That second picture perfectly sums up my thoughts for the day. The front page of today’s Seattle Times had two items: One was a cutesy picture of a kid playing in the snow (it rarely snows up here, so this is a Big News Item(tm)!!!), the other was “Ambush Outside Fallujah Kills Ten Marines” - and guess which one was given more space.

I remember reading that Don DeLillo’s inspiration for writing Underworld was seeing the headlines “Giants Capture Pennant” and “Soviets Explode Atomic Bomb” on a New York Times from 1951, but…I dunno, that seems fairly quaint in comparison to this. It was like seeing the media parody itself.

By Josh on 12.04.05 08:32

There is a huge difference in Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s house arrest and the enemy combatants at Gitmo.

Kyi was placed under house arrest for advocating democracy in Burma. As far as I can determine, she advocated a peaceful change and did not resort to violence.

The comparison of her circumstances to those who were detained fighting against our troops is not a fair one. Ms.Kyi is clearly a political prisoner. The detainees should not be labeled as such. The term enemy combatant says it all.

The second cartoon is all too true.

By seawitch on 12.04.05 13:36

The second one is inaccurate… no newspaper in the country would run darfur on the front page

By Larry Bernard on 12.04.05 15:11

I agree with Seawitch. I take that juxtaposition of the two completely different situations as a cheap shot, and indicative of the sort of mindset that can’t or won’t differentiate between a government that makes rights violations a matter of policy and a civil society that exposes and deals with its deviants.

By Daniel on 12.04.05 22:01

Yes, there is a huge difference, but in our treatment of both the enemy combatants abroad *and* those American citizens at home who have been declared as enemy combatants, the lack of an open system of review and appeal undermines our ability to make statements about the actions of other governments.

In other words, if they are “enemy combatants” they need to be treated as such with a system of review of their status that is open. There are too many stories of people who should not be in Gitmo but are stuck there, and people who are not allowed to see legal representation. Gitmo appears to be a black hole down which people are thrown, and for every mistake we make, we create more enemies from the friends of those who we have “disappeared”. And don’t get me started on the Padilla matter…

It is not wise to give the American President (regardless of who holds that office) the power to arbitrarily declare anyone, American citizen or not, an “enemy combatant” with no appeal and no review. Yet, that is the system in place now.

That is my point for putting that cartoon on the site. I didn’t have the time to write the 1000 words needed to explain, and I’ve noticed subtlety is completely lost and therefore pointless in blogworld, anyway….
;-)

By Jack Grant on 12.04.05 22:18

I agree that there must be due process, but I also see a difference between American citizens and “enemy combatants.” I also believe that we cannot deal with terrorists as if they are simple criminals.

However, that is not my beef with the cartoon. I don’t see any subtlety in that at all. To me, it’s a ham-handed attempt at taking cheap shots.

The fact that we are discussing this and that it is a subject of public debate shows by this very practice that the comparison in the cartoon is specious.

By Daniel on 12.05.05 01:22