Shaking More Than the Barley

Shaking More Than the Barley - 227
Hal Goes Metro-NY/PHI/BOS
May 9, 2007

The first time I saw Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, I recall an overwhelming sense of satisfaction when Wallace and his rebellious rabble gave those English bastards a good thumping. They had it coming after all, forcing their Anglo-Saxon dominance onto a proud Celtic land. The sheer exorbitance of their occupation galvanized the people and justified the honorable rebellion, making heroes and legends out of the ordinary men who fought against such tyranny.

Sitting through Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes the Barley these many years later, I found my reaction to be a bit more complex. Watching the Black and Tans carry out their worst, t’was easy to get the Irish up. Yet watching the lads ambushing the Royal troops, you couldn’t help but see the parallels between the British force occupying Ireland and American troops today in Iraq. Put a Crescent on that Green Flag instead of a Harp, then allow yourself to look past the sun-baked tone of today’s insurgents to see the pasty skin and freckles of rebels past. The similarities are rather evident, and it made me ask the disturbing, introspective question: when did we become “the bad guys?”

Whatever our initial intention, the United States now represents an army of occupation in a foreign land. Events developing within that period of occupation have put into motion a concerted guerilla action against those troops, for the simple fact that they represent said occupation. The steady acts of violence indicate the ship has sailed on the concept of our troops being greeted as liberators, so perhaps it’s time our troop transports sail home.

The Hussein regime has been removed, and the U.S. must face the fact that that’s the optimum result for this mission. Further occupation will do nothing more than further undermine our efforts in that region. There is no longer any logic behind leaving my peers in harm’s way.

I’m shaken by my feelings and genuinely concerned about the United States’ contemporary standing in the world’s view. As a concerned and patriotic American, I don’t want to sit back and watch our short-sighted policies make “Bravehearts” out of belligerent barbarians and turn lowly, criminal warlords into “freedom fighters” while turning my honorable countrymen into “the bad guys.” Too many Americans have fought too long as “the good guys” for us to let that happen.

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