Posted a week after the terrorist attack on 9-11, this cartoon turned out to be one of my most popular and connected me with many of the political cartoonists I admired and remain friends with to this day. It also sparked some controversy that flares up every so often, although I don’t think it ever went totally viral. Probably the most attention it received was from Instapundit back in 2002 (where I was briefly confused with Michael Moore, amusingly enough), which prompted a conversation on the old TCJ Message Boards, which drew the attention of cartoonist Ted Rall, who eventually interviewed me for Attitude II: The New Subversive Alternative Cartoonists.
Like many of the cartoons I am archiving here, this one lived on the Internet for many years until I ran into many problems with maintaining the old website until I eventually abandoned it in frustration. (I regret it now. The old URL is now owned by pornographers, as I should have predicted.) Nonetheless, every so often someone mentions it to me as one of their favorites or as another example of the kind of “false equivalency” that Instapundit objected to. It depends on how you read this cartoon, I think. I used the perspective of people on the ground for both scenes, emphasizing an empathetic point-of-view. Looking back, I think my fears that retaliation would incur more death and destruction for innocent people turned out to be pretty accurate, and I take no pride in that. Twenty-plus years later I don’t think we have learned anything from out mistakes and we are going to keep making them.
