H
e a r t S o n s & H e a r t D a u g h t e r s of A l l e n G i n s
b e r g
N
a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 4 : A r c h i
v e s E d i t i o n
ELIOT KATZ
Gambling with Human Chips
No matter whether the war ends easy or in horror
One thing is certain: It was launched with lies
by a president looking drugged into the TV
cameras
"Should Saddam choose confrontation,"
Bush noted,
"the American
people can know that every measure
has been taken to avoid war," plainly
lying
about who it is
choosing the military option and
who has been narrowly intent on war despite
a rainbow
of alternatives offered from every corner
of Earth
Bush says "the
Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal
some of the most lethal weapons ever
devised," forgetting
those thousands of
US nukes & our own biochem weapons
Although Bush has pulled the U.S. out of the
International
Criminal Court, he is now announcing which
Iraqis
when captured will face war crimes trials
No U.S. reporter asks the question of how many
Iraqis
can be killed before Bush is eligible for a
seat
in the defendant's chair for initiating
this illegal war
Because Bush cannot explain his policies,
William Bennett
appears on every cable
news station reciting the triumphs
of America in Europe West and East
Bennett claims democracy, not imperialism, has always been
the result of American militarism, but he
leaves out El Salvador,
Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, Angola's
UNITA
Vietnam's 3.6 million dead, decades of South
African apartheid
unknown millions dying
middle passage slave ships
early American
blankets mixed w/ smallpox & holy wars
Every nation has its progressive and regressive
traditions
The question now is how will bombs affect 5
million in Baghdad
& will the dead applaud
the U.S. as liberty's troops
If the Iraqi death toll exceeds the WTC, will
the war still be
considered moral victory?
How many Iraqi civilians
does the Bush gang think add up to one
American life
Even if the war is short and the death toll low,
even if
concerns of millions
marching across Earth were overblown
will it have been right to have taken such a
gamble
NYC, 3/03
[Originally
published in NHS 2004, http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/nhs04/Eliot_Katz.html.]