Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 17, 2010

GT ends this arc with a question mark. Who will sponsor the prison—-or maintain Iraq’s Department of Justice and its court system—-once we’re gone?

In Vietnam, the Viet Cong were capable of taking over the country. That’s what makes this war different. Who will bring authority to Iraq? Iran? Will we (or Israel) have to start a new war with them?

Why do you think that the prison buying a guard tower is in Iraq? Maybe neighboring Iran is bolstering their guarding of political dissidents.

You might remember that Iraq had prisons and a court system long before the first Gulf War. The Kingdom of Iraq was founded in 1932.

After the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam, or Vietcong, nominally governed South Vietnam for a time. In practice, the newly conquered territory was administered by the North Vietnamese army, or People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). North and South Vietnam merged on July 2, 1976, to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” - George Santayana

Also– “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” -–Aldous Huxley

pd,

After we leave, there will be a civil war, followed by peace accords, then an invasion of North Iraq, where the Kurds live, who will be subjected to an appalling ethnic cleansing.

Iraq will then be re-united, depending on Turkey’s actions.

The entire episode will be quickly forgotten.

All this sounds so ominous. And so likely.

And they lived happily ever after, like when Britain dissolved the empire.

Or when the USSR broke up, Lew. :-)

Get the guys out safely without our “allies” shooting them in the back. We don’t need any shots of choppers trying to get off hotel roofs with the bad guys knocking on the door. Not losing any more to this mistake would be the best news.

Of course, we still have oil to keep us there, so I can imagine we will always have a nice little Gitmo somewhere around the cracking plants.

Has anyone seen Joe? I haven’t seen him for a few days. Hope he’s ok …

Amazing how people can read a comic strip and instead of enjoying the message it conveys, jump on a political soapbox for debate.

itfbb, What do YOU think is GT’s message in this “withdrawal” arc?

Or maybe you could tell us how G makes you laugh at war and politics and the spectacle of “history repeating itself.” Can you analyze the nature of our repeating withdrawals a little more accurately than Sheik has done, with his false equation between Iraq’s elected government and the Viet Cong?

I’m afraid you’re going to find a “political soapbox” in any loyal Doonesbury forum. I recommend that you ignore it and stick to reporting what makes you laugh without trying to think about it.

Every contributor to a comic strip forum becomes comical. Choose your own style of clowning, but don’t act disdainful or contemptuous of your fellow clowns. That just turns you into a fool—-a clown who doesn’t know s/he’s a clown.

(The “Joe” mentioned in the next post has done a lot of clowning on Doonesbury without ever being contemptuous. Maybe we’ll hear from him again.)

Takiniteasy: Judge for yourself whether Joe is okay – Bargrove posted, in today’s “B.C.”:

“… I talked to Joe yesterday for a long time. (There are no short talks with Joe). He declares that someone lied to Gocomics about his mental health and got his account removed. I do not know what the rant that caused this was all about because it apparently has been all flagged. We seem to have bully commentors who love to poke sticks at old men and throw rocks just to see if they can stir up a rant. It is too bad that they can’t leave people alone and just skip comments they don’t like. But NO! Let’s scream at other people’s freedom to express themselves. These big mouths are known as the “rabid always right.” Too bad. Sorry Joe.”

That stinks. I hope to see Joe back again.

Palin Drome: That’s one of the best definitions of a fool I’ve ever seen – kudos.

@SHEIK: Your avatar is aging. Have you had a birthday recently?

Joe could go on and on sometimes, but I don’t think he was any more outrageous than other posters at times. I hope it wasn’t his religeous comments that got him thrown off. He seemed to be a lonely vet who needed to communicate with other people, and did it through GoComics.

Tariq Hilton

Joe got thrown off? When did this happen? How do you know it happened? He was certainly no worse than many others, as you say.

After the rough week he’s had, I’ll bet Obama wishes Iraq could follow Bush-Cheney down the memory hole, as it has already done in the fantasies of BrianCook and the rest of you neo-libs who seek to rewrite history. But Obama, as GT well knows, has to think of the political/historical future and can’t afford our luxury of comic-strip denial. History that repeats is still history and we have to live through it, no matter how much we divert ourselves with Doonesbury.

palin drome,, I do not wish to rewrite history. I would like only the truth be known. Thanks.

Justice, That’s because you are a true historian and you know that history can be tragic. The neo-libs avert their eyes from tragedy—-they’re always after comic (Doonesbury) relief.

They also tend to view the future overoptimistically, rather like BP drilling for oil. Old liberals like GT are more wary of reinterpreting historical reality and of predicting our likely political future.

Hey Joe - sorry to read gocomics shut down your account. I don’t remember seeing any comment where you weren’t respectful of another. Don’t let the “bullies” win - just change the name of your avatar a little & re-enlist!

Palin drome, your first post here is really strange. Iraq was handling its own internal affairs fine without our help, before we started a war with them. You even brought in Iran into the mix, unexplicably. And then topped it off by suggesting we go to war with them again. A good dose of noninterventionism and mind-your-own-business would do you good. We’re not nearly as needed as we think.

By way of clarifying my last exchange with Justice, here’s a fantasy dialogue. I let it run on pretty long, so you may want to skip it.

OBAMA. The last administration took its eye off the ball when it changed its objective from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan to Saddam and Iraq. No doubt our dependence on Arab oil made the administration anxious to stabilize our Middle Eastern supplies.

NEOLIB. That’s right. By 2002, once we’d gotten revenge for 9/11 (revenge is rationally defined as a body count of 3,000 Muslims), we should have brought home all our troops and put them to work producing renewable energy so we could wean ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil.

OBAMA. That’s what I’m trying to do now, more than seven-and-a-half years after Bush got the go-ahead from the U.N. to put 150,000 troops in Iraq. But it’s not easy to clean up the mess our invasion has caused, and it may not be possible to withdraw all our troops. I’m sorry now that I ridiculed McCain for suggesting we’ll be in Iraq for another fifty years, just as we’ve had to stay in Korea.

NEOLIB. Put Bush and Cheney on trial for war crimes.

OBAMA. That would be folly. Think how many of their advisers would be implicated—-including some who are now in my own administration. I spoke out against the war in 2002, but what about those who voted for the invasion? What about Hillary and John Kerry, or Colin Powell? We don’t want them subpoenaed.

NEOLIB. Just make a scapegoat of George Tenet, who provided CIA cover for the lie about WMDs.

OBAMA. There’s still a problem with this trial. Let’s imagine that Eric Holder succeeds in prosecuting his own predecessors—-the lawyers who wrote the torture memos, the officers who implemented the memos at Abu Ghraib, Rumsfeld, everyone who carried out B-C’s policies. Let’s even suppose we get a verdict of treason.

As a lawyer, I have to worry about what kind of precedent this trial might establish. I won’t always enjoy the immunity of my office. Ten years from now, am I going to be arraigned for fiscal negligence because the Treasury goes bankrupt? And why stop with B-C’s and my derelictions alone? Some are still alive who want to put Truman on trial posthumously for his war crime of using A-bombs. Even living presidents innocent of war crimes might have to answer for crimes against private citizens. Clinton might have to pay Paula Jones, or indemnify the estate of Vince Foster. Every child left behind could join in a class action suit against Bush.

NEOLIB. You don’t have to worry about setting a precedent. Holder can narrow the indictment so that it covers only our living Republican presidents and vice-presidents who acted stupidly.

OBAMA. Okay, so let’s say we get a verdict and the jury decides that B-C wrongfully led us into a war which a deluded majority supported by returning Bush to office in 2004. When this trial has shown how B-C played them for fools, will the majority of Americans be willing to confess their mistake and punish their deceitful leaders by confining them for life to a quail-hunting preserve in Crawford, TX?

NEOLIB. Why not? Just remember to give Cheney a lifetime supply of shotgun cartridges. But then America should also apologize to the world, and to Muslim countries in particular, for this wrongful invasion.

OBAMA. Apologize to Iran and Turkey and Pakistan as well as to the Arabs? What about the Kurds, whom we freed by our invasion?

NEOLIB. I’m only telling you how to clean up B-C’s mess. If you make a new mess, that’s your own lookout. As Commentator says (above), we can always go back to our pre-WWII policy of nonintervention.

OBAMA. We can? I wonder why Hillary and Petraeus and Jones haven’t suggested that. Ask Commentator to apply for a job with my NSC. He can be put in charge of rewriting history and can recount how we destroyed the just and peaceful state the Iraqis enjoyed during the palmy 80s and 90s under Saddam. And he can record how Clinton’s nonintervention in Muslim countries saved Bosnia while it wiped out a third of the Bosnians and exposed us to 9/11.

I wish my parents hadn’t given me the middle name of Hussein. Do you suppose they foresaw that my presidency would be bedeviled by these Islamists, who seem bent on intervening EVERYWHERE?

Ahhh, neo-lib. Again the neo-cons can’t come up with even a new way to portray their “enemy.” Just rehash the oldest jibe they can and throw it out there and their clan will think the chum is real live fish.

“Sigh.”

Charlie Brown Peanuts (Oldest viable comic response)

if you google joe (puppy), you’ll see that he gets around and comments on many sites…

pallin drome

you are better than this fantasy (normally refered as a strawman) where you “WIN” a discussion by putting an extreme position forward inorder to have your postion succeed. Way too much political discussion in this country has devolved to this level.

SCAATY_423,

If you talk to Joe again, please tell him that although I did not always agree with him, I don’t think he should have been removed. Some of his comments about being in Viet Nam and other service for the country were of interest to me. I want to thank him for serving! I would like to see him back again!!!!!!!

edit: I think I misread your post the first time! I’m going to BC to post the above message.

We can also contact the moderators on Joe’s behalf; since he’s been fired, it shouldn’t hurt, maybe help. I always found Joe to be honest and often interesting (even in his ObviousMan cape), if a bit long-winded at times.

As to the other discussion above; what would you give to read the contents of the envelope Obama is said to have found on the desk in the Oval Office on his first day, addressed “To #44, From #43”?

I have to wonder if it might have been some of the answers (and updates) to the questions raised by Bill Moyers in 1987 about the Secret Government, ever since 1947.

Maybe it’s not too late to clean up that mess with a BIG dose of sunlight, before we have to invoke the second part of the second paragraph of The Declaration of Independence, that most seditious of documents. That won’t be a pretty fight.