Many of the best editorial cartoons of 2001 – 2 as selected by the volume
are somewhat predictable—Lady Liberty weeps, Old Glory waves, bald eagles
soar, firefighters march through heaven’s gates, and Osama bin Laden burns in hell.
While many of the cartoons incorporate terms like terrorists and Bin Laden, the
words Muslim and Islam remain conspicuously absent. Still, for every image that
strikes a note of mourning, another adopts a more belligerent stance. While some
illustrations express open-faced wonder—How could this have happened?—others
treat the attacks as declarations of war. In the days and weeks that followed 9/11,
many editorial cartoonists called for military action against al-Qaeda in general and
Bin Laden in particular. In many instances, these calls came from papers published
in the southern or western parts of the United States. From the examples provided
by Brooks’s volume, there seems to have been an inverse correlation between proximity
to the attacks and blanket support for military action.