Letter: Iraq war’s absurdity cartoonish, not funny

Tuesday, May 1, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.

I remember a cartoon I saw many years ago as a young lad. Unfortunately, the situation it depicted calls to mind our country's predicament in Iraq and how we got there.

The cartoon pictures some silly characters piling bricks in the middle of a street and topping them off with a lantern. A passer-by calls out, "why are you piling bricks in the street?" The bricklayers reply, "to hold up the lantern."

"Then what is the lantern for?" the passer-by demands. "So people can see the bricks," comes the answer. To a 10-year-old this is hilariously funny; seeing so-called adults engaged in the height of such foolishness is pure delight.

However, to a 70-year-old now seeing the Bush administration indulging itself in the same sort of lunacy, with hundreds of lives being lost every week, it isn't close to being funny; it is sad and deplorable.

"Why are our soldiers in Iraq?" we ask. "Because the bad guys are shooting at us," the president replies. "But why are they shooting at us?" we inquire. "Because we're in Iraq," would be the honest reply.

However, we never hear those words of honesty from President Bush because he knows (as does everyone by now who has given the situation five minutes' thought) that the truthful answer would be too revealing.

It would expose the Bush administration's complete inability or unwillingness to do what's right for the vast majority of Americans and our soldiers. It would also invite too much attention to what a wonderful job they really are doing in lining the pockets of the administration's best friends, the equals of the "bricklayers" and the "lantern manufacturers," the war profiteers.

David J. Mackett, Las Vegas