Maine Owl

It's that simple"


"I did not raise my hand to protect private companies."

Ron Paul has reached at least one U.S. soldier who has served in Iraq. I consider it extremely brave what the fellow in this video has done: He demolishes a meaningless jingoistic platitude, "honor", from a Republican debate by telling it like it is in Iraq. He speaks of war profiteering and deep bitterness over the scores being made by contractors while his job was to be the guy with the target painted on his body.

The huge leap he succeeds in making here, one that seems impossible for most Americans, is that Iraqis who fight the U.S. are not "terrorists" but patriots fighting an invader, no less than what we would do ourselves if faced with a foreign occupation army.

Iraq is a horrible example of 21st-century neocolonialism where a country is dismantled and a population is broken so that an avaricious world power can fulfill its perceived strategic goals. Ron Paul may be doing a better job of injecting this truth into the public and even the military consciousness than the left peace movement has done for five years.

Update: Winter Patriot has a good, long post up hitting the problem of confusing "publicity with reality" in U.S. newspeak. This prevents anyone "official" here from suggesting there might be an indigenous, secular, patriotic resistance to occupation in Iraq. Even the "better" Democrats, like Wexler, are deeply infected.