This is Historic Times » Middle East

Sam’s Club

deephurting — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:00:54 +0000

I should be doing more lately on the Libyan revolution, but it’s a difficult subject to comment on, especially in light of the US’s current occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I do feel we have a legitimate humanitarian mission in Libya, but it’s hard to trust our government to treat it as anything other than yet another opportunity to put down an anti-US tinpot and distribute his country’s resources to extra-national corporations, instead of the people who live there.

While I was playing with a few ideas involving the US stretching its military too thin by adding another front to its war in the Middle East, a friend of mine pointed out that this isn’t really an accurate characterization until we send ground forces to Libya.

I nearly drew a cartoon that showed Uncle Sam as a knight unable to properly rescue a damsel in distress as she falls from a tower because he’s already carrying two others, but I’ve had problems drawing people falling from a great height before, and the gag implied more virtue than I felt Sam deserved, so I tried to come up with something that would cast him as both a rescuer, and a potential aggressor, and ended up spinning the above image off from the concept of damsels in distress.

I wish I’d drawn the woman representing Libya fighting back a bit, perhaps wielding a club of her own. She’s too passive, as it is here. It really would’ve been the final piece of the narrative, which is noticeably missing from the finished illustration.

The First Rule of Nuke Club

deephurting — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:06:14 +0000

Before commenting on this cartoon, for which I wouldn’t be surprised to get a lot of hate mail, I’d like to encourage readers to first make note of the previous piece I drew on this topic.

Here’s what I’m not arguing with this:

• That Iran has nuclear weapons, or is even necessarily pursuing them.
• That Iran’s current government can or cannot be trusted with nuclear technology.
• That Iran should or should not be welcomed into the proverbial nuclear clubhouse.
• That the international community literally has a “no Muslims” rule in effect on nuclear-armed nations.

The reason I drew this was to further illustrate my feeling that nobody can be trusted with nuclear weapons, but also to add that the double-standard the international community is applying to Iran seems unfair, especially when the two countries most aggressively criticizing them on the acquisition of nuclear technology are the only one who’s actually used nuclear weapons in an offensive manner (the United States), and an ally of the former who refuses to be open with the rest of the world about their own nuclear program (Israel). Israel, of course, has every right to feel threatened by the idea of Iran’s current government and other hostile regimes possessing such technology, but by the same token, I think a lot of Israel’s neighbors feel just as threatened by their alleged weapons.

Also, I found the image of the tree that’s also a mushroom cloud irresistible. I hope others find it clever, even if they dislike everything else about this drawing.

Many people may recognize the dialogue in this as being paraphrased from episode 2F09 of The Simpsons, “Homer the Great.”

Sleep on It

deephurting — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:15:03 +0000