Click to read the whole strip.
The strip is not political, but those first two frames capture an experience very familiar to most conservatives; if not racism, they’ll be accused of some related form of bigotry in almost any debate of a socio-political nature. The only good thing about the wildly indiscriminate charge of racism is that overuse has begun to blunt its impact.
The exact same thing can be said of conservatives.
“Yew hate amerikuh! Yewre a terririst and yew wanna see an islamic caliphate”
“That’s not what i said. I said the 9/11 attacks were responses to the US military occupation of the middle east and support for Israeli ethnic cleansing.”
And “Israeli ethnic cleansing” is a response in kind.
But it’s true that a lot of people use the charge of anti-Americanism or un-Americanism that way, including a surprising number of people on the left. I think they’re so used to being charged with anti/un-Americanism that they get a big charge out of returning it. The right unfortunately is the same way with the charges of racism and sexism–what a thrill to be able to call a liberal racist or sexist. So it goes.
“That’s not what i said. I said the 9/11 attacks were responses to the US military occupation of the middle east and support for Israeli ethnic cleansing.”
Cowbot, an assertion like that like that is likely to get an ad hominem response because:
1. No component of the Middle East had been occupied by the United States or any other occidental power after 1971, bar briefly Kuwait in 1991.
2. There was no ‘Israeli ethnic cleansing’ either.
How did I miss this cartoon?
AMDG
I don’t know–it’s not exactly inconspicuous, is it?
Re “occupation”: if I remember correctly (but I’m not going to dig up Osama bin Gone’s ravings to check), it was any American (or presumably other infidel) military presence that was the putative crime. “Occupation” implies conquest and subjugation. I think “presence” is a much more accurate term.
From 1990 to 2002, the United States, with the consent of the Saudi government, maintained a troop force on the Arabian peninsula. The mean size of this force was 6,200 men. A troop force that size might be enough to subdue a recalcitrant city of about 800,000. Saudi Arabia at that time had a population of 17 million subjects supplemented by about 2 million foreign residents. IIRC, these troops were not located in any population centers. If I am not mistaken, other than a scatter of defense attaches and embassy guards, those would have been the only American troops billeted in the Arab world or adjacent areas at that time.
Joseph Sobran actually wrote a defense of Osama bin Laden where he treated his demand that these troops be removed (and, by extension, his reactive program to the presence of these troops) as perfectly reasonable. (As if sovereign countries allowed their security policies to be dictated by expatriate freebooters). Sobran also wrote a column offering that the U.S. Navy had it coming when one of our ships was bombed when refueling in Yemen because we had no business having a ship in the Indian Ocean. Sobran, for whatever reason, was willing to offer his endorsement to the free floating malice of a bunch of foreign brigands. Sobran may have been odd re the general run of political commentary, but he was a much honored figure in certain circles. (And he loathed the State of Israel as well. Now who does that remind me of…..?)
The actual stationing of troops doesn’t really convey the extent of our involvement, but be that as it may, “occupation” is still not accurate.
Sobran was a sad case. He was a very gifted man and a fine writer in his better days.
Light On Dark Water 
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