Calling All Coulters



America has considered my call-out of my fellow columnist and the results are in: it's nearly unanimous!



Brad writes:

Rall v. Coulter. Preferably on the internet as I don't have cable. Someone (or thing...) needs to put her in her place, especially with her "Christmas Message" on her homepage. "To The People Of Islam: Just think: If we'd invaded your countries, killed your leaders and converted you to Christianity YOU'D ALL BE OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS RIGHT ABOUT NOW! Merry Christmas" http://anncoulter.com/ Have a good new year Ted and I hope sometime in your life, you get to kick her ass (intellectually and publicly).

But Ann, we DID invade two Muslim countries and kill their leaders. We even sent missionaries to try to convert them to Christianity but alas, they keep getting killed. Yet: no Xmas presents! What's up with that? Besides, Muslims get Ramadan presents--assuming the U.S. hasn't reduced their countries to rubble in the name of liberating their oil--er, them.



America has spoken. How about it, Ann? We could make some cash and have fun at the same time! Have your people call my people. It should be easy, seeing as they're the same people. Unless you're afraid, of course.



Wendy's



Russ writes:

"my desire to see Wendy's become the nation's predominant fast food chain (the fact that McDonald's kicks Wendy's ass proves the intrinsic injustice of capitalism)" Bah, McDonald's and Wendy's both deserve scorn. Perhaps Wendy's more so. 91% of their political contributions go to the Republican party.

http://www.choosetheblue.com/mainFrame.php?backlevel=002..001Choose%20The%20

Blue.002Restaurants%20and%20Bars&prodcat=Fast+Food

I'm actually surprised to see you (apparently) advocating for any multinational corporate fast food chain. What is your take on patronizing big corporations that drive out local businesses? (Wal-Mart being an obvious prime "bad guy" example.) A couple years ago I decided I was sick of the homogenization of Anytown, USA spreading everywhere and I totally quit eating at big national chains and only patronize local restaurants. I thought it would be inconvenient or difficult to convince friends who were dining out with me, but it turned out to be quite easy.

See what happens when you toss off some flippant remark? Russ is right, of course. Hell, I read "Fast Food Nation" too. Obviously all multinational corporations are evil, and fast food joints especially so. They contribute to environmental degradation, cultural homogenization and they underpay their employees. But the point I was trying to make is this: when you're driving on the highways of this great land where there are only burger joints to provide sustinence, you'll find that Wendy's makes better burgers than any of the other major national chains. Far better. And yet they're ranked third or fourth in sales. It's like VHS's victory over Betamax--capitalism does not always choose the superior product, is not efficient, and is not the natural state of human affairs. (What is? Still working on that one.)

2005 Editor & Publisher Predictions Column



Prediction number eight in Joe Strupp's column reads:

8. Ann Coulter will drop her column after her syndicate, Universal Press, refuses to dump Ted Rall, "Doonesbury," and "Boondocks."

Hey, you never know. What I do know is that, along with my desire to see Wendy's become the nation's predominant fast food chain (the fact that McDonald's kicks Wendy's ass proves the intrinsic injustice of capitalism), one of my fondest wishes is to mix it up with Ms. Coulter on the political front. She bullies most of her wimpy liberal counterparts on TV by resorting to insults they're unwilling to return. God knows that that wouldn't be the case with me. Could that be why we've never crossed paths on the airwaves?



Which would you rather watch, HANNITY and colmes or RALL v. COULTER?

French Edition of TO AFGHANISTAN AND BACK



The French edition of TO AFGHANISTAN AND BACK is called PASSAGE AFGHAN. It just came out in France, where I'll be doing appearances next month in order to promote it. There have been several reviews, mostly positive, in the French press. One appeared recently in Le Point magazine, another in a publication called Benzine.



, first cartoonist featured in the new "Attitude" series, is interviewed in this week's Newsarama. Scroll down to find ordering information on Amazon for the new book, and please buy it--sales of this volume will help determine whether we'll be able to publish full-length compilations of cartoons by other cartoonists from the two-volume set.



Aircraft Carrier to Fight Tsunami



An anonymous FOR writes:

Kind of like the 1950's horror movies, where a man made monster of environmental symbolism is solved by greater military spending. But it isn't strange at all for Bush. Indonesia is a muslim country rich in oil. It's reflex by now. Maybe it is part of the larger oil seizure plan we're paying for?

Mark Fiore, do you read this blog?



"Liberal Racism"



One Republican talking point--the idea that liberals, rather than the conservatives who fought tooth and nail against desegregation and affirmative action, are the real racists--seems to have longer legs than usual. Even though it hasn't picked up any traction in the black community, the rightists equate criticizing self-hating Uncle Tom types like Condi Rice to racism. The latest entry in this genre appears in a column by one Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe. [NOTE: CORRECT LINK IS HERE NOW.]



Is it gauche to point out that blacks who provide cover for and work against the interests of other blacks are despicable? Perhaps. But it's true.



Read the column. My favorite assertion, besides the race stuff, is that liberals have a monopoly on "poisonous" dialogue. What about the Republicans who called Tom Daschle a traitor for opposing Bush's permawar policy? What about Ronald Reagan, who accepted the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan when he accepted his party's nomination in 1980--in the same town where the four freedom riders were infamously murdered in 1964? What about the hordes of Republican pundits like Alan Keyes, who suggested that I should be shot and/or jailed for opposing Bush's ersatz war on terror? When it comes to hate speech, I--like all Dems--are mere pikers. Our problem isn't that we're too mean. Our problem is that we're not mean enough to people who have it coming.

The Militarization of Charity



Is it me, or does it seem strange that the United States is responding to the tsunami by sending warplanes, aircraft carriers and a strike group? If this keeps up, we'll go the way of Pakistan, where the military takes care of every government function from guarding borders to collecting garbage.

Attitude 3 Clarification



Please bear in mind that I'm NOT looking for mainstream political cartoonists for Attitude 3. Mainstream would include widely syndicated comic strips like Doonesbury and big daily paper cartoonists like Tom Toles. I'm a fan of both, but the Attitude series is devoted to bringing cartoonists toiling in relative obscurity to the larger audience they deserve. Again, please send suggestions and URLs to chet@rall.com for alternative/underground/up and coming social commentary and/or political cartoons. Extra points for online strips. You can check out the Attitude 1 and 2 listings in the Buy Stuff section of this website to see what kind of cartoonists made the cut for those anthologies.

Pictures on the Wall



Jon writes to ask:

In the Alberto Gonzales cartoon (12-23-04-C) it appears to me that the picture on the wall closest to

the door is blurred out. Have you been censored? Does the "C" designation mean censored? I'm I just paranoid? As for the content of that blurred frame it appears to be a pyramid of naked hooded detainees, but I might be

wrong. Inquiring minds want to know. If you cannot respond directly to me can you post something on your blog? I'm sure others have noticed. I can't be the only one.

Indeed Jon is not. The photos on Alberto Gonzales' wall are of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The one on the right shows prisoners' hands sticking out through holes in the wall. And no, the "C" doesn't mean censored. I do three syndicated cartoons a week. The date codes are for Thursday of each week; the A goes online Thursday, the B Saturday and the C Monday. (Though you can see them early by subscribing to the Ted Rall Subscription Service; email chet@rall.com if you have $10/year and an email account.)



Column Correction



Morris writes:

Whether it’s your editors or yourself who put this in your column, I just wanted to correct a minor error: Roosevelt’s mansion is in Hyde Park, along the Hudson River. New Hyde Park is a town on Long Island. (I realize this isn’t an earth-shaking matter!) On a more cynical, serious note: I would venture to suggest that all natural disaster head counts (e.g., the Asian tsunamis) have to be higher for Republicans, because they are obliged by their belief system to count the unborn fetuses. I’m surprised that they’re too stupid to ever make an issue of this.

Morris is, of course, correct. New Hyde Park is in Nassau County, Long Island. Hyde Park, FDR's home, is upstate along the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie. I'm still chuckling about the fetus thing.

Andy Singer on Newsarama



Andy Singer, first cartoonist featured in the new "Attitude" series, is interviewed in this week's Newsarama. Scroll down to find ordering information on Amazon for the new book, and please buy it--sales of this volume will help determine whether we'll be able to publish full-length compilations of cartoons by other cartoonists from the two-volume set.



Attitude 3 Shoutout



Do you know a great alternative political and/or social commentary cartoonist who hasn't appeared in ATTITUDE 1 or 2? If so please email me at chet@rall.com, ideally along with a URL for his or her website, for consideration in a possible ATTITUDE 3 collection. Please note: I am especially interested in ONLINE cartoons for this anthology.

Wish I'd Thunk Of It



In my cartoon satirizing those magnetic ribbons, I should have called the red, white and blue one "French reporter" instead of "generic." Damn.



And Merry Christmas to those of you who care about such things.

"Perceived," Indeed



The always astute Norman of A Sharp Stick fame responds to this morning's post about a pirate radio attempt to organize opposition to Bush's looming coronation:

I checked out the CNN article on the pirate station in DC. I loved the last para:

"A third group, www.ReDefeatBush.com, seeks to focus attention on perceived voting irregularities in the November election." "Perceived" irregularities? What a bunch of fucking wimps. When are they going to start reporting perceived bank robberies? I notice the WMDs in Iraq remain perceived, despite being reported as actual.

Salon.com Names ATTITUDE 2 One of Its Best of 2004



Salon, a website that should run my cartoons but doesn't, reviews ATTITUDE 2 today. Unfortunately, Salon's website has become a total nightmare to navigate thanks to a new system that forces you to watch ads before you get to the good stuff. So I'm posting the relevant section in its entirety:

Cartoonist/columnist Ted Rall has spent the last several years calling bullshit on the power brokers that have been running this country into the ground. This second anthology of up-and-coming or established alternative cartoonists is Rall's love letter to the genre that has brought him to prominence.

"For years, I've been frustrated at the lack of attention generated by this genre of alternative weekly-based political and social satire cartoonists," Rall explains over the phone, "which has been around pretty much since the late '80s and early '90s. And it's true that you can argue that not all them are social or political cartoonists, or even in alternative weeklies -- most of my clients are in dailies, actually -- but there are certain things these comics have in common. They tend to be drawn by a certain age group; Generation X is certainly the wellspring of the first or second wave of the alt-weekly cartoonists. They feature stripped-down or abstracted drawing styles to convey complicated ideas; for that reason they tend to be wordy, text-based exercises. And since I work in that genre, I love it but am endlessly frustrated by the lack of exposure it gets. This stuff always falls between the cracks."

Unless you're there to catch it, which some, like Salon and other forward-looking publications, are. But no matter how much indie cred artists like David Rees, Keith Knight and Aaron McGruder receive for their outstanding work, there are toiling cartoonists like Tak Toyoshima, Emily Flake and Max Cannon who may never get the credit they deserve. Which is where Rall comes in.

"Here you have intelligent and funny comics being ignored because no one yet has pulled it all together as a genre," Rall added. "That's one reason why I felt these cartoonists had a hard row to hoe, because people need to have genres, to be able to categorize things. If it's something you've never seen or heard before, it doesn't fit anywhere. So the goal of the first book was to say there's strength in numbers, and it did much better than I or my publisher ever expected. But this was before 9/11, so in a way the scene we were documenting changed right as we were putting the book to bed." Ergo, the new book, which features interviews with the aforementioned, as well as 15 more budding Matt Groenings, many of whom deserve to be stars already.

Crash the Party January 20, 2005



CNN is reporting that an underground swell of activism is beginning towards the end of bringing massive numbers of American patriots to Washington to protest the inauguration of America's first unelected commander-in-chief. Apparently the call is beginning on pirate radio.



(Bush, of course, remains no more legit today than he was before the 2004 election. Running for "re-election" of an office you stole in the first place allowed him to capitalize on a fake incumbency he never earned. It's like his pal Gen. Musharraf of Pakistan--would he be legit if he ran for president and won?)



Anyway, let's hope the festivities in Washington are attended by as many real Americans as Bushite neofascists.



Tillman Mailbag



Matthew765@aol.com writes:

Tillman just voted "most inspiring". Just need a "least inspiring" contest and Ted could finally get a trophy (something tells me he never, every, got one for sports as a kid, boo hoo).

Matt Kremer

San Diego, CA

Yeah, and I lose sleep over that every night. But Tillman is an inspiring example of what happens when you're uninformed (he signed up to go to Iraq to avenge 9/11, only to later be sent out again, this time to get killed by his own comrades), misguidedly nationalistic and jingoistic. How much better for him, his family and America had he remained here and played the game at which he was so gifted.



Standard Republican Gay Sex--Obsessed Mailbag



dustumho@yahoo.com writes:

Dearest Ted,

There comes a man in every gay man's life where he has to just stop the lies and admit that you love the cock. Today is your day my fudge-packing, non-existant friend. You're a target for all queers, accept it.

If you voted for Bush, you voted for this guy.



And Since We're Judged By Our Enemies



The Washington Times, the hard right paper embraced by the GOP despite being owned by the Moonie cult (maybe because?), has nominated me as one of its 2004 "knaves" (yes, the paper likes its oratory out of Canterbury Tales). In a piece by the editorial board, the Times writes:

Those who denigrated the life of President Ronald Reagan, especially cartoonist Ted Rall, who said, "If there is a hell, this guy is in it."

If a guy who assassinated children, imported cocaine to fund right-wing death squads and nearly destroyed the economy isn't twisting on the devil's fork right about now, who is? Please vote for me, and vote often, Ohio style!

Sorry, Everybody



If you're familiar with the post-election website Sorry Everybody, you may be interested to know that I wrote the foreword of a new book based on the site.



From the publisher's press release:

Twenty-year-old University of Southern California student James Zetlen launched www.sorryeverybody.com on November 4 as a way for Americans to express their disappointment (and, sometimes, outrage) about the results of the election and how it will affect people around the world for the next four years. To date, more than 26,000 people have uploaded their thoughts, images, and opinions to the site. Sorryeverybody.com has become an international phenomenon, receiving more than 75 million hits from people around the world. After announcing the book project on the site, Zetlen reported receiving more than 700 comments in just a few hours.

The $14.95, 256-page Sorry Everybody book will be in stores in time for the inauguration and will feature photographs that have appeared on the site: Democrats and Republicans; priests and marines; professors and veterans; suburban moms and hipsters and hipster suburban moms; mountain climbers, divers, and businesspeople; women with gray hair, boys with blue hair, and girls with pink hair; gay people and straight people; people from California to New York to Ohio to Texas to Arkansas. They've all come together between the covers of this book to say, "Sorry, everybody."

Sorry Everybody features a foreword by Ted Rall, America's hardest-hitting editorial cartoonist for Universal Press Syndicate, and an award-winning commentator who also works as an illustrator, columnist, and radio commentator.

Ted Rall Named 2004's #2 Most Annoying Liberal



For the third year in a row right-wing bloggers hellbent on destroying America have declared me one of America's Most Annoying Liberals. I've been named along with such other luminaries as President Al Gore, Oscar winner Michael Moore, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter and legendary CBS anchorman Dan Rather. As Generalissimo El Busho says, we're defined by our enemies and I am damned proud to be hated by people who hate such admirable patriots.

Attitude Presents: Andy Singer's "No Exit"



Fans of the ATTITUDE 1 and 2 anthologies of alternative cartoonists will be interested to know that NBM is launching a new "Attitude Presents:" series featuring cartoonists in the ATTITUDE books. Each collection in the series, once again edited by me, showcases an artist who appeared in the book but whose books either have never enjoyed broad circulation or don't have collections at all. This is an attempt to bring worthy new artists to a broader public--something many comics fans say they want.



First in the series and now available is Andy Singer. It's 128 pages of hilarious, politically-minded social commentary gag panels by the brilliant artist of "No Exit." Order now and please let me know what you think!



Volume 2 in the series is by Neil Swaab, of "Rehabilitating Mr. Wiggles" infamy.

Ted Rall Subscription Service



Alexandria helpfully inquires:

I was reading your work in the Washington Post online until recently. Now I worry, what if Ted Rall keeps actually saying things and more papers drop him? So I want to point out what Michael and Nicole Jantzen are doing for the Norm. They are offering subscriptions to the strip, and if they reach 4000 people Michael Jantzen will keep drawing the Norm. If not, they are refunding the money (all electronic sources like Paypal) minus the processing fees.

Public television stations say that only a small percentage of viewers actually donate, but you are such a necessary voice maybe this approach would work for you.

I don't necessarily want anymore coffee cups, bumper stickers, or tee-shirts, so the cafe-press doesn't appeal to me. I donated to the Norm because the cumulative time I have spent enjoying that strip was worth a fee. I would subscribe to your site using the same reasoning. (Although your styles a wee might different...)

The Times and Post partially aside—both papers still run my work in their print editions—most of my clients continue to be supportive of my work. This is not a THE NORM type situation. That said, it's true that drawing cartoons and writing columns is a shoestring operation from a financial standpoint. So I'm very, very grateful to anyone who wants to support my work financially.



The best way you can do that is to write a letter to newspapers and magazines that you read but don't run me to encourage them to do so.



The next best thing is to buy my books.



You could also buy my original art. (Now I accept PayPal!)



After that, there's the handy dandy Ted Rall Subscription Service, which is coming due, as it does every year, at the end of this month. For a mere $10 per year (did I mention that I accept PayPal?), you can have emailed to you each and every week all three of my cartoons and my columns, plus whatever freelance work I produce. You get the columns as much as a day before they go online, and my cartoons as much as four days before the Great Unwashed Nonsubscribers see them on the Web.



To pay via PayPal:



1. Send me an email at chet@rall.com.



2. I'll tell you how to pay; after you do, you're signed up.



To pay by cash or check:



1. Send $10 to Ted Rall, PO Box 1134, New York NY 10027.



2. This is important: Send your email address ALONG WITH YOUR PAYMENT.



Trans-Afghanistan Opium Pipeline



Robert writes:

Don't know if you've seen this column on the death of journalist Gary Webb, who looked into Reagan-Bush regime's support of drug trafficking as part of the CIA backed Contras effort. and the complicity of the mainstream media in ignoring the story and attacking the messenger. http://www.alternet.org/election04/20742/



Earlier this evening I was looking at a Lisa Ling (National Geographic Channel) report on "The War Next Door" which is basically about the $2 billion US sponsorship of defoliation and anti-guerrilla warfare in Colombia in the last 4 years. Nice cameo by W talking about narco-terrorism and how terrorists fund themselves through drug trafficking. Interesting, given his Daddy's and Reagan's illicit drug trafficking and arms dealing with Iran, the Contras, and the state-sponsored terrorism against the people of Nicaragua and Iraq through Reagan-Bush proxies.



Is it ironic that Afghanistan is now the world's biggest producer of heroin, following the invasion and overthrow of the Taliban? or pathetic? I'm not sure which. Bush's Double-You -Suck failure in Afghanistan - no Osama, and turning Afghanistan back into a contender in the world of narco-terrorism, to use his own terms.

It's entirely possible that reopening the heroin trade was a Bushie war aim in Afghanistan. We certainly know that hunting down Osama (he was in Pakistan, not Afghanistan), taking out the Taliban (we didn't) and getting the 9/11 guys (they were in Egypt and Saudi Arabia) had nothing to do with it.



That said, there's a number of recent news articles, including one titled "Afghanistan Sees Bright Prospects for Trans-Afghan Pipeline" on News Central Asia (http://www.newscentralasia.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1031), that indicate that the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project is alive and kicking as a major motivator of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.



What happened to Gary Webb is a national disgrace. He was one of America's finest and most honest reporters, punished for nothing more than doing his job. RIP, Gary.



ATTITUDE 2 a 2004 Book of the Year



The UK Guardian newspaper has named ATTITUDE 2: THE NEW SUBVERSIVE ALTERNATIVE CARTOONISTS (edited by yours truly) one of its 2004 Books of the Year.



I have a beef with their one gripe, though:

One gripe, though. President Bush is not a simian idiot (see how easily he turned the key caricatural traits associated with him - stumbling over sentences, etc - to his advantage at election time). Rather, he's the guy who has led a neo-conservative revolution. That's the ugly fact of the matter, and 'subversive' humorists had better get used to it.

Isn't it possible that W. is a simian idiot who led a neoconservative (counter)revolution?

Let's See If This Posts



We'll start this experimentation in Blogger tech revisionism (thanks to Mr. B--you rock!) with selections from the mailbag:



Denny wrote:

ted, ted.......again, you have some wrong information..... 390,000 Frenchmen died during the 1940 invasion? WRONG!!! Several resources I checked bring the total of French casualties during the ENTIRE WAR to 213,324. These are the dead, not wounded. Because you did mention Frenchmen DIED during 1940. I had to check this out because I found you hard to believe. More French soldiers were killed in 1940 then American's for the last 60 years?? By the way, US casualties between World War II and the current war are about 373,855. Another point I see you are trying to make is that the Allies, basically the British, left the French to defend themselves. Well, I would hope that you would at least agree that defending your own country becomes a larger priority then helping defend someone elses. I think you would have to agree that had the British not evacuated the 300,000 troops from France, that they too would have easily been overrun by the Germans in late 1940. As a side note, about a quarter of those toops were FRENCH! I have to ask, where do you come up with these stats?

So did Russ:

You know, the "cowardly French" meme is so virulent that I had ceased to even consciously think about it. Thanks for the good discussion of it. It is indeed ridiculous that the right (while claiming to support the proud sacrifices of brave troops dying for their country yada yada) would so blithely dismiss the deaths of hundreds of thousands of French soldiers who actually did die defending their country. BTW, where did you get the

490,000 figure? That seems high. As far as I can tell, it seems more like 200,000 - there's a fair bit of variance in different estimates, e.g. see: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2stats.htm Not that I think it affects the point you're making - 200,000 or 490,000 or whatever, it's still a lot of soldiers dead fighting against an invasion.

As did D.:

The ignorance and stupidity of the Limpblob rightards would be amusing if it weren't so pathetic...

How about WWI? At Verdun alone, the French Army lost nearly 400,000 dead and wounded, on a battlefield that was not even 5 square miles...'They Shall Not Pass', their rallying cry, carried out to a 't' to say the least...total casualties on both sides, 700,000 plus over a period of only 10 months.

France has forgotten more about dying, war and killing than (thankfully) the US as a nation will ever know. Perhaps their reluctance to engage in our idiotic neocon adventures in the Mideast can be explained by this.

The rightards conveniently forget that the French backed our Afghan invasion; I personally watched French AF Mirage 2000s depart Bishkek airport loaded with bombs to hammer Taliban positions...

French soldiers are as brave as any other nations'...to hell with the chickenhawk critics, though ignorance of history is nothing new for them...and now, as we see in Iraq it is coming back to bite them.

What was D. doing in the Kyrgyz Republic? Well, anyway, what we've learned today is that estimated casualty figures vary even when they shouldn't. After all, the French government provided military funerals to their dead; surely someone could have counted them up. But, upon further research, it seems that I posted one of the higher estimates from the 1940 Battle of France. But as one of the writers above points out, 200,000 is still more men than we lost in all of Vietnam in combat, four times over.



It's war: one side wins, the other loses. Losing isn't shameful; failing to defend your country is. The French clearly weren't guilty of that in World War II.



So where does francophobia originate? Partly from the fact that we resent owing our very nationhood to them; French-bashing is a kind of patricide. FDR played a big role, repeatedly telling the American public that France didn't deserve to be a great power after World War II because it hadn't fought hard enough in 1940. (What about the US, which didn't fight AT ALL when the shit hit the fan in 1939-40?) And the French Vichy Government shamed the country by collaborating with the Nazis rather than going into exile as honor demanded.

Technical Problems



I've been having trouble updating my blog. Hopefully this will be resolved shortly. Thanks for your patience.

French Cowards



Got some fresh hate mail about the new column going up tonight:

Have you thought about moving to France.... They don't fight anyone, even peoples invading their own country.

Yeah, but more of them can spell. But enough of that.



One trope of the extreme/Bushist right is that France is an effete nation. "Old Europe," Herr Rumsfeld calls it. They didn't fight in World War II, for example.



While France was shamed by the conduct of many of its citizens during the war—the Vichy regime was heinously fascist and anti-Semitic, and participated in deporting thousands of Jews to their deaths—I find the notion that they didn't fight pretty damned amusing. After all, 390,000 French soldiers died trying to defend their country from the German onslaught during the six week invasion of May-June 1940. That's more than the U.S. soldiers who died fighting on both fronts of World War II, Korea, Vietnam the two Gulf Wars combined.



In every war, one side loses. France, most historians agree, lost to Germany in 1940 because its military and political leaders committed a series of errors. They failed to extend the Maginot line to the Belgian frontier, allowing the Germans to simply go around it. They refused to appreciate the importance of tanks as the new weapon of modern warfare. They created a defensive strategy that relied too extensively on fortifications. And their Allies evacuated to Britain rather than fight to the end. But none of the 390,000 Frenchmen who died in 1940 deserve any of the blame for those strategic errors. And the Republican Right ought to be ashamed to impugn their bravery.

Greetings from Occupied America



Andrew from the Great White North writes:

I enjoyed your recent column re dying for one's country, as I've always been annoyed by that particular falsehood. However, I'd like to whine about one error of fact: your statement that the US has only been invaded twice by a foreign power.

It's not really true, because in your first example, the War of 1812, it was the US doing the invading. The US was not defending itself against a British invasion, but invading British territory in what is now Canada. The ostensible reason was to protect maritime sovereignty, but the fact that none of the warhawks actually hailed from coastal states puts the lie to that one. The real reason, it seems, was to halt British colonial ambitions in Canada and remove obstacles to western expansion. In other words, the politicians of the day concocted a patriotic lie under cover of which they launched a war to advance American geopolitical interests and their own commercial ends.

In that respect, the War of 1812 bears a remarkable resemblance to certain present-day events, but there was an important difference. The American soldier of the day, a part-time militiaman, didn't see much benefit in dying for the warhawks economic ambitions, so he often fought with little enthusiasm. This leads us to the Battle of Queenston Heights, in which American reserves refused to participate on grounds that they didn't sign up to fight foreign wars, but to defend their homes.

Good points all. It's important to remember that, from its inception, the story of the United States' expansion has been tied to aggression. However, this week's column refers to the fact that the British did invade the United States in the course of the War of 1812, burning both the White House and Capitol in the process. For that matter, the Mexicans didn't really start the Mexican War of 1846--we did. But they did invade U.S. territory.



Ken writes:

Thank you for your most recent column, pure quality as usual. And I live for your cartoon thrashings.

You referenced the Japanese balloon attacks on coastal Oregon and Washington "without casualties" I read a long time ago and cannot tell you the reference, that there was a life lost to one of these incendiary balloon devices. As I recall it was a young girl on the Oregon Coast who was casually hiking in the forest with a church group. She encountered one of these devices that had not gone off, when she touched or handled it, it exploded and she was killed.

The article revolved around the notion that this girl was the only person who died from hostility on the mainland, the 48 states in WWII. Sorry I can't provide citation, No ax to grind, I just thought you might find it interesting. Perhaps I'll Google around and see if I can find some internet reference to the incident.

Several people wrote about this. They're right. A girl was in fact killed by a Japanese balloon bomb.



Jill writes:

It occurred to me that one of the problems with the Democratic party right now is that they often don't know how to select a winning candidate during the nomination process. I reflect that in the case of Kerry the nomination process was basically over after about 6-12 states had voted and that the votes in these early states really influenced others. Potential candidates were out of the race before it got to the southern and mid-western states. Considering how important these states have become re electing a Republican president perhaps the Democrats would do well to look at this nomination process to see if they can overcome what I see as a liability that is built into the process. Can that process be changed?

Probably not, but my primary objection (no pun intended) to the current system is that the electorate does such a shitty job picking nominees. Small committees--the proverbial smoke-filled room--were more likely to emerge with candidates with strong personalities and positions on the issues than what we currently have: design by committee. On the other hand, the DNC/DLC picked Kerry many years ago for the '04 slot, so it's not like the big shots are picking the candidates anyway. Why waste money on primaries when the fix is in against insurgent candidates like Dean?



Dean writes:

Hi, loved the article; just want to tell you that Japan occupied 2 Aleutian islands in WW II, and there was one major battle in which hundreds of US soldiers died defeating the Japanese. That was all after the Dutch Harbor bombing you mention in the article. I used to work for a museum in Anchorage, and put together a program on historic sites in Alaska, including the WW II sites in the Aleutians.

I don't know if it's hundreds of causalties, but this is generally correct. Two small islands were occupied by the Japanese in the Aleutians after the Dutch Harbor incident and had to be dislodged by force.



Jeff writes:

Were you trying to argue that no military action since 1846 was unjustified? It seems as if you are just arguing over semantics, and in a way to poke fun at soldiers who died in Iraq. Fighting for your country's geopolitical interests is the same as defending your country when one aspect of America's geopolitical interest is to protect our country from foreign threats through military action that may not have been provoked by direct attack, but that furthers our country's security. There seems to be no point in your article.

This week's column raises more questions than answers. Obviously the U.S. can justify the retaliatory war against Japan in World War II. And the Civil War could be justified by both sides as self-defense. But I have no interest in "poking fun" at the Iraq war dead. Quite the contrary--those deaths are tragic, pointless, a waste. I don't agree, obviously, that promoting the geopolitical interests of one's country as determined by its political and business leaders is the same as "fighting for your country." That's just not what people think of when they think of "defending America." The point of my column is to expose the military death cult for what it is: a fraud.



Mike wrote:

Great work, as usual, in your column this week. I've often argued that nobody's died for this country since the revolutionary war. Well, that's not entirely true: lots of people die for this country — police officers, for instance — but not in our myriad military actions.

I must make a small exception, however, to your statement that the attacks on Pearl Harbor (in my hometown) and Dutch Harbor were on American soil. They were certainly on American forces, but neither Alaska nor Hawaii were states yet. Hawaii, for its part, was a colony ill-gotten by overthrowing its government.

Accurate points about Alaska and Hawaii. Still, they were--from the standpoint of mainstream, non-Howard Zinn, American history--U.S. territory.



Finally, Jo writes:

Just a note to say thanks for your excellent piece titled, They Fight and Die, But Not for Their Country. As a career soldier and a veteran of the Gulf War, I believe you are right on target. Soldiers fight and die for their fellow soldiers, regardless of the war. It is tragic that our country's leaders continue to exploit them in the name of patriotism. America's soldiers need better leadership at the top; leaders who respect their skills and potential as human beings.