Where the cartoon of the previous week had satirized the role of US media in propagandizing the invasion of Iraq, this cartoon looks inward at what role that I, a humble cartoonist, can play in opposing it. Prior to 9/11 I had a detached approach to political cartooning: poke holes in conventional wisdom, draw funny caricatures of politicians and popular figures, and try to say something intelligent with a joke. After 9/11 my anger and dismay brought out the activist in me. The original approach became more pointed, more angry, and more determined to fight against war, corporations, official lies, imperialism, and so on. As a student of past political cartoonists, I was struck by how World War II had united left wing, liberal and conservative cartoonists against fascism and the Axis Powers. Captain America was not the only cartoon character to punch out Hitler — Daffy Duck and Donald Duck took their shots — but to me it was the most iconic. And it was all so simple. At least in retrospect.
Since then, WWII has been the well pro-war propaganda returns to again and again. It was no slip of the tongue when George HW Bush declared that Saddam Hussein was “worse than Hitler.” David Frum knew exactly what he was doing when he wrote the “Axis of Evil” speech for George W Bush. To oppose US militarism during the Persian Gulf War and the 2003 Invasion was to inevitably provoke the accusation of “supporting Saddam.” This rhetoric is designed to short circuit critical thinking.
It was in fact quite possible for Saddam Hussein to have been a monstrous dictator and simultaneously for the US-British Invasion of Iraq to have been a violation of international law, a war crime, and built on a web of lies to obscure the capitalist opportunism motivating it. To acknowledge both would have required a different course of action than what the US and Britain chose to pursue, and certainly not one as profitable to Halliburton.
Man, I am still salty about it after all these years.
