Pride and Prejudice

"I'm proud that my son wanted to protect the freedom of this country, whether we all agree with the war or not," said Mike Plouhar whose son was killed by yet another roadside bomb in Iraq just 38 days before he was to be shipped home.

His son, Raymond J. Plouhar was seen in Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 as a Marine recruiter, and was depicted as an agent of exploitation, preying upon the young and confused and those with questionable opportunities. I doubt he himself thought of his job in that way.

Raymond J. Plouhar might be seen as a fine man, a man of courage and a man who had sacrificed a bit of himself for the sake of another. He was serving a stint as a recruiter in Flint Michigan, Moore’s home town, after having surgery to remove the kidney he donated to an uncle. A selfless man, it would seem and a man of admirable courage.

Apparently young Plouhar hated Farenheit 9/11 because it criticized the war. Like many, he perhaps believed that the will of the leader is the will of God and so no matter how wrong the war, it’s more wrong to criticize it. Certainly he had no fear of telling a man, married with children, that this was all the more reason to sign up. He must have believed the ever changing stories of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Bush, America’s gang of four.

His parents are proud of Raymond and I too am proud of anyone making a sacrifice to protect the freedom of my country – our country. It’s too bad that he has to see this particular action, that has done more than anything else in my lifetime to erode the freedom of this country, billed as not only something worthwhile for the nation, but something involved with keeping us free, but how can a father face the loss of a son who lived for others and died for nothing.

Raymond J. Plouhar, in my opinion, was more than another anonymous victim of forces wishing to oust us from Iraq and from the Muslim world. He was a victim of George W. Bush and his neo-con barbarians. He was a victim of a strategic ethic that involves the kind of blind obedience to authority that should have died long ago and has no place in a free society.

What a tragedy that this man who gave a piece of himself to save another gave the rest of himself to support a president for whom peace is an obstacle to profit and ambition.