The Sport of War

My two favorite antiwar posters: the president as a runningback with a missile cradled against his chest and his right hand extended in a Heismanesque stiffarm, and as a cowboy riding a bucking missile a la "Dr. Strangelove." Given Bush's macho (yet sporty!) posturing with the UN yesterday--"The game is over" for Iraq, he said--the imagery seems apt. A new website takes the sports-as-war metaphor a step further, elegantly subverting the team logos of three NFL teams in a clever critique of Bush's war motivations.

Jim Lasser, the logos' (re)designer, e-mailed his rationale:

I believe Americans' choices about war are made with little regard to the true pain that is involved. Our 20th Century war experiences have left us quite insulated to the true face of war: what it means to see your home burned, your factories bombed, or your children slaughtered. Though I am not flatly opposed to the use of force, I wish there was a truer national context on which our opinions are made. Sometimes I feel, while watching the excitement with which the media "reports" on the coming war, that we are witnessing the countdown to the big game, rather than the coming tragedies of millions of human lives. Thus, war = sport; another means to entertain ourselves in front of the safety of the television. (And we thought 9-11 changed everything.)

(Thanks Ben.)