Feb 06, 2006 5:31 PM

The Pentagon's Thought Police

In the light of the Mohammed cartoon controversy, I continue to be deeply troubled by the Tom Toles incident.

The Pentagon is supposed to be fighting for our free speech, not policing it.

It would have been one thing if Peter Pace had written in as a public citizen to express his personal disgust at Tole's cartoon depicting the "battle hardened" Army as a quadruple amputee. The Post would have added the requisite ID at the bottom of his letter: The writer is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff.

But that's not what happened in this case. You had the six top generals in the nation all writing in on Department of Defense stationary -- that is to say with the full force and weight of the Pentagon -- writing in to object to the "callousness" of Tole's cartoon toward America's wounded patriots.

(Of course, that critique is a side show. The cartoon is an indictment of the callousness of Donald Rumsfeld, and this letter from the joint chiefs is a defense not of wounded grunts, but of their politically wounded boss.)

How can this 24-star coterie of military brass justify attacking a cartoonist? It's like a battleship going after a dinghy. I don't defend Tole's editorializing absolutely. I know that reasonable people find it offensive. But the freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend. People say stupid shit all the time. That's America.

Take, for example, when Bill O'Reilly called on al Qaeda to attack San Francisco. I found that repugnant. I'm sure many of the 1,400 military families who live in the area did too. But did the Joint Chiefs write a threatening letter to FoxNews, upbraiding the network for encouraging Islamist violence against citizens and service members?

Not on your life.

Email Print