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Afghanistan Offers Lessons In Regime Change To Israel In Gaza

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Ted Rall

            I talked to a lot of people in Afghanistan, where I reported about the fall 2001 U.S. invasion. Young or old, urban or rural, no matter their ethnicity, they all expected the victors to work miracles after the Taliban’s defeat.

            “America will build roads, schools, buildings, everything.”

            “Now Afghanistan will be beautiful.”

            “We will have freedom! We will choose our new government.”

            And after that? I asked. What will the U.S. do?

            “They will leave,” people told me.

            If only things were that simple, I remember thinking.

            History is repeating itself in Gaza. A devastating surprise terrorist attack by Islamist extremists has again been followed by a ground invasion. Now the postwar scenario is being considered. It’ll either be the full-fledged ethnic cleansing centered around the expulsion of the Gazans, or regime change. Israel will have the victorious army, control over 2.3 million people (minus the 100,000 or 200,000 it will have killed) and it will soon face some of the same high expectations for reconstruction and the establishment of a post-Hamas government as the U.S. contended with after defeating the Taliban in 2001.

            What form would a post-Hamas Gazan government take? “It might entail greater control for the Palestinian National Authority based in Ramallah, some sort of new local governance, governance under the tutelage of the Israeli military, or perhaps a coalition of Arab states,” Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies speculated at the start of the war.

            America’s approach to post-Taliban Afghanistan should serve as a case study of what Israel should not do if and when it topples Hamas. After the U.S. orchestrated the presidency of Hamid Karzai, he and his successor Ashraf Ghani were consistently viewed as weak and corrupt puppets installed by exploitative foreigners. Two decades, two thousand soldiers and two trillion dollars later, the U.S. found itself where it started, with the Taliban back in charge.

            The seeds of America’s humiliating withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021 were planted by a few disastrous decisions by the Bush Administration in the months immediately following the collapse of the first Taliban regime in December 2001.

            The Americans’ first major mistake took place at the Bonn Conference in November 2001, where they allowed the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance the highest number of delegates. The Northern Alliance was America’s ally in its war against the Taliban, but it only enjoyed the support of a tiny minority of Afghans, mostly in the remote mountainous northeast of the country and was the fervent enemy of the nation’s Pashtun majority. Accountable only to their American patrons, the Northern Alliance threw restraint to the wind, appointing warlords reputed for violence and corruption to cabinet positions and provincial governorships.

            Members of the Taliban, whose government had controlled more than 90% of the country’s territory before 9/11, were excluded from public life under a misbegotten policy of “detalibanization.” Many fled across the Hindu Kush mountains to Pakistan as a result, biding their time as they organized Taliban 2.0.

            Though telegenic and charismatic, Karzai—the man elected at Bonn as chairman of Afghanistan’s interim government—could not have been a worse choice. Though sold by the Tajiks leading the regime as a sop to his fellow Pashtuns, his close ties to the CIA and the fact that he had been living in exile on 9/11 added to the suspicion among Afghans that he had been parachuted in to serve as the country’s Philippe Pétain.

            A traditional loya jirga tribal council convened in June 2002 in order to choose a permanent leader. Once again, the Taliban—by far the biggest ideological cohort—were excluded.

Making matters worse, Washington refused to let democracy, or Afghanistan’s traditional form of representative democracy, decide the future. When the exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, emerged as an early frontrunner as the figurehead of a potential unity coalition, the U.S. panicked. Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad clumsily buttonholed him behind the scenes until the humiliated former monarch agreed to withdraw from the race and endorse Bush’s choice, Karzai—at a U.S.-held press conference. “Together, these actions convinced many that the loya jirga is a puppet of [Northern Alliance] Panjshiris and foreigners, and that the Bush administration is not willing to let Afghans engage in any democratic debate that might contradict American views,” S. Frederick Starr and Marin J. Strmecki wrote in The New York Times on June 14, 2002.

            The U.S.-backed Afghan government committed countless errors over its ensuing 19 years in power. Regardless of its performance, however, it never stood a chance of being considered legitimate after such dismal origins.

            Like an individual, a regime only has one chance to make a good first impression. The Afghan debacle teaches Israel two important lessons about regime change, should it choose to impose a government upon Gaza. First, disenfranchising a substantial segment of the population will hobble Gaza’s next leadership, no matter how well-intentioned or democratic the process otherwise appears to be. Dehamasification would be as much of a disaster as detalibanization and debaathification in Iraq.

            The other lesson is the most important: a democracy in which outsiders keep their thumb on the scale is an oxymoron. If—which I seriously doubt—Israel seeks to spread democracy to the occupied territories, it must let it play out organically and abide by the results no matter what—especially if they’re disagreeable.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

Israel Should Respond, Not React

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Ted Rall

            In the days and weeks and months and years after 9/11, when you questioned how the Bush Administration responded to the terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda, right-wing Republicans and liberal Democrats alike answered with a passive shrug. “Well,” they said, “we had to do something.”

            Then you pressed about Bush’s specific responses—those somethings. Invading Afghanistan, which had nothing to do with 9/11. The USA-Patriot Act, which stripped away our rights and Congressmen didn’t bother to read. Guantánamo. Torture. Extraordinary rendition. Drones. Same reply: “We had to do something.”

Invading Iraq? Not that. Bush crossed his own line in the sand there.

Hamas’ violent incursion from the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip into Israel—re-read the preceding prepositional phrase, for it encapsulates the insanity of the situation—was instantly described as Israel’s 9/11. Like the United States 22 years ago, Israel is not responding. It is reacting.

            They (feel that they) have to do something. That (feeling) is understandable.

            However, logic is supposed to kick in next. Israelis should ask themselves: Do they really have to do something?

            Did we, following 9/11?

            If so, if something must be done, there are many options. Must “doing something” include military force?

            In 2007, at the height of the “war on terror,” Harvard convened a panel of experts in order to evaluate Bush’s post-9/11 actions. Participants were asked: “Are terrorists simply insane, barbaric, nihilistic, as others have theorized?” Obviously not. “Terrorists want three things, Harvard political science professor and terrorism specialist Louise Richardson said: “revenge, renown, and reaction.”

Richardson argued that “to assume that being tough on terrorism means being effective against it” is a mistake. Trying to defeat terrorists through military means, she said, allows them to achieve revenge, renown, and reaction—exactly what they want. “By declaring war on terrorism, we’re playing exactly into their hands. We’re conceding the very objective they are trying to achieve.” The war on terror killed nearly a million people and cost $8 trillion. What a waste! From Shanksville to Kabul to Baghdad to the Be’eri Kibbutz, neither terrorism as a tactic generally nor radical Islamist terrorism specifically has lost an inch of ground.

America’s number-one client state is repeating our error.

            “There is a sense of helplessness, but we are all now trying to become proactive,” Aviram Meir, whose nephew was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th, told an Israeli reporter. “We have to do something.”

            A normal impulse.

            A normal impulse that should be resisted.

“Human animals,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called members of Hamas as he, rather animalistically himself, announced that he would cut off food and water to 2.3 million people, 99.9999% of whom had no involvement in the Hamas attacks. His choice of words, so dehumanizing and redundant, is ironic. Taking a pause to think before you respond to sensory input—the difference between acting and reacting—is not only a big evolutionary advantage that human beings have over other animals, but the essence of what it means to be a civilized person.

Gallant and other Israelis howling for quick vengeance ought to refer to the psychologist Viktor Frankl, best known for “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a classic book informed by three years at Auschwitz. “Between stimulus and response,” Frankl wrote, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Gallant aside, even the animals we choose to keep near us have this trait. An animal suited for domestication, scientists say, does not panic when startled.

Hamas’ October 7th operation was meticulously researched and planned. It is not even slightly likely that Hamas leadership did not foresee the Israeli response that we are seeing: a brutal bombing campaign followed by a massive ground invasion determined to replace the Hamas government with a puppet regime. Rule one of strategy: when you find yourself following a predictable set of actions, your enemy is winning.

Perhaps Hamas, like the Iraqi resistance in Fallujah, has rigged Gaza with boobytraps. Maybe Sunni Hamas has a regional ex deus machina up its sleeve, like a game-changing promise from Shia Hezbollah open up a second front against Israel, and/or a commitment from Syria, which could point to Israeli bombing of its civilian airports as casi bellis. And/or Hamas is playing a long game, in which Israel’s Geneva Conventions-shattering bombings of schools and hospitals, targeting of Palestinian children and other forms of internationally-proscribed collective punishment erase the memory of the atrocities committed by Hamas and decisively turn the world against the Jewish state.

If I were sitting in an Israeli war room planning my nation’s next move, I’d be worried sick about these possibilities/probabilities.

I would argue: there’s no rush to invade Gaza. Vengeance is a dish best served cold or at least after time to think.

There are numerous other options.

Israel could turn the power back on, let food and water back in and beef up its lame security along its border with Gaza. It could treat the attacks as a police matter and demand that Hamas turn over suspects for prosecution. It could jumpstart negotiations to finalize a two-state solution, which everyone knows is the only viable long-term solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It could embrace the wisdom of Nelson Mandela, who understood that a cycle of violence would never end unless one side, the side in charge that happened to be the African National Congress after he was elected president, declared amnesty so the country could move past apartheid. And if it finally did—after careful consideration—decide to invade Gaza, it could so with full knowledge and understanding of what form of governance would follow Hamas.

            Nothing is stupider than the blind urge to do something, anything, whatever, after an act of terror. Nothing leads to worse responses.

“We have to defend. We have to do something.” Those are the words of Maisa Khader, a 38-year-old chemist, in 2021. She was Palestinian, attending a pro-Hamas rally in Gaza. She was angry about Israel’s latest bombing blitz against the people of Gaza.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

 

 

 

Happy 9/11 Day

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Ted Rall

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 left a bunch of ridiculous legacies that pretty much everyone with an ounce of sanity agrees we should let go. For example, let’s get rid of the TSA and go back to the old days of airport security. And let’s stop saying that we have to do something before we think about what to do.

20 Years After 9/11, We’re Still Morons

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Ted Rall

USA No Forgetting 9-11 Flag - 9-11 Flag - We won't Forgetting Flag - FlagsFlagpoles, Flags, Mounts, Lights, Motorcycle Accessories

           If crisis creates opportunity, we couldn’t possibly have squandered the possibilities presented by 9/11 more spectacularly. We certainly couldn’t have failed its tests more completely. Twenty years after 9/11, it is clear that the United States is ruled by idiots and that we, the people, are complicit with their moronic behavior.

            We had to do something. That was and remains the generic explanation for what we did in response to 9/11—invading Afghanistan and Iraq, directing the CIA to covertly overthrow the governments of Haiti, Venezuela, Belarus, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan and a bunch of other countries, lamely legalizing torture, kidnapping via extraordinary rendition to Guantánamo and other concentration camps, building a drone armada and sparking a drone arms race.

            Acting purely on speculation, news media was reporting as early as the afternoon of September 11 that Al Qaeda was responsible. That same day, Vice President Dick Cheney argued for invading Iraq. We began bombing Afghanistan October 7, less than a month later, without evidence that Afghanistan was guilty. A week later, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden; Bush refused. Before you act, you think. We didn’t.

            What should we have done—after giving it a good think?

            A smart people led by a good president would have had three priorities: bring the perpetrators to justice, punish any nation-states that were involved, and reduce the chances of future terrorist attacks.

            The 19 hijackers were suicides, but plotters like Al Qaeda’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who lived in Pakistan, were not. Since we have an extradition treaty with Pakistan, we could have asked Pakistani authorities to arrest him and send him to face trial in the U.S. or at the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Instead, we kidnapped him to CIA “dark sites” including Gitmo and subjected him to waterboarding 266 times. Because of this and other torture, as well as his illegal detention in violation of habeas corpus, KSM can’t face trial in a real, i.e. civilian, court. Not only will 9/11 families never see justice carried out, we’ve managed to turn KSM into a victim, just as he wanted.

            The Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Pakistan’s CIA, financed and provided intelligence to Al Qaeda. Pakistan harbored bin Laden. Pakistan played host to hundreds of Al Qaeda training camps. Pakistanis I talked to after 9/11 were shocked that the U.S. didn’t attack their country, instead giving its Taliban-aligned dictator General Pervez Musharraf billions in military and financial aid.

            Evidence linking top Saudi Arabian officials to 9/11 has been scarce. But 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, several are reported to have met with mid-level Saudi intelligence agents before the attacks, and, most notably, Saudi Arabia exports its radical brand of Sunni Islam, Wahhabism, all over the world. The Taliban and Al Qaeda initially recruited many of their members from Wahhabi madrassas financed by the Saudis in Pakistan and Central Asia.

            We should have treated 9/11 for what it was: a crime. Policemen, not soldiers, should have tracked down the perps. They should have been given lawyers, not torture. They should have faced fair trials. But if we had to go the military route, we should have invaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the two countries responsible, not Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries that had nothing to do with it. Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were and remain far more dangerous to their neighbors than Afghanistan or Iraq.

            Occupying Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest exporter of Islamic extremism and global terrorism, would have done a lot to reduce the threat of another 9/11. But the most effective way to make us less of a target is to make the rest of the world look upon us with favor. Some people will always hate us. That’s inevitable. Our goal should be to reduce their number to as close to zero as humanly possible.

            We can’t eliminate anti-Americanism by killing its adherents. We’ve been trying to do that for 20 years using drones and missile strikes; all we’ve accomplished is killing a lot of innocent people and making the rest of the world look at us with disgust and contempt. You kill anti-Americanism by treating people everywhere with respect and kindness. That includes those we suspect of doing us harm.

            Unfortunately for us and the world, we learned nothing from 9/11. Not even losing Afghanistan back to the Taliban in the most humiliating U.S. defeat since Vietnam, having nothing to show for 20 years of war, has taught us a thing. We’re still a hammer that sees everything as a nail, a blunt, stupid people whose idea of a plan is to keep indiscriminately bombing innocent civilians.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of a new graphic novel about a journalist gone bad, “The Stringer.” Order one today. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

911: Would You Like Us To Commit a Crime?

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Ted Rall

After yet another police shooting of an innocent unarmed civilian in her own home, you have to ask yourself why anyone would call the police unless they absolutely had no other choice?

Now Drones Are Coming For Us and Our Allies. This Could Have Been Avoided.

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Ted Rall

For the last 18 years, the United States has enjoyed a virtual monopoly on drone assassination warfare. Now, as predicted, other countries are starting to use unmanned aerial vehicles, as seen with the recent attack against Saudi oil refineries. This might have been avoided if the U.S. had not set such a terrible precedent.

For Journalists, Self-Censorship is Credibility Suicide

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Ted Rall

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What is the job of the news media? To report the news. Everyone agrees about that. But some well-intentioned self-imposed ethical guidelines that members of the news media take for granted are getting in the way of the industry’s fundamental mission: telling everything they know to a public whose right to know is sacred.

You know journalists have lost their way when they cheer the arrest and potential extradition to the U.S. of WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange. Any of us could be next; we should be circling the wagons. Yet they insist on focusing on such inanities as Assange’s personality, his “arrogance,” even his cat. Some even approve.

The other day NPR’s “Morning Edition” covered the 25th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Everyone over age 40 remembers what happened: suffering from depression, chronic pain and opiate addiction, the singer put a shotgun in his mouth and blew his head off.

It’s one of the most famous suicides ever. NPR chose to be coy about it, mostly referring to Cobain’s “death” rather than his “suicide.”

Airbrushing well-known reality is silly. But, like most American media outlets, NPR was merely following the World Health Organization’s published guidelines on covering suicide. According to experts news accounts of suicide can feed a phenomenon called “suicide contagion” wherein people in emotional crisis are inspired by stories to see taking their own lives as a solution to their problems. As Time magazine wrote recently, “the more vivid the depiction of a death… the more it may contribute to suicide contagion.” Editors and producers are encouraged to avoid detailed descriptions of how victims of suicide did it, what their last note said, etc.

Reducing the suicide rate is a laudable goal. But journalists’ job is to report and analyze the news, not to reduce mortality. What’s next, refusing to mention hamburgers in the news because they contribute to arteriosclerosis? Cars because they kill people (and in vast numbers)? While we’re at it let’s censor war correspondence on the grounds that battle stories glorify militarism and thus prompt more wars!

Lying to readers is the worst sin a newspaper can commit. That includes lies of omission: readers pay for and have every right to expect the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from a product that promises exactly that. Playing cute by omitting important, relevant facts from the news, as in the Cobain story, seriously undermines the media’s credibility. That goes double when listeners and viewers know what really happened and realize they’re being treated like children by self-appointed nannies.

Moreover, self-censorship can destroy a story. Cobain’s death by suicide was a shocking where-were-you moment and a defining cultural experience for Generation X. I don’t see how Millennials could understand that from the NPR account. It wasn’t merely the fact that the lead singer of Nirvana had died. The way he died was central.

Another way the media loses credibility while trying to do the right thing is adhering to the widely accepted belief among corporate news outlets that they are somehow responsible for protecting national security. When the press receives classified government materials from a leaker or whistleblower they often contact the relevant agency to authenticate the documents and/or to allow them to suggest redactions. If you watched “The Post” you saw the Washington Post contact the Nixon Administration to give the White House a chance to argue why they shouldn’t publish the Pentagon Papers.

Media outlets like The Guardian and the New York Times shared the Edward Snowden files with the NSA and CIA so they could expunge information like the names of undercover intelligence operatives and suggest redactions. Even The Intercept (formerly a left-leaning media group) did this, to grievous effect: they foolishly shared leaked CIA documents with the feds, who used their analysis to track a whistleblower named Reality Winner. She is in prison.

During the Gulf War Geraldo Rivera got in trouble for drawing a map showing troop movements in the sand. The Pentagon threw him out of Iraq and many reporters agreed.

They were wrong. Journalists are not government employees. They’re solely responsible to news consumers, not the military or intelligence agencies who failed to safeguard their own secrets. Why shouldn’t a reporter report what they know, whatever they find out, whatever it is, if it’s news—no matter how sensitive? If the New York Times had gotten the D-Day plans a week ahead of time, they didn’t owe the War Department a phone call. They should have published, consequences be damned.

As the D-day example shows, respecting the public’s right to know is hard. Good people can die as a result. Wars may be lost. But for someone dedicated to journalism it’s an easy call. Either you’re a journalist or you’re nothing more than a low-rent liar and propagandist for the government.

Self-censorship often takes the form of policing newsworthy content for tastefulness. After Vice President Dick Cheney told a senator—on the floor of the senate!—to go have sex with himself, respectable media organizations dashed out the f— or otherwise danced around the nefarious fricative (as I am doing here because this column is syndicated). So dumb.

Everyone knows what Cheney said. No one could deny it was news. So print it.

Then there are the “tasteless” photos that are routinely withheld from printed pages and TV screens in the United States: sexual images like Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” and gruesome pictures of crime victims. America’s namby-pambyness is an outlier. In Latin America, photos of 9/11 jumpers ran on the front pages of major newspapers. But in the U.S., seventeen years later, the images are still scrubbed from public view. Even a sculpture based on those photos was removed from public viewing as too controversial.

It’s not like we don’t know these images exist. We saw them in live coverage on 9/11. Those who didn’t watch them then have heard about it. The media has decided that we’re too sensitive to see our own history. Even if you agree with their editorial decision, doesn’t it make you wonder what else they’re keeping from us?

Images of 9/11 jumpers underscored the horror of the day. Censorship doesn’t respect the dead. It whitewashes their agony.

The counterfactual argument, like airing ISIS snuff videos that might encourage the creation of more such imagery, is powerful. Even with such disgusting material, though, we should err on the side of the news and the public’s right to know. The alternative, the nanny media we have now, cannot be trusted and feeds into the demagogic framing of “fake news.”

(Ted Rall, the cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Francis: The People’s Pope.” You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

If Other Nations Mourned Like the U.S.

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Ted Rall

What if other countries mourned their national tragedies the way we do? The United States reads off the names of the dead during annual commemoration ceremonies and builds walls with names. Other countries have far bigger death counts, often due to us, but the scale of the carnage makes it impossible for them to wallow in such niceties.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Confessions of a Frequent Guest on Fox News

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Ted Rall

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“Report the news. Don’t become the news.” Not that Fox News has ever adhered strictly to boilerplate advice from Journalism 101, but the craziness on Sixth Avenue has come to a serious boil lately.

TV news elder statesman Ted Koppel called Sean Hannity “bad for America.” Sean freaked out and attacked Ted. Sean reportedly pulled a gun on fellow Foxer Juan Williams. Fox peeps reported it to management, who did nothing.

Bill O’Reilly and Fox paid $13 million to settle sexual harassment complaints filed by five women. Again, management knew — but stood by Bill. Advertisers are pulling out.

Last year Fox boss Roger Ailes was forced out in the aftermath of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Gretchen Carlson, who is now at MSNBC. Fox paid her $20 million and apologized. Julie Roginsky recently filed another suit against Ailes.

I’ve never worked at Fox. But I used to spend enough time there to gain insight into a dysfunctional organization.

This was during the years immediately following 9/11. George W. Bush and his wars were popular, especially with Fox viewers. And I went after Bush more aggressively than anyone else. So they were constantly begging me to come on as a liberal punching bag.

It became routine: Fox News popped up on caller ID. Would you like to come on The O’Reilly Factor/Hannity and Colmes/later just Hannity to talk about it? Why yes, I would. Bill or Sean would yell at me (as Alan silently cowered). I’d shoot back a volley of snark in hope that some of it would get through my deliberately tamped-down mic.

Going on Fox felt like going to war. These were the darkest days of the War on Terror: 2002, 2003 and 2004. Republicans were right-wing Republicans and so were Democrats. Someone had to stand up against wars of choice and legalized torture. Someone had to fight for the Bill of Rights. I was insulted (Hannity: “you have no soul”) and lied to (O’Reilly in response to my argument that the U.S. couldn’t win in Afghanistan: “I’ll bring you back to follow up”). But it was worth it. I’d take any opportunity to represent for the Left.

Lord knows the Democrats weren’t doing it.

Some of their tactics were risible. They were so extreme that, over time, no one to the left of Reagan would agree to appear on the network unless they’d never heard of it.

Ergonomic warfare, for example. My teetering armless guest seat was placed several inches lower so that, at 6’2″, I was forced to gaze up as O’Reilly lorded over his desk (which I couldn’t reach so as to rest my hands) from his comfy Aeron chair. A minute into O’Reilly’s oral arguments-style volley of hostile questions, it took most of my concentration not to roll backwards off the set.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but isn’t someone who takes the time to come to your studio, slap on pancake makeup and suck up a barrage of nasty questions and comments entitled to hospitality?

That said, I kind of liked Bill. He was cordial during breaks. Once, while one of my cartoons was provoking death threats (granted, mostly from Fox fans), he expressed genuine concern for my personal safety. Off-camera, he didn’t come off as an ideologue. I got the impression that he was in it for the money.

Hannity was a classic Long Island mook.

Unlike O’Reilly, the thick-necked Hannity followed me around the studio, trashtalking me with right-wing talking points while I searched for the restroom. “Save it for the show,” I advised him. What’s wrong with this guy? I thought. Give this to him: he’s for real. Hannity is a rabid culture warrior, a Goebbels for an America in free fall.

One episode turned me off Fox for good. Hannity’s producer invited me on to discuss a controversial “Doonesbury” cartoon. I was going to deliver my opinion and analysis as a political cartoonist, not talking about my own stuff. On the air, however, Hannity ambushed me instead with insults over a controversial cartoon I’d done months earlier about Pat Tillman, and which I’d already appeared on his program to defend.

I held up OK and kept my cool. But I was pissed. These appearances are discussed and agreed upon in detail: you’ll show the cover of my book at the beginning, you’ll identify me as “Syndicated Editorial Cartoonist,” you’ll be questioned about this and that. Switching to an entirely different subject violates the rules. At a well-run cable news network, punking a guest could lead to a warning or dismissal. Hannity’s crew just laughed.

Not long afterward, Sean’s producer called to apologize and begged me to return. I said I would if Sean would apologize on the air, the same medium where he’d tried to humiliate me. “He’s not likely to agree to that,” the producer said. I stayed home.
Two of my Foxiest memories took place in make-up.

A rushed make-up assistant accidently scraped my open eye. Years later, my left eye tears up in windy weather. Riding a bike, it runs full on. Stuff happens.

More startlingly, Sean entered the room while I was in the make-up chair. He didn’t trashtalk me or acknowledge my presence. My make-up artist was an undocumented worker. Sean knew. He told her that Fox was trying to determine how to pay her off the books and reassured her that they would figure it out.

As tempting as it would have been to expose the hypocrisy of a network and a personality who have raked in millions by spreading nativism and xenophobia, I didn’t go public for a simple reason. I didn’t want to strip an innocent hard-working person of her livelihood or, worse, subject her to possible deportation.

It was a confusing episode. Here was Sean Hannity, mega-mook, taking a risk by breaking the law to help an illegal immigrant. He almost seemed human. On the other hand, Fox News could easily afford to hire a U.S. citizen at a reasonable salary. There was more nuance in that minute-long conversation than in a year of Fox News broadcasts.

It was also revealing. Why would the top-rated channel in cable news break federal immigration law? The answer, it seems, is that Fox management didn’t think rules applied to them.

I’m still waiting to come back on O’Reilly to talk about Afghanistan.

(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form. You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.)

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