Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 05, 2010

Politics makes strange bedfellows.

While the comic is in Afghanistan, I hope we see a reprise of The Red Rascal, possibly the funniest moment in its long history.

OFF TOPIC!!!!!!!

I would love to hear what GT has to say about self proclaimed blockage runners bringing war material to a group of terrorist used to hiding in schools, hospitals and Mosques. The US blew ships out of the waters that ran the blockade of the South. Poor Hamas, they only fired 4,000 rockets at civilians. To think those mean old Israelis want to inspect cargoes.

I would love to hear what GT has to say about piracy and murder of unarmed civilians on a humanitarian mission in international waters. When it was the Achille Lauro that’s what it was called - piracy and murder. The rules do not change when it’s Israel breaking them!!!

Jews should know better than to act like their oppressors of 70 years ago. My grandfather who served at the Battle of the Bulge and my great uncle who was captured and put into a concentration camp are rolling in their graves.

Israel has turned Gaza into the new Warsaw Ghetto and the news is finally starting to get out what they are doing to the people there. They have bombed hospitals and schools and they refuse to let the Palestinians rebuild. The 1.5 million people living there are starving and don’t have clean water to drink. They have used white phosphorus as a chemical weapon against unarmed civilians. They have built apartment buildings on top of Arabian cemeteries. Nobody ever mentions the death toll from the supposed 4000 rockets from Gaza, but here’s a clue - more civilians died on the flotilla in that single day of piracy and murder.

It is time to force Israel to recognize a place for Palestinian Arabs as per it’s original charter. They are Semites too and even the very misuse of the term Anti-Semite as applying only to Jews tries to blot the Palestinian Arabs, who are ALSO Semites, out of existence. In word and in deed the world now knows who the real haters are.

No more US money or support for this vicious nonsense. No more propaganda or whitewashing of war crimes. Israel has to play by the same rules as everybody else on the planet. My family didn’t serve in WW II and work to set them free, only so that they could turn around and be the new tyrannical fascists of my generation. Of all people, they should know better!

Everyone has been so concerned that these guys would starve if they didn’t grow dope for a living. But I’ve applied my American Capitalist mind to the problem: They can make Muhammad dolls!

I checked. No one is doing it! The market is wide open. they could make a killing!

And they say we don’t understand them! I’ll call his young boy at once!

I even have an idea for a mobile version, The theme song has already been worked out by another group for us:

“I don’t need no Hoo-ver dam, Ed. Long as I got my plastic Muhammad. There on the dashboard of my car!!!”

Nothing a little American ingenuity can’t help out.

Which is exactly how they have stayed the way they are for over 5000 YEARS!!!

Ron,

Maybe they like it that way.

Randgrithr is right. We can’t have a double standard for Israel, USA or anyone else. We will lack credibility in the future which will put our own people at risk. Even John McCain used to understand that. Having humane standards for treatment of prisoners and enemies isn’t unamerican or unpatriotic in any way. This goes back to George Washington even after the tyrannical British had their way with us. In fact, it goes back even further than that. The USA is not the only country which enjoys freedom.

It would be interesting to know where all these people who are posting are coming from. Is this a national post for everyone who wants to comment on Doonesbury?

The Uclick Network,

Looks like it.

I have absolutely LOVED GT Doonesbury’s strip for I believe about 40 years. That is why I’m so surprised that he has not commented on the PIRACY and CRIMINAL acts done by the Israelies to enforce an INHUMANE criminal blokade in TREBLINK, I mean The WARSAW GHETTO, sorry I mean GAZA!!!! Just in case, I am a Catholic U.S. citizen who is appalled that BILLIONS of U.S. Tax Dollars are being used to MURDER unarmed Peace Activits in International waters!

International site, folks.

Lots of folks in Detroit think like Albert, too.

“This land is mine God gave this land to me.”

sorry, just reprising old movie themes and reading my Bible.

Actually Rand, the “oppressed” are using the tactics of the current “oppressors” which were developed in the ghettos. Those “terror” tactics got Israel their land and now the former occupants are using them to try to get them back.

Pales. had land set aside for them in “Transjordan” by the UN same as the Israelis had land set aside for them. Jordan never seems to be rushing in to offer any of that to ease the tension.

Funny how it was basically a wasteland when the Pals. had it and now it is indeed a Blooming economy providing about 1/4 of the food for Europe. Seems like someone blessed the land when it returned to the Israelis.

As freeholder says, it’s an international site, and 535 folks in Washington are of Akbari’s mind.

Like him, they’re just trying to build local trust (a.k.a. porkbarreling). “Have one of your aides call mine.”

C.I.A.::Akbari = President::Congress

Maybe GT isn’t commenting on some of the latest news because it lacks comedic value. No comedians commented on 9/11 right after 9/11.

What’s really interesting is the actual point of the cartoon is that Afghanistan, like most countries, does NOT place a national government above “local” rules and wisdom- exactly what the so-called “Federalists” and TEA Party folks claim they want here, while demanding Afghanistan and Iraq submit to a “National” government that WE create.

As to “our ways” respect, it might do well for the religious right (which is neither) and pro-Netanyahu nuts to recognize that ARAB PALESTINIANS were the majority and owners, of those certain middle east lands, for some 2,000 years, before a UN/US backed regime mostly of foreigners from eastern Europe and Russia, took over the land and called it “Israel”.

It is an INTRA-TRIBAL dispute between SEMITE factions- wow, same argument as in Iraq!

Since today’s posters would rather talk about Israel’s history than GT’s political allegory, here’s a biblical passage that anticipates the passive aggression of the Islamists last week:

“When the Moabite king saw that the war had gone against him, he took with him 700 men armed with swords to cut a way through to Syria, but the attempt failed.

Then he took his eldest son, who would have succeeded him, and sacrificed him atop the city wall.

There was such consternation among the Israelites that they struck camp and returned to their own land.”

(2 Kings 3:26–27. The king = Hamas, and his son = the nine killed on the flotilla)

The Turks can show Israel a thing or two by allowing for a Kurdish homeland, and admitting to the Armenian genocide.

Israel has resisted calling the Armenian atrocity a genocide, and Turkey can really stick it to Israel by admitting to it.

… and Arizona ought to start a counter boycott, by cutting off water and electrical power to CA.

Then the California National Guard can invade Arizona to take control of the power and water supplies…. <——- sarcasm….

palin drome,

Is Islamist a real word?

“Islamist” like “Islamism” was coined after 9/11 to distinguish militant jihad (a modern movement) from the Islam traditionally based on the Koran.

FriscoLou makes an obvious point. Who are the Turks to denounce Israel for “genocide”?

Right on, Teresa; but Havoc doesn’t have to pass the information along because Obama’s administration knows full well it’s in cahoots with Karzai.

Attempts to reach Afghan women have been dicey; see last week’s NYT article on our female marines:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/asia/30marines.html?scp=1&sq=female%20marine&st=cse

Maybe a year from now GT can do a strip with Havoc telling Akbari “So long, partner, you’re on your own.”

palin drome,

I wanted your take on “Islamist” etc. They’re basically nonsense propaganda terms, like “Viet Cong” and “welfare queen” were in earlier eras.

As for Akbari’s “young boy”… valet / bed partner might be a reasonable interpretation.

The New York Times article about the female marines all describes good initiatives; basically I would describe it as “1+1=2” or “duh” (i.e. is it not OBVIOUS?). Perhaps Americans could consult the Canadian military in Afghanistan, which has been working on this kind of thing for a while. We (Canadians) don’t look at it as aiming to win a war - we don’t consider that as what we’re there for - we want to improve things for Afghanis, and guess what? to do this we have to learn the language, the culture, etc.. and do things that would improve life from their point of view.

What I find frustrating is that, while women have a long way to go in Afg., they also still have a long way to go in the US. Hey guys, while you’re at it, how about passing the ERA?? The second part of the article shows that you need it!!

Yes, when I saw “young boy”, I too thought of “valet / bed partner”. sigh

ERA? That old thing?

Has anyone read the book “Three Cups of Tea”, by Greg Mortenson? This man got it into his head that what was needed was schools to educate girls and women (amazing!). I think it has been shown that this single thing increases a country’s prosperity, and lowers the birth rate.

Anyway, he dedicated his life from then on to work on this, in Pakistan and Afg. The book describes some of his work. To me, this kind of person is what I would call a hero.

Greg Mortenson was notably successful in some backward villages before the building of schools became a political weapon and the Taliban retaliated by blowing them up.

Nice observation on Akbari’s bedfellow, SuperGriz. At least from the time of Suleiman (16th c.), Moslem rulers have shared their beds with boys (I don’t know about the C.I.A.’s “girls”). GT can be very sly.

If “Islamist” is a propaganda label, it’s no less effective than the “Crusaders” label that our enemies fix on us.

Or for that matter, take GT’s stereotype of pedophile Muslim rulers. WE laugh at it, but Osama bin-Laden would dismiss it as Western propaganda.

Remember Achmadinejad’s reply when the students at Columbia asked how Iran treated its homosexuals? “We don’t have any,” he said–and seemed really bewildered by the laughter his answer provoked.

Women for babies, boys for se…………….

Palin Drome,

“Or for that matter, take GT’s stereotype of pedophile Muslim rulers.”

Not so stereotyped in some parts of Afghanistan

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/2010/04/manlove-thursdays-bouhammer-1.html

Bingo, SuperGriz; your link identifies the key ingredient of today’s cultural satire.

“Try to understand us, learn our ways” indeed!

You’ve got to admire how deftly GT punctures our eagerness to moralize politics, especially when we carry our righteous zeal abroad.

Ps. The observance of “Manlove Thursday” could provide GT with some pretty explosive material, should he dare link it with the debate over gays in the military.

Sorta reminds me of “dealing in the mountains” of SE Asia, not America.

Then again, the real Mu. had a very young girl as his last wife/bedfellow so he may have been more for equality than we’ve been led to believe?

When was the last time an Israeli suicide bomber blew up innocent bystanders?

Thank you, Lew, for making the point that Israel & Palestine are engaged in a civil war. Palestinians lived there for centuries before Israelis forced them off their land. Now, you point out that Palestine wants at least some of it back and that Israel considers those reasonable acts warlike & has its military shooting unarmed humanitarians.

Actually, Freeholder, Jordan was not for Palestinians, who already had their own country, Palestine, where Jews, Christians, & Muslims lived in peace & relative prosperity. Palestine was a thriving country unfortunately colonized by the British when the British turned it over to the Israelis, who drove out the Palestinians & have slaughtered thousands of them over the last sixty years with the help of the U.S. & the countries of western Europe.

I agree, FriscoLou, that Turkey hardly has clean hands in the matter of genocide (see the Armenians). Of course, the U.S. denounces genocide while it committed genocide on the Original Americans & kidnapped, killed, enslaved, & oppressed a million Africans.

stew bone,

Get a life. Or read a book… or something…