The Prophet and the Profiteer

How good is Garry Trudeau, author of the Doonesbury comic strip? Since he began nationally syndicating his political satire after graduating from Yale around the same time as Bush, his lampoons have preceded actual events.

I am thinking first of the trucker’s strike of 1975, which he first incorporated into a plot line weeks before it happened. Then wicked poison pen premonitions of Watergate, Contragate and the administration of G.H.W. Bush, whom he depicted as a feather.


This year he has been using a crystal ball to draw his strip, jumping on the issue of PTSD in returning Iraq veterans long before it hit the news pages. On Monday, he began skewering the administration’s vile policy in Iraq with the insane but funny notion that Ray, a continuing character as a combat veteran, finally returned home, but with a terrorist following him as a puppy might.

Today, the president of the United States, in a bizarre and self-defeating speech comparing Iraq to Vietnam, actually said:

“ … (I)f we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America.”