Fraters Libertas

Speaking Truth to Cartoons

Joe from Brooklyn Park takes exception to an animated editorial broadside against the US military in yesterday's Star Tribune:

Regarding the cartoon on the Strib editorial page yesterday that showed Bush defending the military response to Katrina - the closing balloon had Bush saying: "There are more than enough troops to screw up both places" - the other being Iraq.

This is not only beyond insulting to the troops, but just plain ignorant. If anyone transitions well from providing humanitarian aid to killing bad guys with utter lethality, it's the U.S. military (and the Bay Ridge faction of the Gambinos, who ran my old neighborhood). I still recall Marine Commandant Krulak's comments about fictitious three-block city that he envisioned. In one block, his Marines had to kill bad guys; in the next block they had to care for refugees; in the third block they had to separate warring factions with a centuries-old hatred for one another. And they had to do all equally well.

He also sent young officers from the Basic School and the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab at Quantico to the NY Mercantile Exchange to watch commodities traders and learn how they made split-second decisions based upon the information available.

Sure, those Marines have their challenges. But have they ever tried to incorporate hoary liberal clichés into little cartoons four times a week for the amusement of aging hippies and radical wannabes? Didn't think so! Until they do, they can just shut their cartoon chicken hawk traps!

UPDATE: Mitch Berg has more:

Steven Ambrose once noted that throughout world history, a squad of teenagers with weapons - whether they were hoplites, legionairies, knight's retainers, bashi-bazouks, vikings, redcoats billyanks, or Russian, German or Japanese soldiers - was always something the innocent bystanders had to fear; rapine and pillage travelled with them. The US soldier has always been the exception, never more so than today, when the "bystander" might be a thug with an IED. Many of the world's armies throughout history would have solved that problem by mowing down the whole crowd to get to the muj and avoid getting hurt.

But again, no matter. It's not about history to the cartoonist. Iraq, goes the conventional wisdumb, is a quagmire. So is New Orleans. What do they have in common? Chimpy McBushiitlerburton!