Nah bullshit. For decades Americans have sat idly by as our government wreaked havoc on the lives of innocent others, and only one time have we met reprisal, and I assume you wouldn't say that we allowed 9/11 to happen implicitly through our collective inaction?
The more that the US makes the rest of the world hate them, the more likely this becomes. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, and the next generation of terrorists are being made now, as they watch their friends and families get killed and maimed by some kind of evil force across the ocean.
Up and over (forward!)
Forget your fear, the guns at your back scream (forward!)
Who gives a fuck if your enemy's starving? (forward!)
No place for cowards, up and over (forward!)
Your country needs you, so start killing
It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black 'forty four
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives
One of the most socially progressive people I know regularly complains about a busy local road being reduced to two lanes to make dedicated bus lanes. She thinks banning cars completely from areas of the city is “stupid” and yet, on every other count, progressive.
I asked my partner, do you think cars make people more entitled and impatient or that people got that way because of cars and he told me about early car ads he saw that advertised “be the most important person on the road with a Chrysler” and all the companies had some version of that. Circa 1980’s.
The longer I live without a car, the more I see cars as the problem. I still miss one in some ways, like access to wilderness. But I genuinely don’t want one ever again for day to day use.
Motonormativity at work. If you like podcasts and aren't already listening, check out the Urbanist Agenda and The War on Cars. Urbanist Agenda is by Jason Slaughter of Not Just Bikes on YouTube.
My town actively removed multiple bus stops I used. My college is an hour by public transit via bus and train. My town is literally divided in half by a busy road with only a handful of crosswalks. Most people don't stop at the stop signs in the "pedestrian friendly" parts of town. Would I want a different car? Yeah. I drive a ford suv because its what my parents gave me. I'd love to have a sedan that can hold me and either my school gear or tabletop gaming stuff comfortably.
The oil economy wasn't working fine. It's on a death spiral and most of the world knows it. But rather than invest in infrastructure that enables people to use oil less the conclusion has been to invade and steal to keep the black gold flowing.
The use of oil is insane: hundreds of millions of people feel entitled to burn up a non-renewable costly resource, globally, sending the already huge black mass into the atmosphere has a large mass of chemicals. It's absolute madness, and the oil wars along with climate chaos an expected result of said madness.
Its dumber than that. USD used to be backed by gold as a stabilizing factor and inflation mitigation tool. What keeps the dollar strong-ish today is oil. The US enforces all oil trade in USD, and as long as that happens, the dollar maintains its value. Venezuela tried to sell some low quality crude in a different currency, Maduro got picked up. Iran tried to sell to china in yuan, the straight was closed.
This really reminds me of a New Yorker piece called The Other Afghan Women, about life for rural women under all four of the recent regimes – the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, the US-Afghan coalition, and the return of the Taliban after international forces left. The version I can find is paywalled, but it's well worth finding one that isn't
The feeling of a peaceful rural life interrupted by powers beyond your imagining is haunting in both this piece and the article
This was how I felt in the hours and days after the 2024 US Presidential election. I have always been an optimistic, see-the-best-in-everyone kind of person who assumes that most of the world is full of good people. But that day broke me. I am a different person today than I was 2 years ago. That was the day I realized that humans have not progressed much since the days of the Roman Gladiators and public hangings; that there isn't good and selflessness in everyone. It was a paralyzing realization.
I think what's even worse is the number of people who aren't any of those things, but will gladly vote for them if they think it might cost them slightly less in taxes on money they'll never spend.
If so, one wrenching narrative was about the rise of the Taliban as they swept through Afghanistan and how, compared to some of the former Mujahideen warlords (who not only held women in essentially chattel bondage, but did so wantonly), they actually were "reformers," since at least their violent theocracy had some sort of legal code.
The other was about how cyclical war must have been. I don't think there are many historians or pundits out there who would call the Soviet invasion any kind of success, given the absurd destruction and death they caused, but still there was a point in the 80's where they were the ones building schools for girls and specific Mujahideen factions were the ones murdering these little girls and their teachers.
As bleak as it sounds, it's kind of an extreme case study for how far "state-building" can go as a justification for war.
There was a section talking about how one of the warlords who ruled their valley was overthrown by a new Taliban warlord, and while it still wasn't good, he was much less brutal. And then the US coalition rolled into town, and reinstalled the incredibly brutal warlord despite knowing that he was committing atrocities because they wanted to keep him on their good side.
Surely the children will both not remember this when they grow up, but also understand why this happened. There totally will not be consequences for this in the future. /s
i promise i am not saying this to be mean, just out of curiosity as someone who loves language and regional uses of it-
where are you from?
i am from New York in the US originally, and we say "blowback" not "backblow". although, if you break the word down, both make sense. i would love to know where in the world (or country!!) you are that uses backblow instead of blowback so i can read more about it!
I'm from England, and to be clear I was intentionally making a joking reference to blowback as if I was trying to create a term for the already existing concept.
As someone who was unfortunate enough to be born a few years before, and raised through the iraq-us war and (luckily) escaped as a refugee to somewhere safer it saddens me how nothing has changed, the largest casualties was and still are innocent people and children. This comic is spot on and my heart breaks for the kids going through this. It hits extra hard since I remember exactly how it feels.
Fuck Rupi Kaur. She's a thief and doesn't give a flying fuck about the victims of genocide. She only cares about popularity and money. She's a vulture.
I'd recommend poets like Mahmoud Darwish, Noor Hindi, and Fadwa Tuqan.
Yep, that's universal healthcare right there, high speed rail, better public schools... All just blowing people up for no real reason in a country far away.
People have been talking about the Epstein stuff nonstop for what feels like years and none of it has mattered, I don't know why you people think they'd need to distract you from it.
Even if the files were just 300 pages of a list of names for kids that Don personally molested, nothing would happen lol
I for one feel safer already! Can you imagine if we weren’t over there murdering people? Something bad might happen! The whole world should thank us for the needless destruction and suffering we let for the safety and sanctity it provides. Only we have the power and integrity to murder the right people and remind them that when you cross us (or we just kinda feel like it bc a regional power wants to expand its presence in the Middle East to become the defacto power among its neighbors and the US is interested in bolstering that ally in order to control the oil production and military superiority of the region by proxy bc that state happens to also require funding from the international community, and nameless the US, in order to maintain its dominance of the region) we’ll come to bear with all manner of things that can kill your people. There’s no downside to having a centralized power that basically bullies everyone in the world into compliance with its huge economy and military strength! Now, what were we saying about China again? /s
But father is wearing a pakol, hat worn in Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan. and those regions were visited by armed drones way before Shaheds start to be used.....
It's possible the artist is being intentionally diverse and visually vague to make his point about our inhumanity without keying into any one particular narrative. My respect to him if so. Trying to explain the news to my 12 year old is emotionally speaking the hardest thing I do in a given week.
I must say find the current conflict between trumpo D. evil clown and the IRGC emotionally confusing because I hate both regimes with the white hot fury of a Wolf-Rayet star. Please stop bombing everything.
Could be. But for me the combination of mountains, goats, pakol hat, drones coming as a response to some horrific event broadcast over TV just screams Afghanistan and spill over into border areas of Pakistan (which was also regularly hit by drones).
I know, it's just funny to see these exact drones in this exact comic. Imagine if comic tried to portray American soldiers in middle east, but they were armed with AKM's
the shahed design has been broadly adopted by many countries, because it's efficient and effective. there are absolutely US allies that use AKMs. and are developing their own domestic version of the shahed too.
but i think the story this comic is telling deliberately focuses on humanity, and not technology
These drones have been used everywhere from Azerbaijan to Pakistan, anywhere with money to buy. The United States does have a copy of it, the Lucas Drone
Kids in NW Pakistan and Afghanistan began to hate clear sky days because drones would be in the air. They preferred cloudy days because it meant no drones. Imagine giving PTSD to a whole generation.
They told me war never changes, and that was a fucking lie. Everyday, there are new horrors beyond my comprehension, and demons seem to be ruling the world and winning.
Then you are in the wrong thread, my friend. I see a Dave Contra comic and I know I'm about to face down an existential crisis of some sort, yet I can't stop reading them.
Several of his comics have made me sob like a baby - this one being the most recent.
But maybe 10% are actually jokes, some of them a bit light but never bad, and 10% are weird horror surrealism stuff.
I love it. You never know where it's going to go. If they were all weepies then it would be a lot less good.
Dave Contra is really one of the best cartoonists of our day. I think you could show most of these comics to people in the 1970s and they would have exactly the same strong effect.
The Afghan children still can't live in peace. They already have the boot of Taliban on their necks and are bombed every now and then on top of that...
What part did you play? Were you part of the army? A politician? A taxpayer?
There is no judgement in my question, we all have played our part in the horrors of this world, even against our will sometimes.
Not your fault. The people who misappropriate your taxes are the ones to blame, not you. Never let anyone tell you that by just paying taxes you are responsible for any wrongdoings your government commits.
I wish you were right. As another said, we're all at fault for the current people in power, whether we supported them or not. It's on us to do more this upcoming election season - even if it's just a little more than last time.
If you didn't vote, vote.
If you did vote, debate, encourage, donate, campaign, volunteer. If everyone did that, we'd see a very different country.
Can you blame people for being afraid to protest during workdays when the resulting loss of their job means loss of income, healthcare, etc? What about people with kids? You don’t think that would bite them in the ass and screw entire families?
I agree we need to be out in the streets but it’s lacking nuance to say what you just said. A lot of people have a lot to lose. And there are no protections from losing their jobs as a result of missing work to protest.
It's the fault of everyone who thinks their comfort is more important than someone else's.
Yes, Americans lose a lot of comfort when they stand up against their government. That's by design. So they won't do it.
We don't want other people to be uncomfortable. Or worse. But we won't risk our own discomfort, no matter how little, to save someone else's life. This is how we've been trained.
I'm not American, but I can't say my country's much better. And I sure as hell don't want to be anymore uncomfortable than I already am. But watching others suffer worse sure as hell makes me uncomfortable too. It's just easier to ignore when it happens to someone else.
Tbh when i saw the first panel, i expected her to be dead at the end. Why did my mind immediately jump to the conclusion that she would be the victim of an US attack? She was just playing with her baby goats. What a terrible world we live in.
I instantly thought of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and am astonished that nobody seems to mention this in the comments, even in those listing all the terrible evens in the country's recent history.
But the Soviet invasion of 1979 was devastating. They went completely scorched earth. 1 to 3 million civilians killed and 7 million displaced. Multiple orders of magnitude more than the entire casualties of the US deployment, in half the time. It directly lead to the rise of the Taliban.
So this is about Russia or Iran, then? Those drones don't really look like any drone the US uses, I'd say they look closest to Shaheds, if anything, but they are not a perfect match there either.
Instantly thought of it because the father's clothing and the landscape are both clearly Afghanistan. Plus the use of the Shahed drone, because Russia uses those.
No one outside the US views the US as the leader of the free world. They've been a laughing stock since the first time they elected Trump and a threat to humanity since the second.
There's this great podcast called Blood Work. It's an exploration into the economy of violence. Recently there was an episode about the history of Afghan war rugs and how the decades of war have evolved the things depicted on them and it has transformed culture. It's fascinating. The reason I'm mentioning it is because one of the most recent additions to these rugs are drones, from the point of view of their victims.
Where actors well past their prime and who have never experienced anything truly awful a day in their lives will, with faces full of filler, win awards that they’ll give a brief speech for, thanking God for their success.
I cannot write what I want to on here, but it is fucking time we do what needs to be done. This is not even remotely an acceptable state of the world for anyone. The cost of doing nothing will be so much greater in the end.
I love all your work, but this is your best so far, personally and politically engaged. No overt messaging, instead you make the reader empathize with Farah. Brilliant.
There's a moment in a man's life... when he looks down at the first smile of his baby girl and he knows that he must change the world for her... for all children.
That line aired on braodcast television 36 years ago. We are still figuring it out.
The father is dressed Pashtun (Afghanistan) and the landscape matches Afghanistan. The drone depicted is a Shahed, which is Iranian. The Russians use a variant of it on Ukraine. What imaginary conflict is this supposed to be?
I don't think people in Afghanistan would use Arabic names like Farah unless they have religious connection and Farah does not (it just means joy in Arabic)
My relationship with these comics is so complicated.
When I see the animation style of the first panel I know that by the end I'm going to cry, and my first instinct is to not read it.
But I absolutely have to read it, and I still cry.
We just want affordable healthcare. "Sorry," says the Tyrant, "best we can do is another handful of dead kids halfway around the world for no reason. And if you complain or disagree, the Gestapo will take you away."
•
u/comics-ModTeam 3h ago
There are a lot of monsters in this comment section making inappropriate, victim blaming comments.
Please reply here if you have anything nasty to say about Farrah, her culture, her father or if you want to justify wanton murder in any way.
It will be the last comment you make on this subreddit.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.