Okay, this one may be a reach. I wanted somehow to relate two unrelated events with the idea that the eco-terror we inflict on ourselves is as dangerous (probably far more so, in fact) than anything terrorists can do to us. I’ve looked at this cartoon about a dozen times in the last 12 hours, and six times I’ve thought it was brilliant and the other six really dumb. What the heck. It’s already drawn. I might as well post it.
Hypocrisy is nothing new in politics, and neither side has a monopoly. That said, former vice president Dick Cheney is taking it to a whole new level with his constant attacks on the Obama administration’s conduct of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the handling of terror cases. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that any criticism of the Bush/Cheney administration was undermining the morale of the troops, giving aid and comfort to then enemy and emboldening the terrorists. The word “treason” was even whispered in certain conservative circles. I won’t even go into the long-standing tradition of previous administrations not criticizing the current one, especially in wartime. That rule no longer applies, either. I’m left to conclude that the Republicans will do and say anything to undermine any Democratic administration, no matter what the cost to the nation.
Yet another take on air safety. Short of strip- and cavity-searching every passenger and hand searching every piece of luggage, I have no idea how you make air travel perfectly safe from terrorists, and neither does anyone else, especially the people in charge of actually trying to make it safe. Their bureaucratic approach so far has made air travel, once so simple, an inconvenient trial at best and a nightmare of delay and inefficiency at worst. It’s impossible to know if all these security measures have actually made us any safer, but I doubt it.
I was going through some old cartoons, looking for work to include in an upcoming show of my work, when I ran across this one from 2006. I thought at the time that exploding underwear was both a funny line and bizarre enough that it was unlikely ever to be a real threat. In a world as crazy as ours, that’s the kind of assumption a satirist should never make. Last week, sure enough, Umar Farouk Abdulmatallab, a Nigerian with al Qaeda links, tried to bring down a plane with explosives hidden in his underwear. Here’s the cartoon. Weird.
Finally, the 9/11 conspirators are going to have their day in court. What an uproar has been unleashed by Attorney general Eric Holder’s decision to allow Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his followers to be tried in a civilian court in the United States. The very idea that we at long last are returning to a bedrock American tradition–a trial by jury–in the prosecution of the alleged criminals who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon has Obama’s critics foaming at the mouth. It will endanger the citizens of New York, it will be a recruiting tool for al Qaeda, these guys are warriors who don’t deserve a civilian trial, what if they’re acquitted?–and on and on.
I’d like to believe that most of these arguments are purely political, that if the Democrats were arguing against giving these men a fair trial, they would be accused of not having faith in the American system of justice. I’d like to believe that, and not that the Republicans have lost their moorings in the war on terror and their relentless campaign of fear-mongering. One thing is certain: torture will come up in these trials, and the Bush administration and their Congressional enablers will be embarrassed once again. In the end, though, most of the world will admire an America that has regained the courage to live up to its principles. The ones who hate us and our way of life will be unmoved, no matter what we do. Let the trials begin.
