American Views Abroad

As the only syndicated political cartoonist who also writes a syndicated column, my living depends on freedom of the press. I can't decide who's a bigger threat: the deluded Islamists who hope to impose Sharia law on Western democracies or the right-wing clash-of-civilization crusaders waving the banner of 'free speech'.....Most reasonable people reject both --- but neither is as dangerous to liberty as America's self-censoring newspaper editors and broadcast producers.

....Editors and producers decide not only what's fit to print but also what's not: flag-draped coffins and body bags arriving from Iraq, photographs of Afghan civilians, their bodies reduced to blobs of blood and protoplasm, all purged from our national consciousness.

...Europeans and Arabs see the horror wreaked in our name on their airwaves, assume that we see the same imagery and hate us for not giving a damn. America's self-censors make anti-Americanism worse.

www.commondreams.org/views06/0208-20.htm or www.tedrall.com