The Vietnam War was also ignored by our ink-and-paint warriors for the same reasons described above, but that is far from the whole story. Early returns from Vietnam suggested that the war was not winnable without massive American commitment. This commitment was made regardless of the wishes of the American people, who were fed carefully concocted lies about the progress of a war that escalated into a military nightmare. Combat in Vietnam was confused and chaotic, with no clear distinction between enemy and ally. The leader of our South Vietnamese client was Ngo Dinh Diem, a figure so corrupt that our government authorized a fatal coup against him. The discovery of American atrocities, including the revelation of the massacre at My Lai, proved our own soldiers to be capable of acts previously ascribed only to our most barbaric enemies. As the war finally spiraled into a hallucinatory orgy of waste and destruction with no evident result, much of the nation rose against it, tearing America apart along racial and generational lines.

Our beloved cartoons could not fight in such a war, despite the many examples of heroism and valor by our forces in Vietnam. The same cartoon character that took up arms would probably have no idea whom he was fighting or even why. He might be depicted burning down innocent villages in a “Zippo raid,” shooting up heroin in a fetid jungle hooch, or fragging his own commanding officer. Audiences back home would likely boo his every appearance on the screen, which would be problematic enough in the first place; by the Vietnam era it had become distasteful to depict racial stereotypes of any sort, and vicious caricatures of Asians may have been more likely to draw sympathy for the enemy instead. As John Wayne was to discover, no motion picture star (animated or otherwise) could have played cheerleader for a war that had grown so violently unpopular.

Only two cartoons are generally associated with the Vietnam War, and both serve as examples of the bitter cynicism that characterized the times. Old Glory was a 1939 Warner Bros. cartoon directed by Chuck Jones in which the spirit of Uncle Sam instructs Porky Pig as to the importance of the Pledge of Allegiance. The film was often shown before rock concerts in West Coast venues such as the Fillmore during the late Sixties; audiences would hoot derisively at the film’s ending, delighted at the sight of a pig saluting the American flag. The other film was an underground short called Mickey Mouse in Vietnam. Some rumors (probably apocryphal) attribute this film to several antiwar Disney animators who allegedly made it in secret. Mickey Mouse, meant to symbolize innocent youth, is drafted, put through rigorous boot camp, and sent to Vietnam. He is shot dead almost immediately upon arrival.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut took a rare politically incorrect stand when it lampooned Saddam Hussein. © Comedy Partners, Inc. All rights reserved.

Wartime animation died in Vietnam along with Mickey. After the duplicity and horror of Vietnam, Americans had lost their taste for war and no longer seemed to accept many justifications for it. They could hardly be blamed. In a country that found military propaganda tiresome and hard to swallow after Johnson and Nixon, not everyone believed that the Persian Gulf war was a noble foray to liberate the oppressed. Our opponent, the detestable Saddam Hussein, was actually “on our side” at one point in the past. To the puzzlement of all but the cynics, he remained fully in power after defeat. Again, political correctness forbade the enemy from being savagely stereotyped. With all this considered, what sort of propaganda could Bugs Bunny (or, by then, the Tiny Toons) successfully disseminate? The only shot Hussein took from animation was fired by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, and that came eight years after the war had ended.

Even following September 11, 2001, the response was less than enthusiastic from our animated heroes despite the fact that no external enemy had inflicted so many civilian casualties since the British torched Washington, D.C. No Powerpuff Girl, Justice League member, or inhabitant of Bikini Bottom ever throttled Osama Bin Laden and his minions for their perfidious deeds, and none are ever likely to. Depicting our extremist enemies in order to have Kim Possible cut them down would be offensive to...but why go on? We responded to the attack with far more sadness and solemnity than rage; our vengeance limited to blasting caves on the other side of the world and attempting to run down scattered Al Qaeda members like so many cockroaches. Americans mourned, put flags in their windows and entered one wearisome global war requiring eternal vigilance. As we prepare to thrash the hummus out of Iraq, we do so knowing that most of the world does not agree, and we ask our leaders for proof that this is a sound decision. This is not the mood in which a nation prepares for war, so why expect patriotic exhortations from our cartoons? The time when American animation went to war is over; if only the same could be said for war itself.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.