and its Commander in Chief as they kill anyone (foreigner or US Citizen) who poses the slightest threat to US exploitation of neo-Imperial resources.