PREMATURE JET LANDING

IN 2003, PRESIDENT BUSH landed on the deck
of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and gave a
speech announcing the end of “major combat operations”
in the War on Iraq, while standing in front of a “Mission
Accomplished” banner. The staged event was a moment of
compounded irony for those who remembered that young
Bush had not distinguished himself during his own military service. Still, artists did their
best to satirize the event: Owen Smith (opposite) had Bush giving the A-OK sign as he readied
his plane to land on a panicked populace at the Washington Mall (the inspiration for this
was a 1962 series of Topps “Mars Attacks” trading cards, below, left). Christoph Niemann
had soldiers at Arlington Cemetery folding the “Mission Accomplished” banner in lieu of the
American flag laid on a fallen comrade’s coffin (right). Barry Blitt (below, right) had the bat-
tered president stagger in front of a banner for Mission: Impossible, the late-sixties TV series.

99