Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Was it for this the clay grew tall?

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Mike Peterson Published: January 17, 2014 1 minute 3 comments

I've mentioned my frustration with the attitude so well lampooned by Kevin Siers today.

There have been a spate of cartoons taking the opposite tack — accusing Obama and Kerry of foolishness or worse for negotiating rather than threatening, apparently hoping for a chance to send more of our young people to die in the sand.

Nor in their quest for vicarious glory do they lack for allies. Congress seems determined to antagonize Iran in order to undermine both our own executive branch's efforts to resolve things peacefully and the new Iranian government's attempt to reclaim a place in the community of civilized nations.

These contemptible chickenhawks make me want to restore the draft, not because I think it's fair on its own merits, but because it's not fair that the children of Congressmen and rightwing commentators don't have to face the consequences of their parents' empty-headed imperialistic gunboat diplomacy.

Only, if we bring the draft back, let's make fairness the goal: No more student deferments and no discrimination this time around: Women can and should serve, even if you don't want them in the front lines. Lord knows not every draftee ends up in combat.

And let's also make it a criminal offense to attempt to influence National Guard units on who they admit. Let the Dan Quayles and George W's face the same odds as Tyrone and Shaniquah.

Which brings us to Kal Kallaugher's commentary on the upcoming centennial of the War To End All War.

It was called the Great War on the assumption that nobody would be that stupid again, but, well, yes, we saw how that worked out.

I think, in light of Siers' cartoon above, that it's worth noting that one of the reasons WWI didn't end all wars is that the victorious allies insisted on being vindictive in the peace negotiations, which destroyed the German economy, antagonized the Germans and put them in a position wherein they turned to an extremist and started things all over again.

Which I think is why we had the Marshall Plan after the next go-round, rather than an endless series of negotiations and retribution.

But the lesson was short-lived and here we are once more poking the bear with a sharp stick to make him dance.

Not only do I appreciate the timeliness of Kal's message itself, but it also gives me a chance to mention Joe Sacco's new book, The Great War, which is actually a single fold-out panel depicting the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

I swiped that illustration from a New Yorker interview with him about the book, and would also refer you to this extensive piece I did here on Sacco two years ago, following an appearance he made at Dartmouth.

I don't expect the centennial of the Great War to get anywhere near the attention we lavished on the centennial of the Civil War back in the mid '60s. That celebration launched re-enactors, for that war and others, but World War I was bloody, muddy and so clearly unpleasant that I don't think anyone wants to remember it, much less "celebrate" it.

Particularly since one effect of having officers and enlisted men mingling in the blood and mud was a breakdown of the "natural order" that had kept laborers in their rightful place. It was not the start of the labor movement, but it crystallized a more general sense that human rights were not only for the elite, and thereby gave both the civil rights movement and organized labor a major boost.

We certainly aren't looking for that today, are we? No, we're not!

For my part, I had long admired the poetry that emerged from the trenches and the irony of Rupert Brooke's heroic vision — Brooke having died before he actually got to the war — compared to that of Wilfred Owen and Seigfried Sassoon and others who got to see what it was really like. 

But I didn't get the full impact until I read Vera Brittain's brilliant, crushing memoir of the war, Testament of Youth. Between her experience as a volunteer nurse near the front, and the horrific personal losses she suffered, the book snapped into sharp focus Gertrude Stein's statement about a "lost generation," and made the Hemingway novel for which it was an epigram a far sadder and more tragic book than I'd found it on first reading.

Mostly, it put aside for me the kind of wistful, vague "when will they ever learn?" of Pete Seeger's anthem, and the off-handedness of Phil Ochs putting WWI in a catalog alongside everything else, with "I must have killed a million men and now they want me back again."

Her book let me experience the pure fury of those who actually experienced it first hand.