Yellow ribbon magnets remind us to “support the troops.” Politicians remind us to “support the troops.” Talking heads on television and radio remind us to “support the troops.” But, remember, we live in the Orwellian States of America. Here “support the troops” usually means to be in favor of keeping them at war in many far flung countries all over the world. “Support,” these days, means we want our soldiers to keep fighting and dying for the lies of our government. In a sense, it could be argued that in our own little version of “newspeak,” sentencing the troops to death in an Iraqi civil war equals “support” of those troops. If one so much as WHISPERS that maybe the troops should just come home, then one had better be prepared to be peppered with various epithets including, “cut and runner,” “terrorist appeaser,” “anti-American,” and “anti-semitic.” And just for good measure we’ll tack on one of the pro-war crowds’ absolute favorites: the war detractor will be lumped in with the “blame America first” types.
But here’s a question not too many people seem to be asking. Which candidate for president do the TROOPS support? Which candidate would THEY prefer to have as their commander-in-chief? And at this point I think a little digression is in order. The president of the United States is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. He (or she, heaven forbid) is NOT commander-in-chief of the American people. Our culture has become so militarized that many of us seem to have forgotten this point.
Returning to our question of which candidate the troops support, the answer may surprise many people. For none other than anti-war Republican Ron Paul has received more donations from active members of the military than all other candidates, Democrat and Republican COMBINED.
Here are the numbers: I omitted Mitt Romney since he is no longer in the running. With him included Paul’s numbers are ALMOST as much as both parties’ candidates combined.
According to the FEC Q4 :
Ron Paul: 1160 $249k
John McCain: 438 $83k
Mike Huckabee: 126 $37k
Barack Obama: 443 $76k
Hillary Clinton: 154 $41k
Some parts of the mainstream media are even picking up on this fact as we can see on this CNN piece. So perhaps our military men and women don’t want to be globe girdling police officers. Maybe, just maybe they enlisted to defend OUR country, NOT Iraq, or any other place. Could it be that the neocons are wrong again? Well, why not? They were wrong BEFORE the Iraq war with their predictions that this little endeavor would be all sweetness and light.
And so here we are. Instead of that sweetness and light that was forecast, we are nearly five years into darkness and death. Many members of the armed forces have spoken with their wallets. And surely much to the neocons chagrin, they support the candidate who believes they should just come home.
