Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 03, 2013

There are ‘US Interests’ that need to get at the Lithium in them thar hills, and the gas and oil pipeline still to be built from the Caspian down toward the coast.The Empire has to have that country in full control for any of that to happen, din’tcha know?Even if it has to be empty of the tribes that happen to be there now… An old old story retold.

You would think we would have learned something from the USSR’s experience over there. Who knows, if it weren’t for the expense of that debacle, they might not have given up the idea of countering SDI so quickly.

The native Afghanistan army becomes more and more like our own Continental Army at the time of the American Revolution against the Brits.

The “graveyard of empires” proves to be the graveyard of the New American Empire. Compliments of Dubya Bush, Dick Cheney, Donny Rumsfeld, Dick Perle, Bob Kagen, Elliott Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Douggie Feith, Condi Rice, Scooter Libby, Billyboy Kristol, John John Bolton, etc., etc., etc.

But Jeff Redfern, self-seduced by megalomania, rescues everything with THE RED RASCAL.

And THE RED RASCAL seduces this doofus-in-the-NAVY-tee into following his own fey imagination off the mental cliff . . . .

Wannabe legend-in-his-own-mind wears a NAVY tee into LANDLOCKED land Afghanistan where no U.S. carrier fleet would ever dare to tread.

I thought we were leaving 30-40,000 behind.

Well, all this time I assumed Jeff thought that the Red Rascal was really real – himself!

We need a fictional response to the war. We’ll call it the Red Rascal Initiative. Just pull everybody back to a safe country that people here can’t tell from Afghanistan, show video of our kids shooting missiles every now and then, and say we’re winning. RRI will save tons of money.

Actually, i don’t think we went there to conquer the country; we were supposed to get OBL and leave. When W blew it (as he blew everything else), mission creep kept us there. Now the Talibs are saying our plan is to say we won and leave, as in VN. If they were smart, they’d keep their mouths shut and let us leave.Kip W, we don’t even need RRI. All we need is CGI.

I got asked a couple of times to write a book of my “adventures” in Special Forces. Truth ? my stint was FINE, probably a lot like everybody’s Army time. Dull except for the training.

Except no women in the outfit. Except for the ones who’d show up for the regular games of “Smile”.

The ‘write a book’ types really wanted the Red Rascal. I like truth myself, which is why I joined…

We “have the ultimate solution at [our] fingertips……….”

And IF we blow ‘em all away to paradise (Islamic), heaven (Christian), nirvana (Buddhist), other bodies (Hindu), Eden (Jewish), etc., THEN how do we know the Chinese or the Russians or the Indians or any people with this “ultimate solution”, ain’t gonna blow us away to all the same?

with over 800 bases around the world, why would we leave Afghanistan. after all, with only 325 golf courses, i’m sure they need one in Kabul or Herat or..

I know it’s from a few weeks ago, but TEXAS was ranked as the #1 state to do Business in, and CALIFORNIA was 50th!!We should withdraw from the Federal Union!

Once the Fed’s stop supporting the unemployed, California is going to see an exodus to the nice Republican Texas, Florida, Georiga, etc! You can’t afford Texas to leave, how else will you pay for all the entitlements?

I really enjoyed the early comments. Don’t ever make war in Afghanistan. You just can’t win.

“Any who refuse to leave their last body till they help others are extra special people.”

How many of these “extra special people” who were in “their last body” at ground zero in Hiroshima or Nagasaki at the final nanosecond got the chance to “refuse to leave their last body till they help others”?

I agree with Kaffeekup about Afghanistan, I thought the original mission was to get OBL. That has now been done, thanks to Prez Obama. The prez now wants us to leave in a responsible manner.

I guess Japanese Americans had a bone to pick with FDR too, since they were hauled off to those camps because of their race, a dark time in US history.

Bush 43 has real memories of his heroics in Vietnam ….

Bush 41 remembers being the youngest pilot in WW2 ….

John Wayne fought off a whole tribe of Apaches in the 1950’s …. Slyvester Stallone single handedly defeated the entire NVA army 30 years ago on another Hollywood set

on the other hand, John McCain DID have real experiences

Well, Bush 41 was in WW2. Bush 43 in Vietnam? Don’t think so.

Oh, yeah, Georgia. A cesspool of corruption under republican “leadership”….

The Indonesia reference went right over my head. Please explain.

Jeff actually admitted that he made things up? He’s always worked so hard to make people believe his stories are true and here he is admitting that he made it up. Unbelievable.

“Why would you ask such a question?”

It’s logical to probe an assertion logically.

SICK humor. If you ever spent any time with a wounded warrior who incurred a brain injury, you’d never consider writing a strip like this. The real and the unreal are often hard for some to figure out and there’s nothing funny about that. Imagine someone in your own family going through an experience like this and then maybe you won’t think what you wrote is funny, G.T. I can appreciate humor, even political humor, whether it falls in line with my politics or not. But weak humor about brain injury crosses the line. You really should be ashamed of yourself for this pathetic attempt at humor.