Q Toon: Pillow Talk with Leo & Max

I introduce the characters of Leo and Max as a way of discussing issues that are not necessarily LGBTQ+centric for an LGBTQ+ readership, and also to represent the gulf separating Americans with liberal and MAGA world views.

Today —  or tonight as it happens — they are disagreeing over Trump and Netanyahu's war with Iran.

It's rather curious that after Pete Kegseth spent a year insisting that we return to calling the Department of Defense the Department of War, the Lawless Trump Regime™ doesn't want to call what the Department of War is sending war materiel and soldiers to a "war." Nah, it's a "special military operation," just like the one Russia has been sending war materiel and soldiers to in Ukraine for the past four years.

Whatever. The Department of Special Military Operations vows that unlike previous administrations' special military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, we're not in Iran to execute regime change (only to execute regime leaders). Although in the case of Afghanistan, we've seen Trump's idea of a successful end to a long, drawn out war: bring back the very same people our special military operation was supposed to have gotten rid of.

This time around, our special military operation assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, and also, according to Trump himself, "most of the people we had in mind" to succeed him. Trump has expressed his pique at not having had a say in the selection of Iran's new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba "Dubya" Khameini, who is probably holed up in the safest place from the Trumpster special military operation machine in Tehran: the Russian embassy.

Hardly anyone outside of Iran will shed a tear for the elder Khameini — for the 176 schoolgirls blown to smithereens by an American cruise missile, certainly — but it remains to be seen how his murder will play out within Iran's borders. Tehran's young, urban protesters have been no fans of his; but the poorly educated, rural peasants in the rest of the country were his MIGA faithful. 

To put it in terms Americans might understand: some Liberal Leos might have, at best, mixed feelings were Iran — or North Korea, or Cuba, or Grand Fenwick — to eliminate Trump, Vance, Mike Johnson, and much of the remaining order of succession. But all Leos and Maxes would be united in condemnation of any attack that included wiping out a girls' school and setting Texas oil refineries ablaze.

Nor would any of us ever accept those countries appointing our next head of state.

Toon: War Is Over If You Won It

Let me start off by saying that I have little patience for reporters, pundits, and politicians who want our military officials to tell them when a war that is impending or underway will be over.

That's not how war works. 

War is by its very nature out of control. The Pentagon generals, admirals, and think tanks can plan, contingency plan, strategize, and contingency strategize 24/7 until the cows come home; but, as we supposedly learned in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the enemy doesn't necessarily cooperate.

I watched most of the press conference by Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Dan Caine and Secretary of Defense, War, or Whatever We're Calling This Now Pete Hegseth, and I would have liked to see reporters ask what the goal of Operation Epstein Fuckery is, now that Iran's sclerotic leaders have been blown to smithereens.

Is it to wipe out Iran's defenses? To inspire the youth of Teheran to rise up and overthrow sharia law? Is it to install the highest bidder as viceroy and make Iranian oil production another wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc.?

Only time will tell. Hegseth certainly won't.

P.S.: Do not ask Ambassador Mike Huckabee.

Пісня Залишилася Такою Ж

Some say that history repeats itself. Others say that it doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes. 

In light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I'm departing somewhat from my usual review of cartoons hitting their century mark in order to look at works from the period of Soviet expansionism immediately after World War II, now that history is doing whatever it is that history does.

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 erased Poland off the map of Europe, while assigning Lithuania to German control and Latvia and Estonia to the U.S.S.R.'s. By the spring of 1945, the USSR had occupied all three Baltic states and Poland. Viewing the Baltic states as errant parts of historical Russia, Stalin reincorporated all three into the Soviet Union.

The U.S. protested Stalin's move, but the Allies were preoccupied with the war's western and Pacific fronts. Opening up a new front with a supposedly allied nation was simply not going to happen. The U.S. never did recognize the USSR's annexation of the Baltic trio.

Likewise, Poland's fate was sealed before the defeat of Hitler. Once they were no longer of any use to Stalin, he had all of Poland's military officers summarily executed, and set up a puppet government in Warsaw. 

"Whose Move" by Walt Kelly in New York Star, 1948 

Stalin expected all of Germany would join the communist bloc as well. With Germany defeated, the Allies set up U.S., Great Britain, France and Russia zones of administration. Given the remarkable showing of the Communist Party in France's 1946 elections, Stalin figured that all he needed to do was subvert the British in their zone, and the U.S. would succumb to its isolationist partisans and withdraw out of his way.

"Blood from Turnips" by J.F. Meehan in Brooklyn Eagle, August 3, 1946

Ostensibly, what Stalin was interested in was war reparations from Germany and the weaker Axis powers. How he achieved it was by subjugating governments in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania to control from Moscow. (Finland had German backing during its Continuation War against the USSR, 1941-44. But permanently reclaiming Finland for Mother Russia would remain just out of Stalin's grasp.)

"An Unlucky Day for the Traffic Cop" by Cyrus Hungerford in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 13, 1947

Alarm over rampant Soviet expansionism in Europe all but silenced any remaining isolationists in the U.S. The Truman Doctrine of speaking up for the sovereignty of smaller nations was useless without the military might and foreign alliances to back it up.

"The Foot Is Familiar" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, February, 1948

In Czechoslovakia, where Hitler's quest to carve up and conquer his neighbors had begun, the Soviets engineered a coup, overthrowing the elected government in Prague.

"The Speaker's Platform" by Edwin Marcus in New York Times, 1949

Soviet adventurism was not confined to Europe alone; the Allies were supposed to return occupied Iranian territories to control of Shah Reza Pahlavi's government, but Stalin refused to withdraw from areas taken by Russian troops. Instead, the USSR encouraged breakaway socialist republics in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.

"Aw, C'mon, Joe, Let It Cool Off" by Dorman Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. March 17, 1946

With U.S. and British support, Iran crushed the Azerbaijani and Kurdish rebellions in 1946 and 1947 respectively.

Meanwhile, Truman responded to Stalin's push to undermine the governments of Greece and Turkey with substantial foreign aid that would have had Republicans of the 1920's howling in protest. Remnants of isolation still existed (notably at Hearst papers and the Chicago Tribune), but most of the protests to the Marshall Plan came from Moscow.

"Advice from an Expert in Internal Affairs" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, April 9, 1947

With nearly all of Europe reeling from World War II's devastation, the Marshall Plan stepped in to make sure that even the British Empire would be safe from the lure of Soviet domination.

"Great Expectations" by Edwin Marcus in New York Times, 1947

And the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was born: a mutual defense treaty that, again, would have been anathema to the American isolationists of the 1920's.

"Unintentional Cupid" by Richard Q. Yardley in Baltimore Sun, 1949

The founding countries of NATO in 1949 were Great Britain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Turkey joined in 1952, and West Germany in 1955.

"Observation Post" by Herbert Block in Washington Post, October, 1951

Stalin then, and Putin now, would characterize NATO as an offensive threat to Russia's existence. But for seven decades, Europe stayed at peace (for the most part) — possibly the longest respite from war the continent had seen since before the the cro-magnons met the neanderthals.

But it's all over now.

✍

Housekeeping note: My source for the Walt Kelly cartoon at the top of this post dates it in 1946, but every reference I can find about the "Pogo" cartoonist says that he first began drawing editorial cartoons in 1948, for the short-lived New York Star that began publishing in July of that year. Although events could have made that cartoon appropriate in either year, I can find no source mentioning that Kelly ever drew political cartoons for the Star's predecessor, PM, or any other publications before 1948.

1989 in Review

Hey, since I devoted several posts last year to cartoons from 1989, here's the photo I took at that year's end of 1989's newspaper headlines.

Careful readers may notice a magazine headline that was repeated in my 2019 photo.

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P.S.: I've commented several times about how it is getting more and more difficult to assemble newspapers for these photographs. Today provides a sterling example.

On the morning after the Trump administration intentionally assassinated the top military official of a foreign, sovereign state against whom we have not declared war, while he was in a neighboring country in which we have troops stationed (and what about the Kurds?), without consulting anyone in Congress or any one of our NATO allies, here is the choice of my locally available newspaper front pages:

Only the Chicago Tribune managed to squeeze the story onto Page One.

Q Toon: Phoning It In

In a surprise move last week, the Corrupt Trump Administration announced a campaign to decriminalize homosexuality worldwide.

The announcement was particularly curious, given Trump's cozy relationship with some especially bad actors on LGBTQ rights around the world (the U.S. voted with them last year against a U.N. resolution against capital punishment for consensual same-sex activity), and with the antigay right in this country.

True, he did promise at the 2016 Republican National Convention to "do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens" — he even included the Q in the acronym. But he also included the T, yet has singled out transgender Americans for sustained hostility and discrimination.

Trump's promise then was a swipe at Islam, and, according to former Trump flack Sean Spicer, a bone thrown to persuade one convention delegate to withdraw his name from a "Never Trump" petition:

The final name that needed to be scrubbed from the petition, Spicer writes [in The Briefing: Politics, The Press, and The President], was that of Washington, D.C., delegate Robert Sinners. The book describes an alleged deal between Sinners, who Spicer says told the Manafort team “he wanted Donald Trump to support gay rights,” and senior Trump communications advisor Jason Miller.
“Jason assured Sinners that Trump would be the most ‘inclusive’ candidate the Republican Party ever had,” Spicer writes....
Sinners then reportedly signed “a form that officially removed his name from the petition,” and the deal was done.

The new campaign appears to be the pet project of Richard Grenell, Trump's Ambassador to Germany (who is also in the running to be named Ambassador to the United Nations). Grenell is a disciple of National Security Adviser John Bolton; his name showed up in my blog in 2012 when Mitt Romney dropped him as a foreign policy adviser as a sop to religious right-wingers alarmed that Grenell is openly gay.

Grenell cites the recent execution in Iran of a man accused of being gay as the impetus for the campaign:

Grenell called the hanging “a wake-up call for anyone who supports basic human rights,” in Bild, a leading German newspaper, this month.

“This is not the first time the Iranian regime has put a gay man to death with the usual outrageous claims of prostitution, kidnapping, or even pedophilia. And it sadly won’t be the last time,” Grenell wrote. “Barbaric public executions are all too common in a country where consensual homosexual relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging and death.”

As much as it is heartening to see our government standing up for LGBTQ rights in Iran, it is hard to imagine the Corrupt Trump Administration doing the same for LGBTQ rights in Saudi Arabia, where LGBTQ relationships are also "criminalized and punishable by flogging and death." After all, Trump could barely scrape up any trace of disappoval of the Saudis' murder of openly heterosexual journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Nor have we heard much from him about antigay repression in Russia, especially the disappearance, torture and murder of hundreds of LGBTQ Chechens.

As with virtually everything else about life in North Korea, we know precious little about the plight of its LGBTQ citizens; a gay defector last year painted a picture of oppression and forced denial. Homosexuality isn't technically illegal there; but as in any totalitarian country, the government can label anything "contrary to a socialist lifestyle," "obscene," or "decadent" as an excuse to prosecute whomever it wants.

It's a safe bet that safeguarding the rights of LGBTQ Koreans did not come up in conversations between Kim and Trump in Vietnam this week. Rather, the Corrupt Trump Administration's sole concern in LGBTQ rights anywhere is their usefulness as a wedge between western European liberalism and the Iranian theocracy.

Trump has not been able to persuade other signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal to join him in abrogating the agreement, in which Iran promised to limit its nuclear activities and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor their compliance, in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. Without European cooperation, Trump has no leverage to force some presumably more punitive deal on Iran.

So is he just being clever, calculating that liberal western politicians would rather go back to Square One on Iran's nuclear ambitions (even as nuclear powers India and Pakistan have begun shooting at each other) than to appear antigay? Maybe.

Or maybe not.

News reports this week suggest that, contrary to my cartoon, Vice President Mike Pence is more aware of the administration's brand new policy than President Trump himself is.

A reporter asked Trump about the global initiative, which is being spearheaded by U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest ranking openly gay person in the Trump administration.
At first, Trump seemed not to understand the question, asking the reporter to repeat it.
“Say it?” Trump said.
When the reporter referenced the push to decriminalize homosexuality across the globe, Trump professed unawareness and said something about reports in his administration.
“I don’t know which report you’re talking about,” Trump said. “We have many reports.”

Stop Me If You've Heard This

History, it is said, repeats itself. Or at least it rhymes. Or exhibits recurring themes and leitmotifs. Or wanders in circles. Or suffers flashbacks.

In the past week or so, the NRA elected itself a new leader best known for illegal arms sales; a foreign enemy released three American prisoners; Donald Joffrey Trump abrogated a treaty with Iran; and the White House complained that a criminal investigation was getting too close to the president had dragged on too long.

Where have I heard this song before? Doesn't that tree look familar?

When the Reagan administration's secret arms deal with Iran first came to light in 1986, it was immediately associated with the release of one of the hostages who were being held by various factions in Lebanon's civil war. Iran was backing Hezbollah there, while also in the sixth year of war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

I drew a connection with Nicaragua, whose socialist government had just arrested Eugene Hasenfus, an ex-marine from Marinette, Wisconsin. Hasenfus had been shot down while flying arms to right-wing rebels known as the Contras. I wasn't making the right connection, but I was in the right ballpark.

When the true Iran-Contra connection came to light, the Reagan administration line was that aid to the Nicaraguan guerillas was all the work of one U.S. Marines Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North.

It was a complicated scheme, involving North's funneling $10,000 from the Sultan of Brunei to a Swiss bank account (to the wrong account as it happened), and enlisting the aid of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega against the Nicaraguan government. (Overthrowing Noriega would become a priority of the George H.W. Bush administration.)

Since President Reagan had no idea what was going on, he was obliged to appoint former Senator John Tower (whom we discussed a couple weeks ago) to lead a commission tasked with investigating the Iran-Contra affair. The Tower Commission presented its findings to the president in March, 1987.

But that didn't bring an end to the matter. Attorney General Ed Meese named New York attorney Lawrence Walsh special counsel to determine whether to charge anyone with any crimes. Congress also held hearings into the Iran-Contra affair; Lt. Col. Ollie North was a star witness. He defended his having lied to Congress because he believed aiding the Contras through illegal arms sales was a "neat idea."

You never saw future NRA head honcho Ollie North on TV except in full military uniform, badges and all.

On March 16, 1988, a grand jury handed down a 23-count indictment against top administration officials, including future NRA top gun Ollie North. By the time any of the court trials got underway, Ronald Reagan was out of office. He was also exhibiting signs of senile dementia, although those closest to him were doing their best to conceal the problem and to pass it off as his usual aw-shucks folksy demeanor.

Walsh had concluded that Reagan had not himself broken the law, so popular speculation immediately after his presidency centered on whether he would be called upon to testify at the trials of his subordinates. Of more pressing concern to the first of these was paneling a jury that could be impartial in weighing the fate of future NRA don Ollie North.

But a jury was finally seated. In May, 1989, North was found guilty of three out of 16 federal charges: accepting an illegal gratuity, aiding and abetting in the obstruction of a congressional inquiry, and ordering the destruction of documents.

Appellate courts would ultimately set aside North's conviction, as well as those of Reagan's National Security Adviser Adm. James Poindexter and nine others. Five others — including former State Department official Elliott Abrams and former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger — were preëmptively pardoned by lame duck President George H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992.

There was no investigation of Walsh's investigation, of course. Bush's successor would have to endure a totally unrelated interminable investigation which was supposed to be about some Arkansas land deal in which Bill and Hillary Clinton had lost money. But it ended up being about extramarital affairs and —

I'm positive we passed that tree before!

Late Election Results

This week's elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere gave new hope to a beleaguered Democratic Party. It was much the same 25 years ago this week, when Democrats, who had seemed incapable of overcoming their electoral disadvantage in the South, Midwest and West, put an end to 12 years of Republican rule. Souljahback Saturday returns to my thrilling cartoons of yesteryear, as a nation overlooked accusations of sexual harassment to send Bill Clinton to the White House.

Here in Wisconsin, we participated in the Democratic sweep. We ousted Robert Kasten to send Russ Feingold to the Senate, and Armed Forces Committee Chair Les Aspin won decisively over first-time congressional candidate Mark Neumann. But the President-elect had other plans for Aspin...

...little realizing that two years and two elections later, the third time would be the charm for Mr. Neumann.

On his way out the door, President Bush issued a controversial pardon to Caspar Weinberger, who had been Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan and had been indicted for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal in June. Prosecutors added a new count to the indictment less than a week before Election Day, based on a diary entry that contradicted President Bush's claim of being "out of the loop" while the Iran-Contra scheme was concocted.

In December, the additional indictment against Weinberger was thrown out due to the statute of limitations having expired. Bush pardoned Weinberger and five other Reagan administration officials in time for Christmas.

On October 30, President Bush had come to my hometown to be interviewed by Larry King. I had joined a group of protesters on the presidential limousine's route to Memorial Hall, waving a sign mocking a quip Bush had made during one of the presidential debates about Bill Clinton's paper-thin experience in foreign policy.

From inside his brightly lit limousine rushing down Sixth Street at 35 miles per hour, it is extremely unlikely that President Bush was able to read any of our signs, or even to detect that we were protesting at all.

A month later, I drew these last two cartoons by way of appreciation for his handling of four years in which the world went through fundamental change seemingly overnight. I couldn't stand along the road waiting for his motorcade to drive by again, so as much as anything else, these were my apology for that Millie poster. Oh, we were (and are) still stuck with Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, but David Souter didn't turn out to be so bad.

I was particularly pleased at how this cartoon turned out visually, and it remains one of my all-time favorites.

Cartooning's Front Lines

Cartoon by Atena Faraghdani

This past extended weekend, I attended the annual convention of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists. I've been trying to get to one of these things for years, but again and again there has been one scheduling conflict or another.

This year's convention was in Columbus, Ohio, home of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. It also fell in the shadow of the assassinations of the cartoonists and editors at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, and the attempted shooting at Pam Geller's Cartooning Mohammed circus in Garland, Texas.

Registration desk at the Columbus College of Art & Design

With that in mind -- as well as the presence of an exhibit of cartoons drawn after the Charlie Hebdo attack and of a panel of cartoonists who have been imprisoned in their home countries for their work -- the security level was quite high. In addition to campus security at the Columbus College of Art and Design, we had city police, county sheriffs, under cover officers, and Homeland Security agents.

And, yes, a bomb-sniffing dog. After having left my heavy briefcase up on some upended construction materials during my first few trips to the bathroom, I decided that it might be wiser to leave it on the floor within easy sniffing range of Offissa Pup.

Most of the cartoonists' rights panel

A panel discussion entitled "Free Speech or Hate Speech?" was highly informative, but could have been improved if there had been someone on the panel representing Muslim sensibilities. With almost everyone in the room passionately devoted to artistic license, it fell to one young man (Palestinian, if I heard correctly) in the audience to attempt to argue against absolute freedom of speech.

In later conversations with my fellow ink-slingers, a few of us agreed that we had never had any reason to draw Mohammed before 2006 or since, and felt no compulsion to find an excuse to do so. The cartoon exhibit upstairs contained only one drawing of Mohammed, showing him commiserating with Jesus and Buddha over the murders committed in their respective names. My favorite was one by V. Cullum Rogers, depicting a religious fanatic with a smoking machine gun, standing over a slain cartoonist, while a voice from the dark clouds overhead says, "I don't get it."

At the banquet Saturday night, the Cartoonists' Rights Network International (CRNI) announced its Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award was going to Iranian cartoonist Atena Faraghdani, 29, currently in prison for drawing the cartoon at the top of this post depicting members of the Iranian parliament as cows and monkeys. The cartoon, protesting a vote to restrict women's contraceptive rights, has resulted in charges of "spreading propaganda against the system" and a 12-year-9-month prison sentence. Even her lawyer has now been arrested, just for shaking her hand in court.

All was not seriousness and warm-hued Threat Levels; I had a good time, gained some valuable insights, and met several fellow cartoonists whose work I admire greatly. I'll save some topics for Snoozeback Saturdays and other occasions.

Cartoons drawn after the Charlie Hebdo assassinations

Q Toon: Proportional Response

Usually, I try not to draw about the same topic two weeks in a row, but some stories just stick to the news like gum to a shoe.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) made news a couple weeks ago when he penned a letter to Iran lecturing them that the U.S. Senate would have to ratify whatever treaty the Obama administration and the European Union worked out with them, broadly hinting that of course, it won't. He was on CNN's Situation Room to discuss his strategy to blitzkrieg Iran into submission when host Wolf Blitzer asked him about the so-called "religious liberty" bill that Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson had sent back to the state legislature after the furor over Indiana's RLPA.

Apparently eager to steer the conversation back to his Iran talking points, Cotton pooh-poohed LGBT concerns about religious liberties legislation:

“I also think it’s important that we have a sense of perspective about our priorities. In Iran they hang you for the crime of being gay. ...”

Q Syndicate✒Apr 9, 2015

Of course, gays' and lesbians' lives and liberties are threatened in many other countries besides Iran -- in some cases at the urging of American activists who purport to be Christians.

I should note here that Cotton did in fact acknowledge that Christians don't have it easy in Iran, either, continuing,

“They’re currently imprisoning an American preacher for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ in Iran. We should focus on the most important priorities our country faces right now, and I would say that a nuclear armed Iran, given the threat that it poses to the region and to our interests in the region and American citizens, is the most important thing that we’d be focused on.”

Cotton was not, however, suggesting that the plight of that American preacher (or, indeed, of the 150 Christian students slaughtered at Garissa University College in Kenya -- or the 14 killed in the Lahore, Pakistan, church bombing; or the 21 Copts beheaded in Libya;  or in Nigeria; or in Syria... ) was comparable to the gross human rights tragedy of having to play piano for a gay wedding.

Syria Is Iran's Route to the Sea

"Syria is Iran's only ally in the Arab world. It's their route to the sea." -- Mitt Romney, in his third debate with President Obama, October 23, 2012

According to the Manchester Guardian, that was the sixth time that Mitt Romney has characterized Syria, which is separated from Iran by northern Iraq, as Iran's route to the sea.

"Maybe one of the few bright spots in the Middle East developments in the last year has been the rising of the people in Syria against Assad. Obviously, as you know, Syria is Iran's only Arab ally in the region. Syria is the route that allows Iran to supply Hezbollah with weapons in Lebanon. Syria is Iran's route to the sea." -- Romney, at the AIPAC conference, March 6, 2012

"Syria is their [Iran's] key ally. It's their only ally in the Arab world. It is also their route to the sea." -- Romney, in a Republican candidates' debate on February 22, 2012

See also an interview on MSNBC on December 21, 2011; an interview with the Washington Post on February 10, 2012; and an interview on Brian Kilmeade's radio program on March 14, 2012.

And here you thought Romney couldn't be consistent.

Toon from the Archives: Shock Light!

This week's cartoon (see yesterday's post) reminded me of a cartoon I drew in 1991:

The cartoon was based, more or less, on a shampoo commercial airing at the time, as well as on various ads for lower-calorie malt beverages.