Today, I spent a couple of hours in the late afternoon putting the finishing touches on tomorrow's ROADFROGS strip. I had no idea what was happening in Boston until my wife came home from work and told me about the bombings. We, of course, turned on the TV and watched the coverage on various networks.
I think most of us certainly reflected on 9-11, but I had another line of thought going through my head, too. Back in the late eighties, when Jeff Roberts and I were trying to develop G.I. Jeff: A Really Average Hero, I came up with a character I wanted to use as a baddie: Achmed Malahende Achmed was his name. The whole concept of this character was very politically incorrect, and is probably more so these days. That very political incorrectness was a large part of the character's appeal for me and Jeff. We never got around to building a storyline for Achmed, but the basic premise was that he was a devout (but not necessarily zealous) Arab Muslim, who - while no jihadist - wreaked terror in his wake ... totally without intent. He would be the "accidental terrorist". Jeff and I were really into playing with popular book, song and movie titles, thereby coming up with some (mostly lame) story ideas. There was a popular book out (I think it was by Anne Perry, but I could be wrong about that and I don't feel like doing my research right now) entitled "The Accidental Tourist". Jeff and I got a few chuckles out of the concept, but as our work on the G.I.Jeff comic fizzled out, Achmed kind of fell by the wayside too.
I didn't really think about Achmed again until, in the wake of 9-11, there was quite a bit of confusion and contention regarding Muslims in the US, as well as in other Western nations. Had I tried to resurrect the Achmed character in, say, 2003, I would have probably been lauded in some corners of society and lambasted in others.
Right now, as I write this, we don't know who is responsible for the reprehensible terrorist act that was perpetrated today in Boston. If it turns out to be an Islamic group, I imagine that many here in the US will call for a clamp-down on the freedoms of Arabs and other Muslims here in the states. There will be others who will say that we cannot limit the freedoms of the few without, by default, limiting the freedoms of all. And there will many who will offer some kind of compromise which will probably just be a waste of time.
I don't know the answers to the dilemnas we face in the wake of this attack. And, as shallow as it may sound, I just wish we could all get along. But, just as in fiction, conflict is what moves the story - in this case the story of America. In my lifetime, I've seen awesome and awful events, many with resounding and enduring effects on our nation and its people. Today would seem to mark the beginning of a new chapter in the "age of domestic terror" in which some would say we find ourselves. Maybe so, but I prefer to think that this event might just be a footnote in the larger story of the forging of this nation. A story of which I hope I don't live to see the end.
And I plan to be around for a long time.
Maybe, if I live long enough, there will come a time when I can write and draw a silly little G.I.Jeff story about Achmed Malahende Achmed, the accidental terrorist. Without recrimination.
In the mean time, my prayers are with the injured, the murdered, their families and the investigators who are trying to sort all this out. And I pray that this event might be something that draws us, as Americans, together rather than driving yet another wedge between us.
