Feb 02, 2006 3:49 PM

Of Cartoons and T-Shirts

The same day Capitol police made the "mistake" of arresting Cindy Sheehan and booted the wife of a GOP representative for wearing anti- and pro- war T-Shirts to the State of the Union address, all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- 24 stars worth of the nation's top military commanders -- wrote to the Washington Post decrying the publication of "A Reprehensible Cartoon" by Tom Toles, a Pulitzer winner widely regarded as the best editorial cartoonist in the biz.

The cartoon portrays the ailing U.S. Army as a quadruple amputee in a hospital bed, with "Dr. Rumsfeld" telling the patient that he's "listing your condition as 'battle hardened,'" with a sub-panel adding, "I'm prescribing that you be stretched thin. We don't define that as torture."

The cartoon was a response to SECDEF Rumsfeld's assertion that the Army is not over-extended, or " broken" as even military commanders have been asserting since 2004, but rather battle hardened. The Pentagon commanders, in a move that can only have a chilling effect on free speech, wrote that "using the likeness of a service member who has lost his arms and legs in war as the central theme of a cartoon was beyond tasteless."

Apparently we're on a slippery slope with our Bill of Rights these days. First, the president claims his constitutional authority overrides the 4th Amendment's guarantees against unwarranted searches, now, our nation's top military generals and Capitol police feel warranted in squelching free expression.

This reminds me of something . . . What was it? Oh yeah, the nutball Islamists who are going all "Satanic Verses" on the Danish cartoonist and European newspapers who dared to publish these illustrations of Mohammed with devil horns and a bomb for a head.

Now I have no doubt that the drawings are blasphemous -- when Palestinian gunmen shut down the EU office in Gaza demanding an apology, it's clear you've touched a nerve. But are they really any worse than this drawing of Ariel Sharon French kissing Hilter?

Point being, that the key to ending tyranny -- in this country and abroad -- is making the world safe for unruly, offensive, blasphemous, heretical, disruptive, and all around irritating expression.

Unfortunately, this is a concept that our man in Afghanistan has yet to grasp:

"Any insult to the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him)," said Hamid Karzai "is an insult to more than 1 billion Muslims and an act like this must never be allowed to be repeated."

Email Print