Marc Simont

The Beautiful Planet: ours to lose Marc Simont

This impassioned anti-war cartoon book by one of America?s foremost illustrators answers again—in visual images and for different countries—the question posed by Norman Mailer 42 years ago in Why Are We in Vietnam?

In other words, why are we half way around the world killing people who have done us no harm?

Marc Simont?s cartoons are satiric dispatches from the front, beginning with Vietnam and ending in Iraq and Afghanistan (so far). His drawings capture the essence of a brooding Nixon, a smiling Reagan, a bland Bush One and a dumbfounded Bush Two as they prosecute their wars. Simont?s fierce portrayals of representatives of the Military-Industrial Complex—from Kissinger to Rumsfeld to Negroponte and Cheney—are intimately linked to his passionate sympathy and indignation on behalf of all civilians, soldiers and prisoners who have suffered. Simont is continually struck by the majesty of the planet as it floats in space like a jewel. Will it survive?