David Janes, friend and right-wing blogger, remixed the Tom Tomorrow comic (America: A Brief Parable) that I posted earlier and posted it to his blog, Ranting and Roaring:
He also writes:
Remember the Afghan invasion … the brutal Afghan winter? The millions of refugees that were going to spill out from that war? The hundreds of thousands of casualties? The graveyard of empires? The quagmire? Remember the Iraq invasion … the millions of refugees? The hundreds of thousands of casualties? The elite Iraqi guard? Being “bogged down” in sandstorms? The quagmire? Bush’s “Vietnam”? The tens of thousands of US casualties?
I know he’s speaking to the portion of the population that’s to his political left, but it might be worthwhile to answer his questions here.
The invasion of Afghanistan was, in my opinion, justified. There were definite connections between 9/11 and Al-Qaeda. 100% support there. Thumbs up. Peanut Butter Jelly Time.
The problems come up with the rest of the laundry list. Remember Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction? That the war would last weeks? That American troops would be greeted with flowers and candy?
That the insurgency was in its final throes? Or even why the invasion took place (is it WMDs, fomenting democracy or countering Islamic fundamentalist terrorism?)
(Now that the troops are there, I believe that immediate withdrawal or even short-term withdrawal is a baaad idea. It’ll probably send precisely the wrong message to anyone whose sympathies lie with Islamic terrorists or North Korea.)
How about some of those appointments so awful that even the most die-hard Bush sycophants called him on them? FEMA’s Michael Brown, who could barely coordinate an Arabian Horse society, never mind disaster relief? Or Harriet Miers, whose primary qualification was ass-kissing?
How about the War on Science, from “teach both (creationism and evolution) theories?” to its strange “Goofus and Gallant” approach?
Well, David, we’ll have to discuss this over beer sometime. Perhaps before Christmas, so we can exchange small tokens, which I suspect will be the bumper sticker shown below:
Click the image to go to the web page where you can buy such a sticker.
One reply on “David Janes’ Remix of “America: A Brief Parable””
Um, there *were* tens of thousands of civilians killed in each war (see iraqbodycount.org, for example). The fact that a lot of commentators asserted the contrary without bothering to cite any proof contradicting the evidence doesn’t change the facts on the ground. A stadium full of people could all shout “there were no civilian casualties!!” at the same time, and entire villages in Iraq and, yes, Afghanistan, would still be dead. And there are thousands of refugees and internally displaced people. Afghanistan continues to be ruled by brutal warlords (except for Kabul).