B.D. has been in the Reserves for most of that period and Trudeau is accurately noting that B.D. himself has only gone on three tours. It is not a reference to how many times the U.S. has gone out and killed people, but how often the character B.D. has volunteered to put himself in harm’s way. Grenada and Panama, for example, were organized and executed before any Reserve or Guard units could be called up.
I guess I may have reacted to today’s language, without remembering the previous week’s strips. Comics don’t seem to stick with me - I read them, and they’re gone. Today’s words just struck me as odd. Still do a bit.
In my opinion, this action was misguided and unnecessary from the start. And if someone joined up after it was begun, in several small ways their action furthered the administration’s agenda.
Bottomline, we waged an offensive war against a sovereign nation, who did not pose an immediate threat to us. I don’t see an obligation to respect someone’s choice to willingly assist in such an endeavor. Sure, they have the right to make that decision, but I have every right to believe that decision is wrong.
Which is a shame. Because a large part of me wishes to afford a great deal of respect and gratitude to anyone who dons a uniform. Current and recent events just muddle my thoughts so…
Correct. He volunteered for service in Viet Nam, the first Gulf war (Desert Storm) and this one. Although… IIRC from reading my compiliation big books, he and Boopsie were in the hot tub when he got called up for active duty, so I am not sure this counts as volunteering. Hmm. Or, was he called up for Iraq and volunteered for Desert Storm? Damn. !!
Then again, Zonker Harris volunteered for Viet Nam to get out of Finals. Brilliant !!!
Cartooniverse
If my memory is correct, B. D. was in the regular army during the Vietnam War. Afterwards, he became either a reservist or a member of the National Guard. He went to the First Gulf War and to the war in Iraq as a reservist (or a member of the National Guard) because his unit was called up in each case. Granted, it doesn’t make a great deal of sense that he would continue to be a reservist this long. But that’s typical of the characters in Doonesbury. They age, but they often seem to be in a time warp. The most obvious example of this is Zonker Harris, who doesn’t seem to have changed much since the strip began in 1970.
Dinsdale writes:
> Comics don’t seem to stick with me - I read them, and they’re gone.
I don’t mean this as an insult, but this isn’t a good idea for Doonesbury. Every character has a history. A long, long history. There are no individual strips that stand on their own. The central set of characters in the strip (Mike Doonesbury, B. D., Boopsie (I think), Zonker Harris, Bernie) are all about 54 years old. Like me, they started college in 1970. Even one-week-long series of strips are meant to be read as a single unit in Doonesbury and are often incomprehensible when only a single strip is read.
No and No. It was B.D. who volunteered for Vietnam to get out of finals!
I think the war was a big mistake, and wish we’d never gone in.
I’m a 47-year old man who’s never been in the military. Last year, through my civil service job, I volunteered for a four-month deployment in Iraq. I did so for various reasons, some personal, some patriotic, some financial. I worked hard, made friends, got shot at – it was a priceless experience.
Nobody opposed to the war has ever given me grief upon hearing that I volunteered to go to Iraq. On the contrary, I’m sometimes embarrassed at how demonstrative people are, whether or not they agree with the decision to invade.
(But deep down, on a personal level, I am very grateful for such gestures).
IMO, no one has to act as if they respect anything they truly don’t respect. (That would criminalize thought).
But ideally, IMO, people should treat each other with common courtesy (I’ll thank you to wait until my back’s turned to cuss me out 
).
Mum always encouraged us not to feel ill will towards soldiers in Northern Ireland, reminding us that quite a few of them would have signed up simply seeking employment as they found it nowhere else. I’m sure there’s perhaps more respect to be gained by joining a dangerous career instead of sitting round claiming the dole, but then I could say much the same of teachers, nurses etc. There are many financial incentives, as much as any sense of duty for those jobs.
I suppose it all depends what respect BD’s asking for, something more than the common courtesy noted above?
Political background: I have been against this Iraq conflict since the very beginning. I was one of those paranoid people who feared that President Bush would mire us in Iraq to avenge his father even before the question was answered of who won the election in 2000. I was not against the first gulf war; we fought an aggressor who was invading, unprovoked, an ally of ours. I thought the first President Bush made a wise choice in stopping when he did.
We still need the military and national guard. If no one volunteered, then they would conscript, of this I have no doubt. If it were not for volunteers, others would be found to serve. As for the soldiers who have volunteered supporting this administration’s policies, well, that is their right. I respect that they are putting their body in harms way to support their political choice. Many volunteers do not support this administration’s policies, but had other reasons to volunteer, some practical, some idealistic, and some not very well thought out. I don’t think their political leanings should matter to me. What matters is that they are serving honorably, and for every soldier who serves honorably, he or she being there might make all the difference.
There are many who do not serve honorably. Those who rape, those who commit various atrocities we always see in war despite clear laws and code against. These do not show honor and bring shame to us all. I believe that most of these entered with the intent to server honorably and failed. I also imagine there are those that do volunteer with less than honorable intent. I hope these are few and far between and are screened out for the most part.
Even knowing that some will fail to serve honorably, I respect all those who enter with honorable intent. We still need a military and a guard.
Actually, it was to get out of a term paper. But the sentiment was there.
Again, the specific scenario in this week’s series of strips is that some of the students in Sloan’s class have an attitude that at the same time either supports the war or acquiesces to it, and gives lip service to the “support the troops” mantra, but by their actions and speech reveal that they demean and dismiss those who actually serve as fools, dead-enders, or members of a lesser caste.
What Trudeau’s doing is going to the territory covered by others like Moore have before, with their question *“Hey, Mr. Congressman/CEO/Upper-Middle-Class-Guy/Conservative Intellectual , if this is such a Great and Noble Struggle in which we all must Support Our Troops, how come YOUR son is not joining up” * . . . and his editorial claim, made by putting words in the character’s mouth, is that the “chickenhawks” don’t really “respect” or “support” the troops but rather look down upon them as mere cannon fodder, doing the “dirty work”.
… now that I think of it, of course, it’s also a way for Trudeau to indirectly tell his fellow anti-war liberals that since (in his opinion) the hawks’ “support for the troops” is phony and condescending, it behooves the doves to actually show some respect (hence the teaming up of BD with pacifist Scot Sloan).
No one should respect soldiers who commit atrocities. Charles Grainer–the ringleader at Abu Ghraib–doesn’t deserve respect. The appalling actions of many German and Japanese troops during WW2 and the purely evil schemes of the Nazi government make it hard to respect their soldiers. But I can feel some sympathy for an ordinary Wehrmacht grunt getting his ass kicked at Stalingrad.
Most of the Iraqi “insugents” are really criminal sectarian gangs who spend more time murdering their fellow Iraqis than fighting the Americans. Their main motivation in attacking Americans is that the Americans are keeping them from mudering as many Iraqis as they’d like.
I remember meeting up with fellow veteran buddies in 1970, and feeling our way around each other’s feelings about the war. I saw a lot of reflexive anger against the “hippies spitting on returning veterans” and the like. What I never saw was a veteran who thought the war itself was anything but a politically orchestrated cluster fuck.
None of us thought that Johnson had respect for us, nor Nixon. None of us believed that anyone actually gave a rat’s ass about the enlisted grunts that died, and got wounded, and got oranged, and got suicidally depressed about killing people. Some were still in favor of trying to win the war. Most were just happy to have come back more or less whole. Most of us got stoned a lot more than the hippies, 'cause we had much better connections.
Tris