The Logic of War

 

1

A group of Bush Sr’s US-armed

fundamentalist freedom fighters

compared to our own founding fathers

have become Bush Jr’s evildoers

who need to be smoked from their caves––

and the National Review philosophers

say postmodern theory has wrecked

             the planet with relativism?

 

2

How come if we stop shopping

            the terrorists win?

But if we create a million starving refugees

            through bombing

                         the terrorists haven’t won?

 

3

Because the World Trade Center was attacked

any Bush-initiated response is considered beyond reproach.

Locked in the language of war, it’s impossible

             to find another way out.

 

4

We are fighting to preserve freedom

a cause so important almost no dissent

            can be televised

 

Where’s the discussion in mainstream press whether

investigations, intelligence, freezing assets, police action arrests

plus a more democratic egalitarian foreign policy

            would have been more appropriate

                         and effective in the long term

                                     than war?

 

5

Although a person’s terrorist links may be as-yet unproven

            he or she may be denied a civilian trial

given a military tribunal exclusively for terrorists

at the sole discretion of one who stole highest office

            with the help of five civilian judges.

 

6

A 15,000-pound bomb is called a daisy cutter

 

7

Every day ticker tape moves across bottom

            of CNN’s screen

updating the latest estimate of WTC missing

            presumed dead

                         now hovering around 3,000.

Each day NY Times features an obit page

            with individualized moving stories

                         of victims of 9/11’s inexcusable horror.

Through tragedy described on personal level

            we are learning the preciousness

                         of Each Human Life.

 

Bin Laden on videotape gloats heinously

            over high American civilian death counts

                         he calls blessed terror

Every day we are learning which human lives

            are precious to whom.

 

A New Hampshire professor has completed a study

            estimating over 3,700 Afghan civilian deaths

                         from U.S. bombs.

Not a single mainstream NY paper or TV station

            covers this study or derives

                         their own tally.

Each week I see one or two articles on the web

            about starving freezing refugees                       

                         forced to flee the bombing

300,000 shivering in Maslakh, 100 dying each night,

            230 buried in Dehdadi, mostly kids

                         judging from small size of burial plots.

 

The Pentagon says it is pointless to attempt verify

            Afghan civilian deaths

Every day we are learning that the value

            of human life is relative

                        to how many steps removed one feels

                                     from the dead one’s relatives.

 

8

On Fox News, Bill O’Reilly says Afghans

            are responsible for crimes

                         of their government.

Does anyone remember Vietnam?

            Blessed terror of the Nicaraguan Contras?
                          Angola’s Unita? Latin American death squads?

 

Thankfully, no other country’s military

            blamed me or my friends for those.

 

Didn’t the U.S. Cold War government help create

            the cave tunnel training camps

                         for which Afghans are being bombed?

One of these centuries leaders on all sides will learn

            to leave the gods and people out of it.

 

9

Our newest ally Pakistan supports terrorists

that have stormed India’s parliamentary gates.

The U.S. sensibly urges India to show restraint.

 

10

Those who remained in cities & survived––celebrate.

In a refugee camp, a mob has beaten Robert Fisk,

only major Western journalist in country

            writing against massive bombing

because he looked Western & didn’t speak their language

            & his driver looked like George Bush.

 

I protested the war as a risky gamble with millions

            of innocent Afghan lives

but am quite happy to watch the fascist Taliban flee,

            music being played,

& women walking Kabul’s streets w/o burkas.

 

11

What idiot wouldn’t realize terror attacks

would be a gift to the American Right

as well as mass murder untold sentient beings?

 

If the terrorists attacked mainly because

            they don’t like our individual freedoms––

then by supporting the president

            in all his foreign & domestic policies

don’t we let the terrorists win?

 

For now, we are teaching the terrorists a clear lesson

that you don’t solve your gripes with bombs

unless you’re the world’s sole superpower.