The Comics Journal: Interviews

Message Board
Contact Us

Ted Rall
Interviewed by Gary Groth
excerpted from The Comics Journal #247

GARY GROTH: Let me begin by asking about your interest in the 'stans, which predated 9/11 if I'm not mistaken. Had you gone over there before?

TED RALL: Yeah, I'd been to Central Asia four times previously.

GROTH: Was your interest in the 'stans based on your interest in geo-politics in general, or did it go beyond that?

RALL: Well, it actually goes back to when I was a kid. When I was 12 years old, my mom subscribed to National Geographic for me and one time there was a big spread about what was then called the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Kazakhstan was described by National Geographic as the most rugged, most remote place on earth. And I thought, "Wow, if the guys from National Geographic say that, it's got to be true." I was always really taken aback by this photo spread that just showed these massive empty spaces. I grew up in suburban Ohio, so that was exactly the opposite of what I was used to. All of my life, I always wanted to go. Then in 1997, I was a staff writer at POV magazine, which has since gone under. At the time, I was pitching stories to my editor and I said, "You know, I've always wanted to do the Silk Road -- travel from Beijing to Istanbul over land." So we came up with this scheme where I would go to Beijing and buy a car and drive to Istanbul. I went there and things didn't work out like you'd expect, which is, of course, how traveling is. I was out there in the 'stans for just over six weeks. It was an astonishing experience, and when I came back I thought, "OK, I've really got that out of my system," because it was so difficult to travel there. But like a vet coming back from Vietnam, I couldn't get it out of my mind.

GROTH: Was it dangerous?

RALL: It has its dangers. It's not really so much that as it is -- well, first of all, the diarrhea is just out of this world. It just goes on and on. The first time you go to Central Asia, you'll have it for two to three weeks, and you're completely liquid the entire time. You're just deadly sick. I lost about 40 pounds and I weigh about 200. I was pretty messed up. And also, the climate's extreme. One bus ride I took, I was in shorts and a T-shirt because it was 120 degrees, and that night I was freezing my ass off above the snow line in the mountains. It's very uncomfortable. And because the distances are so vast, you might routinely find yourself going four or five days without a bath because you're stuck on a bus. I guess the biggest hassle of traveling out there is documentation, because it's the former Soviet Union and there are checkpoints all throughout. You're constantly being pulled over and hassled by the police, who are always trying to shake you down for bribes. The first time I went, this just enraged me. I couldn't believe the systemic corruption.

Now I realize that's just the way it is, and I know how to do it and get away without paying a bribe, or paying something very modest. You have to show them that you know the routine and that you know you don't have to give them anything, and just have a low-key demeanor. But if you get angry, that's just going to make things worse for you. You get out of your vehicle and you walk up to them -- you don't try to avoid these guys; you don't try to avoid their eyes -- you go up with a big smile, give them a big handshake and sort of rub their shoulders and say, "Hey, great to see you. You're my new best friend for the next five minutes."

GROTH: Basically act like a used car salesman.

RALL: It's exactly like that! You always carry cigarettes. You offer them a cigarette, and you say, "Hey, what's goin' on? How's it goin'? Great. Here's my documents. How's the road?" Just small talk, because these guys are bored. They're in the middle of nowhere, and you're sometimes the only vehicle they've seen for many hours. They're often very drunk, so you just have to be cool.

GROTH: You just finesse it.

RALL: Yeah. It's just like traveling anywhere. Every culture has its rules of what you're supposed to do. Once you catch on, it's not so bad, but the first time is a real shocker.

GROTH: Was there warlordism there at the time?

RALL: No, not at all, not where I was. I didn't travel through Afghanistan that time. The trip was across northern China and into Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and then Turkey. I wrote a piece about it for POV. I think it's on my website, actually.

That was really my first interest. And when I came back, I realized the more I digested everything that I'd seen -- the decline, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the clash between the lingering USSR and the rising Islamic fundamentalism, the new great game over oil pipelines and also what the United States government was up to over there, maybe more than anything else -- I saw that our government was behaving so poorly and so atrociously at propping up these tin-pot dictators that there was no doubt that our policy was going to come back and bite us on the ass. So I came back and told everyone who would listen, and most people who wouldn't, that everything was going to be about Central Asia in the future, and that the Middle East was old news. Israel and Palestine -- don't even worry about that any more. Central Asia has to be at the top of the agenda. But no one paid attention back then.

GROTH: But they're linked, aren't they? The Middle East and Central Asia?

RALL: They're not really. The truth is that we're talking about different people. They're not Arabs, for one thing. They're Turkic peoples. It's a very different culture, and these people are not paying very much attention to what's going on in Israel. I mean, I don't want to understate the facts, because it's complicated. But for the most part, they're really looking to Ankara for the tone that they're hoping to set in the future, for their own countries.

GROTH: So there's no Muslim solidarity among the Muslim populace?

RALL: There's definitely Muslim solidarity! Particularly among the rising fundamentalists. Basically, there are certain countries that are extremely unstable. Tajikistan fought a civil war all throughout the '90s and it's still very unstable. And it's the headquarters for the IMU, Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is trying to overthrow the government of Islam Karimov. And those guys have launched invasions and incursions of Kyrgyzstan as well. The mountain climbers who were kidnapped in southern Kyrgyzstan near the Tajik border a few years ago were taken by IMU guerrillas. And they're running around all throughout Central Asia, essentially in the more conservative backwater village areas, definitely Taliban-backed and Taliban-aligned, and those people are radical Islamists. For them, Muslim solidarity is a very real issue. There's no doubt that what's going on in the Palestinian territories is something that infuriates them and they view as being another form of oppression. But their issues are more local; they feel more locally oppressed by their own regimes.

GROTH: But they're not entirely disconnected?

RALL: Nah, it would totally be unfair to say that they're disconnected.

GROTH: They still must know that the United States finances Israel's incursions into the West Bank.

RALL: Absolutely. But for them, it's not maybe as close to home as it would be for Syrians, say.

GROTH: So, did you go back to any of the 'stans before 9/11?

RALL: I've been back a few times. In 1999, I went to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Western China -- which sort of counts as an honorary 'stan because it's all Muslims, the Xinjiang Muslim Autonomous Zone -- and Pakistan. And so I traveled, in a way, into Afghanistan, because it was through Taliban-held sectors of Kashmir along the Karakoram highway. I wrote a piece about that highway for POV. It's the most dangerous highway in the world, the highest-altitude roadway; they lose people really frequently. It's a brutal, brutal drive. POV was a guy's mag, so it was like, "Go to Central Asia and come back with men-being-men kind of stuff."

I had this radio show from 1998 to 2000, and one of the things I did was "'Stan Watch," breaking news from Central Asia, as a regular feature. It started out as this joke; mention all these exotic things going on in exotic places that most people wouldn't care about. The irony is that it became a cult favorite on the show. People loved it; they really did want to know what was going on. It became quite popular. As part of that, I went back to Central Asia, this time bringing 23 listeners of my radio show for a sort of Trans-Central-Asian Magical Mystery Tour. We flew into Baku, Azerbaijan, then into Ashkhabat, Turkmenistan and went from there. The objective was to make it all the way to Afghanistan. But, of course, things do not work out as you hope, and we only got as far as the Kyrgyz-Tajik border. But we did get from Turkmenistan into Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.

GROTH: How odd. You actually hauled a tour group along?

RALL: Yeah, it was a huge pain in the ass. I'd never do it again. It was a huge amount of work for a bunch of ingrates. I had to get visas for seven very uncooperative countries for 23 people; arrange separate buses all along the way, hotel reservations, the whole thing. It cost about four or five thousand dollars per person. Honestly, given that it was nearly a month, that's not so bad.

Then I went back again a couple months after that. The U.S. State Department had this program where the U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan invited me to meet Turkmen dissidents and explain political cartooning and the role of political dissidents in a democratic society, believe it or not. They paid me to go to Ashkhabat for a couple of weeks and spread the good work about American democracy.

GROTH: That is pretty perverse.

RALL: It is pretty funny. That was in September of 2000. And then there was the Afghan trip in November and December. And I went back this past spring. I was in Tajikistan very briefly, just barely a week. I wrote a piece about Buzkashi for Gear magazine, which hasn't appeared yet.

GROTH: All right, so when 9/11 happened, you had a leg up. You were familiar with the region.

RALL: Yeah. What's funny is that 9/11 never really had anything to do with Afghanistan, but I certainly had a leg up on Islamic fundamentalism. It would be more accurate to say that when the attention turned toward Afghanistan, I definitely had an advantage.

The Left That's Left

GROTH: You tackled this from a dissenting point of view early on, but this has divided the left probably more seriously that just about anything has.

RALL: What left?

GROTH: The left that's left. Christopher Hitchens has possibly been the most outspoken leftist in support of the war. How do you account for such vehemence on the part of the leftists?

RALL: I think you're seeing a split, that's been a chasm of American ideology that's been around a long time, between liberals and leftists -- and they are not the same thing, just like conservatives and rightists are not the same thing. Liberal people tended to fall into line more readily in what they perceive as a time of war. I can't say "time of war" since there is no war. If I remember Hitchens' argument correctly, and I may not, he's into the whole "Islamic fundamentalism as fascism" motif?

GROTH: That's what I remember.

RALL: I think it's, frankly, very facile. I think a lot of traditional liberals -- and this'd probably be a lot of the brightest in the nation -- are reluctant to step up when their country is doing something outrageously wrong and say, "This country is an embarrassment. I'm ashamed to be an American while we're doing this." And, whereas leftists have more allegiance to the idea of the country than to its particular leaders at the time. I don't doubt that Hitchens' opinions are heartfelt. I think he's coming from a place that's different. I want to see a better world. I think Hitchens is more interested in pushing a personal or nationalistic or religious or subcultural agenda.

People often take me to task and call me hypocritical because I take seemingly contrarian stances. I contradict myself, and that's because I really do feel that way, that these things are complicated. Like our discussion about American colonialism. A lot of these things I'm just conflicted on, and I think that's something liberals don't like. They want to feel more ... I don't know. They're also more concerned with appearing patriotic. Like during the '50s, they all went along with the red scare: "We're anti-communist!" Why?

GROTH: What writers have you admired in the post-9/11 commentary? Have you read Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace?

RALL: I tried to read it; I found it very boring. Certainly his politics are in the right place. I've been waiting for Chomsky to write something completely original. That hasn't happened.

GROTH: Well, he has a collection of interviews out about 9/11.

RALL: That's not the same thing. I'm waiting for a fully realized treatise. Which is what I tried to do [with "The Stupid Pipeline"]. I'm definitely going to go through another round of edits. I know there are things missing from that thing, and things I could take out.

GROTH: Who have you looked to?

RALL: Honestly, I have to say that there hasn't been anyone. I've been very disappointed. I feel like I'm in the wilderness, politically. I mean, can you think of anyone else?

GROTH: Howard Zinn also has a book of interviews. The left is good at giving interviews, I guess.

RALL: Those guys are great, but they're old line. That's the thing: There really isn't a left any more. I hesitate to even use the label because it doesn't exist. There's no one there. In a world where Tom Daschle could be accused of being an anti-American, communist running dog, anything's possible. The irony is, I don't consider myself a hard-line lefty, either. By European standards, I'd probably just be considered a mere socialist. I've got lots of problems with the Trotskyites. I'm not a party-line-doctrinaire kind of guy. I try to keep an open mind on things. Believe me, after 9/11, I waited a couple of days to see if Bush was going to behave like F.D.R. and try to unify the country, move forward with purpose and set aside partisan politics.

GROTH: You weren't holding your breath for that, I hope.

RALL: No, I was very worried actually, because I thought if he did that, it was really going to fuck up my cartooning career. I'm really not saying that facetiously. I was really worried, because my whole career is about being contrarian. And it's like, what am I going to do? I'm not a positive guy; I can't do that.

GROTH: Bush didn't let you down.

RALL: No. So after a couple of days we start hearing about fast-track signing authority on free trade and tax cuts, school vouchers that we all need to fight the war on terrorism. I'm like, "Oh, good. Nothing's changed. Just as I thought."

GROTH: How do you account for Bush's enormous popularity? I think at one point he had 90 percent approval. I think it's going down because of the financial scandals. It was at 90, maybe at 76 or whatever it is now. How do you account for the American public backing him like this?

RALL: First of all, it's important to understand that popularity rating does not indicate future results. When you're asked, "Do you approve of the job the president's doing?" that's not the same thing as, "If the election were held tomorrow, would you vote for Al Gore or George W. Bush?" I think his popular rating's like 68 percent. Now, there's no way he could carry 68 percent of the vote in a rematch against Gore. It's impossible. You have to understand, it's kind of like, "Do you think my wife is attractive?" Sure. But do you think she's as hot as Claudia Schiffer? Two different questions, right? So, I think that's an important thing to understand.

Nonetheless, his approval rating's incredibly high, and I think it's because people, myself included, in the first days after 9/11, were all like, "Look, this is a time we've been hit; we've been hit hard. This is a time when we need leaders." Bush wasn't elected originally, but you know what? On 9/11, whoever's sitting in the White House is elected. Go. Run. Take care of it. I think there's this projection that's really born out of fear. The American people are like, "We have to support this guy. We need to rally around him; otherwise he's not going to have the ability to get things done on our behalf. The flipside of that is, in two years, all of that trust that was invested, and all that love, is going to have been betrayed so heavily that I suspect that the public is going to turn really hard against him. Just like happened with his father.

GROTH: One thing you wrote in "The Stupid Pipeline" - in fact, it was the last paragraph - let me read it to you:

On a personal level, Americans performed admirably, post 9/11. Unfortunately, our government seized the moment as well, not to do good or right, but to take advantage of our grief, of our naivet�, of our lust for justice and vengeance. They did it to line the pockets of themselves and their friends, to gain political and economic advantage for a tiny coterie of influential people. They took advantage of our ignorance about Islam, Caspian Sea oil and South Central Asia. I have faith that the fundamental goodness of the American people will cause them to see what was done in their name, and to do something about it.

To be perfectly honest, that struck me as boilerplate, populist bullshit.

RALL: [Laughter.] Really?

GROTH: "Fundamental goodness of the American public"?

RALL: Historically, I think that the American people can be fooled a long, long time. Look, Americans are very stupid in the short run. But what happens is, it's just like under Nixon. After the Watergate break-in, the guy was re-elected by a record landslide. And he's scum! Everyone knew he was, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar. Now people say, "Oh we feel so terrible about what we did to the people who went to Vietnam. They all came back and were called baby-killers. And none of that's true; that never happened." I remember that anyone who went to Vietnam at the time was either shit out of luck and couldn't make it to Canada, or was a right-wing person who wanted to go out and kill gooks. That's how it was.

This is an extremely conservative, reactionary country, with a lot of very violent strains and undercurrents, right? So I don't want to make out like the American people are all goodness and sweetness and light. Do you think that underlying all that shit is a fundamental decency and common sense that, maybe, is almost unique to the United States? People put up with a lot of bullshit, and they do a lot of bullshit, but if things go too far, they react hard against it and correct it -- as happened after McCarthyism, as happened two years after the '72 election, when Nixon was nearly driven out by a mob from Washington. There's a correcting effect, and that's the fundamental decency that I'm talking about. If people really figured out what was done in their name for that fucking oil pipeline, I think if they really knew, if they really found out, he'll be impeached. He'll leave.

GROTH: I guess that's one theory. On the other hand, they might be appreciative that they could get cheap oil.

RALL: If you could really make people focus on the fact that, not only did thousands of innocent people die over there, but we're more likely to face more terrorist attacks in the future, and we also killed thousands of guys, admittedly, all in helicopter accidents.

GROTH: You know, you're sort of positing what the Christians call a kind of invincible ignorance. Obviously, people must know that we are pals with Saudi Arabia, even though they're a corrupt and oppressive regime, because of oil, and because Americans want to drive their SUVs. The American public must know this, and yet --

RALL: But they don't focus on it.

GROTH: -- it doesn't deter them from buying these enormous gas-guzzling cars, and insuring our reliance on Saudi Arabia and other corrupt regimes.

RALL: That's right. It's like Dan Perkins says, "People are complicated." I'm going to be shopping for a new car soon, and I really believe in buying American. However, the best car I have found so far in my hunting, is Japanese. And so, shit, what am I going to do? I haven't decided yet. I may buy a Japanese car. Does that make me a fucking hypocrite? Sure it does.

GROTH: Only if you're a nationalist. Why shouldn't you help the Japanese economy?

RALL: Well, I don't care about the Japanese economy; I only want to help the American economy. I am a nationalist that way. I care about my country more than I care about other countries. That's just how it is.

[To read the rest of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #247. To read a section trimmed from the published interview, click here.]