Posted on Sep 18, 2014
By Mark Fiore
The U.S. plan to fight Islamic State with a coalition of countries, including gems like Saudi Arabia, should make us reflect carefully about the motives behind the operation. In Mark Fiore's new animation, the cartoonist points out the inherent hypocrisy and contradictions involved in attacking brutal IS forces with brutal forces of our own (and while he focuses on Saudi Arabia, it's also worth turning the mirror on some U.S. military tactics which, lest we forget, were recently deemed torture). Read about Fiore's inspiration in his customary introduction and watch his latest animation below.
Now that the United States is forming another military coalition tocombat evil in the Middle East, maybe we should pause to take a closer look at the members of this coalition. Sure, ISIS is terrible and does awful things like behead people, but they’ve got nothing on Saudi Arabia, whichbeheads people as a matter of policy.
Between August 4th and 22nd, Saudi Arabia executed 22 people, bringing the yearly total to 34. (They executed 79 people in 2013 and killed 2000 people between 1985 and 2013.) They recently killed four members of thesame family for drug trafficking.
I’m not saying every one of our allies in the fight against ISIS has to be perfect, but it does seem a bit hypocritical when one of our most important allies in the Middle East has such a thing for beheading— just something to keep in mind when the next terrible ISIS beheading video is released. Nobody seems to get worked up when prisoners who have been tortured and condemned by a religious court are beheaded in a public square, as long as it happens in Saudi Arabia. Dogboy is a little confused by this whole thing, and Mr. Dan is trying desperately to make the world black and white. You can of course find more links about the news behind this cartoon here.
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