Above is the Doonesbury cartoon that ran this past Sunday. What’s different about it from previous Memorial Day Doonesbury ‘toons?
Well, in 2004, a new tradition began to “honor” Memorial Day and the recently fallen:
Cartoonist Garry B. Trudeau on Memorial Day will devote his comic strip “Doonesbury” to listing U.S. military personnel who have been killed during the war in Iraq.
More than 700 names will appear in tiny type over six panels in the Sunday strip. A note beneath the final panel will say, “List as of April 23, 2004
Comic strip historians say it is the first time such a eulogy has been presented in the comics, and it echoes the war dead roll call Ted Koppel delivered April 30 on ABC’s “Nightline.”
“This is the only time I can think of this happening in the comics,” said M. Thomas Inge, author of “Comics as Culture.” “Every D-Day, Charles Schulz did a special drawing in ‘Peanuts,’ but nothing like this.”
Apparently in 2009, both traditions have been scrapped.
I have a question for Garry Trudeau, creator of Doonesbury.
I have the same question for the producers of ABC’s Nightline.
This Memorial Day, Trudeau didn’t devote his comic strip to listing the names of the war dead.
Ted Koppel used to read the names of the dead and show their photos on a special Memorial Day Nightline. That didn’t happen this year.
Was Memorial Day 2009 met with any sort of statements like those?
I don’t think so.
Why is that?
Said Trudeau when he began his yearly “tribute” to those killed in Iraq:
“It’s not exactly a secret that I opposed this war,” he writes in an e-mail interview with the Globe. “Anyone who reads the strip knows that. But it’s no contradiction to want to honor the warriors who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in our names.”
I didn’t know that the war on terror Overseas Contingency Operations ended on Bush’s watch. I didn’t know our troops are no longer in theater in Iraq.
72 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq, by my count, since President Obama took the oath of office. Did you “honor the warriors who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice in our names” this year, since it’s the same in-theater conflict as 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, and 2003? Between now and next Memorial Day, combat troops will still be in theater (and don’t kid yourself about the “all combat troops” will be out by August of 2010).
I question whether Trudeau (or ABC and Ted Koppel) truly wanted to honor the fallen so much as score political points with a political statement.
I’m not criticizing him for being an anti-war liberal critic of the war. I’m criticizing him for being inconsistent in his opposition and disingenuous in his reasoning.
In general, this is the way I see it: Anti-war/anti-peace liberals want America to see flag-draped coffins because they want to “take the fight out of us”; to demoralize America’s resolve by saying, “See how awful war is? Bring them home now!”
Anti-war conservatives (I don’t think I like war anymore than anti-war activists) like myself don’t mind seeing flag-draped coffins because I don’t see victims. I see heroes. I see warriors who made the ultimate sacrifice for a cause greater than self.
Opposition to the war was not about principle and patriotism. It was about partisanship. Even before 9/11, Trudeau had it in for Dubbya (they knew each other back in Yale).
A little honesty, please?
Hat tip: Freedom Eden
A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
WS, what the heck is your point! Doonesbury and Nightline… the casualty list is now in the thousands… what do we just list “last year”s dead? This is nuts. ALL THE FALLEN IN THIS WAR SHOULD RECEIVE PROPER MENTION. I might be missing your point, but so far it is not connecting with me.
Yup. Try again.
Try again… you are really flip with this subject WS, and even though we have disagreed, agreed and in between, I have always respected your positions…. this I do not respect at all.
I hate numbers, as they do not represent the totality of lives effected, but thus far there have been 4301 KIA’s in Iraq, and 690 in Afg (and apologies by using numbers). I would love to see their names on every single newspaper and in the “scroll” on every TV channel to remind people we are at F-in war! Instead you post b- about what? Why the heck don’t you post their names????????! Are you voiceless? Speak up, instead of your being smug! with “try again”
Where did I say hit the reset button on the numbers?
Reread my post and try to understand my point; or continue working yourself up.
I’m going to bed.
Go to bed WS and reread that post when you are fresh. And yeah, I am worked up.
blast, I think the point you may be missing is that it was only important for Trudeau and Koppel/Nightline to carry on the tradition to “honor the dead” with such emphasis while George W. Bush was in office.
Now that Obama is in office, no one wants to hear or read their names anymore, despite all theatres still being active.
This means their attempts to “honor” were really a tool of political expediency. They did not honor our warriors… they were “using” them for their political agenda.
Who is no one? I want to hear their names Mata. And I looked up Ted Koppel, and he has not been doing Nightline since 2005, I have no idea when “Dooonsbury” last posted names of the dead heros, but I am guessing it was April 2004 as mentioned, which brings me to what the heck is this all about. Honor our fallen, not USE them. If Koppel and Doonsbury was using them before, then what the heck is this post about? It just ticks me off.
Let FA post all of the name of the fallen…………! Lets honor our dead! They gave the last measure of their devotion. Let their names continue to be part of our lives every day, lest we forget what sacrifice they and their loved ones have given. I don’t believe WS is about disrespecting our fallen, far from that… but when we invoke their honor, let us honor them.
If I were to just place a “*” here for each name, it would cause FA readers to page down several times just to see the stars… it is all too much.
You’re off on a tangent, blast. Slow down. Word’s post was about Doonesbury and Nightline making this event an annual occurence on Memorial… from 2004 on thru every year of Bush’s Presidency.
Now that Obama’s President, they don’t seem to want to make it an annual occurence anymore. My “no one” was rhetorical of the two and their “tradition”, plus their readers who evidently have not protested the ending of the “tribute”. Get the point?
You will find some of the most devoted admirers and supporters of the military here on FA. .. active, and our fallen. Quite simply, you have mistaken Wordsmith’s point in his post, and taken it to an extreme that bears no relationship to the subject. And I, too, am done here.
He must have woke up and said damn, how can I do this to ZERO.
Well I’ll pick the thread up and add this:
Trudeau and Nightline haven’t run the names of the honored dead from the WTC, PA, and the Pentagon in a while, if ever. Why? They are why we fight. The images of that day are the most powerful reminders of why we fight, but you hardly see them in the MSM now. When the Bush Administration wanted to remind Americans of the act that forced us to finally fight back in a war that had been waged against us for years preceding 9-11 there was no end of criticism from the left that images from that tragic day were gratuitous and aimed at fueling the war.
These same voices opposed to showing the towers crumbling, scattered debris, or the Pentagon in flames clamored for images of flag draped coffins, portrait photos of service members killed in combat or through accidents and illness. By the way your KIA figures are incorrect. Check your numbers against the KIA column in this DoD website document:
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf
As for the troops, if Trudeau cares about the fallen enough to mention their names at all, why stop?
I ask, just as others here have asked, what is different today than several years ago?
My answer to that question is to suggest to you that the supporters of the current administration are not eager to remind Americans that war still rages on and that there is a cost in human lives that mounts with each passing day. Death and destruction are the unpleasant reality of any war, including the one so many Obama supporters believed their candidate would end. Each mention of a fatality is another reminder of a campaign promise delayed.
And a final point about Trudeau is that he learned from the last anti-war campaign he helped wage – during the Vietnam War – that trashing the troops is tantamount to political suicide once the dust settles and the other side of the COIN, so to speak, is better understood. I would suggest to you that Trudeau’s tribute is disingenuous and that is the same point that Wordsmith is making and that Mata Harley is trying to reinforce for you.
I can’t tell you. HAH!
Yet more proof that opposition to the war in Iraq was just opposition to Bush.
Bush is gone=opposition is gone.
Partisanship before patriotism
When people complain that Rush Limbaugh said he wanted Obama’s policies to fail, it’s completely ironic that many of those who were shocked by such a statement were the same people-like Trudeau-who wanted Bush’s policies to fail, who opposed success in the Iraq War until Bush was gone. Then they fell silent and expect others to do what they lacked the mettle to do: support a President’s efforts to succeed.
Blast, not very smart, are you?
Word, you’re exactly right. It’s all about the Unicorns now…
some things just piss me off, the bias of the press has cost some of those lives, when will they say that, oh I forgot, they do not give a damn about the soldiers.
Its the same old BS, and no one in the MSM will call them on it. Fox needs to do a special about how the same voices that wailed and cried for 8 years about the dead are now silent and dark.
Mata,
Thanks for clairfying. I started second-guessing that maybe I wasn’t clear, and others might (mis)interpret my reasoning as blast did.
@blast #7:
Stupid of me. I knew that! But in reading and citing from Freedom Eden, I didn’t really think about it; nor research whether or not Nightline has in fact carried on the tradition post-Koppel. I tune in rarely, these days. So shame on me for not verifying the facts in my post.
In 2004, ABC and Nightline were criticized for airing The Fallen around sweeps week rather than Memorial Day (“But we felt that the impact would actually be greater on a day when the entire nation is not focused on war dead”, Koppel said. Um….isn’t Memorial Day the perfect time to focus on the war dead?). So in 2005, ABC aired their Fallen program on Memorial Day.
But no political agenda? I dunno…
Exactly what was this impact they speak of?
Which is exactly the charge I’m making toward Nightline and Doonesbury: I question whether or not they are honoring the fallen, or merely using them to make a political statement. Nightline is arguably less clear; but Trudeau makes no apologetic secret about where he stands. I just find it hard to believe that his decision to print the names of the fallen in wake of Nightline’s controversial airing in ’04, wasn’t a politically motivated decision, but an anti-war liberal’s method of “honoring” the troops: by ending the war.
Maybe you have a point, though, blast: I don’t know that Doonesbury has made it a tradition each Memorial Day since 2004, to list the names of the fallen. So I might very well have egg on my face (I likes mine scrambled!). I was knee-jerking to reading Freedom Eden’s post.
@tfhr:
I’m a little slow, but all I see are cumulative numbers.
Here’s where I got my numbers.
January (since Obama taking office): 8
February: 17
March: 9
April: 19
May: 20 (one up from my count last night)
2004:
2005:
2006:
2007:
and a departure in 2008:
I guess the last one kinda blows a chunk in my theory; although this is the same cartoonist that was so rah rah Obama, he was making Obama victory cartoons before the Election.
And in 2008, with the turn in a positive trend, news coverage of Iraq waned, didn’t it? If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.
And yes, I’m not above using troops to make a political point of my own.
@Wordsmith:
Nope.
No egg on your face.
Doonesbury was consistent all the way through 2007.
Trudeau was on sabbatical in 2008. I would guess that would be the reason for the departure.
I do wonder why 2009 was different though…..
Actually I don’t wonder that at all. It’s pretty clear.
Wordsmith,
Your post was crystal clear from the start. Trudolopulas and Koppal-putamus were both using our heros to attack and criticize Bush and his policies. The ‘change” in their modus is a perfect example of how the left-ward idiots could give a rat’s ass about our fallen souls. Blast just needs some more popcorn and another shot of kool-aid.
MSM and Obamabots says….
“War? What war? Casualties? Bad press???? HUH????”
“We’re too busy adoring THE ONE.” Besides, we’re jet setting in Europe right now watching film festivals and the French Open.”
“Please leave a message after the beep……BEEP!!!!”
Over 117 Afghanistani civilians were killed by mistake in the Herat area of western Afghanistan last month . A terrible tragedy due to human error. This happened on President Obama’s watch. Candidate Obama went to great lengths to say that U.S. military was bombing civilians during the campaign. Where is the outrage from the left that would have surely been Front and center in the MSM for weeks if it had happened during President George Bush’s term in office. A double standard? You betcha!
@Aye Chihuahua:
Thanks, Aye.
Lol at comment #22
@Rovin:
It’s just representative of why someone like Cindy Sheehan gets national media attention while a Gold Star father like Mark Crowley is unheard of.
Sorry to be joining this thread late, but two points: as far as I can find, Koppel only ran his “The Fallen” series in 2004 and 2005; so there’s no obvious agenda there. You may be right that Koppel is doing this out of a political agenda, but my policy is – if the same exact statement were made by an individual you support (let’s say, Oliver North read the names on his show on Fox) and you would defend it, then there has to be some pretty compelling counter-evidence to now attack it.
As for Trudeau, isn’t that cartoon explicitly making the point that agency personnel should be remembered in the same way the troops have been in previous years, but cannot? To me this seems consistent with the previous years of highlighting fallen service members.
@Wordsmith:
Wordsmith,
You’ve done an excellent job making the point here and the back-up by Aye Chihuahua slams the door on any doubt. (Cartoonist on “sabbatical” – that’s a bigger laugh than most of Trudeau’s comics themselves. It wouldn’t surprise me if Trudeau spent his vacation licking something for Obama – could be envelops, could have been something else.)
My comments about the numbers was specifically directed at blast’s KIA figures, not the total you mentioned as you did not make a distinction between hostile fire deaths and deaths due to accidents, illness, etc. The numbers blast used also include non-combat deaths (As do the figures from iCasualites). Please understand that these totals are not strictly KIA. That was my point and it was not made to bash blast, just to set the record straight because we are frequently treated to erroneous reporting from various media sources on matters that really do make a difference. I don’t believe blast meant to distort the figures and whether iCasualites has a hidden agenda or not, I don’t know or care, but it would be best if they made a clear distinction for the sole sake of being accurate.
Does anyone even read Doonesbury anymore, now that the newspapers are devoting less space to comics, and indeed, kids are online now rather than reading print?
Though at times I’ve enjoyed some of his characters, I’ve always found mixed messages, as well as some pretty hoary stereotypes in much of his work. His work as been so partisan, it’s impossible to separate his politics from his intent. He takes a lot more time to say (and not always successfully) what he means than the late Paul Conrad or the current Dave Granlund. In column space, Garry Trudeau is very indulged.
I don’t think we need his statement:
“It’s not exactly a secret that I opposed this war,” .
I mean, who cares? The focus should be on the men and women who served in this war and all others. Just put the names up, draw the cartoon, and end it there. There’s no need for interviews if the message you’re conveying is clear.
But obviously, this wasn’t the case. Hence, the frosting on the cake. This was a political piece through and through.
It is as if the MSM has had a lobotomy and has forgotten all of their anti war, anti gitmo, talking points since the big o has come to power.
@Buffalobob:
Not “As if….”, but as in a complete removal of the entire walnut. If there had only been some objective journalism available to fill the void….
tfhr, you are correct on the casualty figures, I should have used the term casualty instead of KIA, since of course not all the deaths were combat related. However, drowning in your tank when you drive off a bridge or have some other form of accident is related to the ops don’t count as KIA but as “non hostile”. No doubt given the large number of people serving, some might have died from illnesses and disease, but I suspect most of the casualties (deaths) were related to being there and serving our country.
I hope Doonsbury will continue his effort to memorialize the names of the fallen. I could careless about his politics, but I do appreciate the respectful manner in which he presented their names. I never saw the Nightline thing, nor before this post ever knew about the Doonsbury memorial. I will be printing out the Doonsbury strips from this post.
@blast:
I have to correct this:
“…but I suspect most of the casualties (deaths) were related to being there and serving our country”.
No, every casualty and illness is related to serving the country and that includes the young Marine killed in a motorcycle crash in San Diego, the soldier that died in a drowning in Germany or the sailor, airman, or Coastie that passed away for any other reason you can imagine anywhere around the globe. They all serve our country and deserve better than to be “memorialized” in some snarky, 1960’s throw back comic strip that serves the agenda of its partisan artist. And you know it.
um…. it’s a cartoon.
And we don’t have to call attention to the men and women in uniform who give there lives so much now, as we finally have a leader who gives a shit about them.
Get a clue.
excellent point, Wordsmith. The Left can’t be against a war when THEIR guy’s in and, by the way, their guy’s executing the war the same way that guy he detested did. And then this same guy bemoans how many terrorists that war made but then thinks they’ll like us more if he released memos and pictures. He got his way on the photos;’ the Right thinks he’s a hero for having changed his mind but the word today is “the pictures are so terrible, showing sexual abuse, that it’s a good thing they’re not being released.” Ya, that helps calm the terrorists down. Obama always gets it both ways.
As far as ‘giving a shit about them’, catch the tepid applause when obama speaks…and the amazing cheering when the supposedly hated Bush did. Remarkable difference.
We ALL honor our fallen and it’s sad that reading their names or writing them in strips apparently became a slam on them; so many of them believed in the cause as witnessed by the many who are hurt and want to go back. Amazing men shouldn’t be insulted
@Troy:
Troy,
I’ve deployed for Clinton and Bush II but I didn’t get the impression that either didn’t give a shit about us, as you put it. So what are you talking about?
Also, Z has made a good point alluding to the fact that President Obama has not changed the way in which we fight. So what are you talking about?
Go to bed WS and reread that post when you are fresh. And yeah, I am worked up.
When you calm down, blast, maybe you could give it another try. I just came by, I don’t have a lengthy history with the site — I drop in from time to time — and I got the point pretty much instantly.
“Anti-war conservatives (I don’t think I like war anymore than anti-war activists) like myself don’t mind seeing flag-draped coffins because I don’t see victims. I see heroes. I see warriors who made the ultimate sacrifice for a cause greater than self.”
That seems like it might be worded a wee bit better. “don’t mind” comes across as indifference, which I sincerely doubt is the case. I offer General Patton’s version: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.“
Anyone who claims to not understand the original post is either lacking in mental capacity or is insincere. I am loath to call anyone an idiot. I figure that idiots will demonstrate their lack of capacity well enough on their own without any help from me.
I will give Blast the benefit of the doubt and assume that he or she is of at least average intelligence. That leaves me only with the conclusion that Blast is simply not sincere. A pretense of incomprehension is a childish and dishonest rhetorical tool.
The original post is excellent and telling. It speaks very well for itself.
As for the scatologically interested Troy, I can only agree. We do now have a leader who gives a s**t about our troops. He gives the same for the rest of us, and no more. For him it is not about people, it is about concepts like “social justice”, however that is defined.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” – George S. Patton
If someone is going to read the names of our fallen troops, then do it with the respect that those heroes deserve.
Cortillaen and Bildo,
I had used that Patton quote at the beginning of the Memorial Video I made for last weekend:
Liberals are gutless. If you gouged their kid’s eyeball out with a fork, they still wouldn’t see that as sufficient reason to attack you.
In that same vein, just because an able-bodied red-blooded American wants to fight for his country, he’s really just brainwashed and too stupid to know he’s being used by “chickenhawks.” (Funny term, ain’t it? I guess that, since I’m not a mechanic, I shouldn’t have any opinion on how my car gets fixed, either.)
I have the feeling that yellow-bellied mentality has been around for a lot longer than the USA, and I suspect it won’t be going anywhere too soon. We will always have these pansies who absolutely WOULDN’T take a fight to somebody else, no matter if they were going to burn their house down. Because violence never solved anything, right lib’s?
It’s always easier to sit around and nay-say. The real men get up and do what they need to do.
I saw a Korean War vet yesterday. My wife said I looked like I was going to cry. I was honored to be in such a man’s presence, but I’d spit on Hussein’s shoes if he came near me.