The September 2003 issue of J L A – issue 83.
There’s been a napalmetto attack on American soil. President Lex Luthor, a corporate puppet of his own company LexCorp, tells the public that the nation of Qurac was responsible, but offers no evidence whatsoever. There is loose talk of “WMDs.” The public buys it.
In Gotham (where Batman lives), the police beat up a bunch of peace protesters. They abuse their power and shut down the subways.
President Lex tells Superman “It’s unbecoming to question your president during times of international unrest.” Superman tells him it is not disloyal to want to know the truth.
I don’t know about you, but I have got to own this issue and everything leading up to it. I’m hoping LexCorp gets awarded a fat contract to reconstruct Qurac.
Later
I grabbed it- this issue is pretty great. It is a one-shot (it’s has a “Dallas” ending), so on the positive side it requires no previous issues to understand what is going on… but on the other hand, that also means no fat contracts for LexCorp, and the Luthor Administration won’t be outing the secret identities of its own agents (maybe even Superman) as the Bush Administration did with the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Ah well!
However the previous story arc (JLA issues 80-82) does have a group of white supremacists claiming to be the “real” America, wanting to cleanse the undesireables (non-whites) from the country… not quite as good an analogy for our present leadership, since there haven’t been any overtly racist remarks in the administration.
Unless you count Senate majority leader Trent Lott defending the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese Americans for being Japanese (February 2003)… to justify preventing anyone with a Middle-Eastern name from ever flying again.
Or how about the nearly 50,000 votes thrown away by Republican officials in mostly-black counties in Florida during the 2000 election. This wasn’t so long ago.
Okay, maybe the parallel isn’t such a stretch.
The September 2003 issue of J L A ( issue 83) is pretty great. It is a one-shot with President Lex Luthor telling the public that the nation of “Qurac” was responsible for a terrorist attack, but offering no evidence whatsoever.