Last Saturday, NewsBusters shared a truly disgraceful Ted Rall cartoon that depicted a United States soldier as a suicide bomber.
On Friday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, in its "Cartoons From Around The World" section, featured a rather revolting "comic" by German cartoonist Rainer Hachfeld. In it, a panel showed children in Afghanistan shooting toy guns playfully at an American military plane, with panel two dramatizing the same plane attacking the kids with gunfire clearly hitting one as the other ran screaming for cover.
How delightful.
As this is the property of cartoon syndicator Daryl Cagle, copyright laws prevent unauthorized distribution. However, as the above link indicates, Hachfeld's piece was also published at Cagle's MSNBC.com webpage.
NewsBusters' member Saw the Light, who forwarded this piece to me, made the following sage observations about the cartoon which he has given me permission to share:
With the railing on Haditha and the elevation of Kerry and Murtha, this view fits the template of many of the leftists who view the military with scorn and hatred...The reaction of the media is that they are guilty of crimes to make My Lai look like an afternoon at the park.
I quite agree, and concur with STL's further explanation of the cartoonist's message: "One, the US sees everything as a threat and is too quick to respond with deadly force. Two, the US military has no regard for innocents in any way, killing wantonly without any reservation."
That about says it.
In the end, this is a German cartoon. However, that an American newspaper, and one of the leading American news websites, would disseminate it speaks quite loudly about how our press views those risking their lives to protect this nation and all it stands for...including the media's rights under the First Amendment.
I need to go scrub my hands and this keyboard of this despicable vision, for it makes me wonder how people who publish this invective can possibly be citizens of the same country I call home.
