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CounterPunch
November
9, 2002
The Ballad of S. Hussein
by SYDNEY BERNARD SMITH
in the dim & distant eighties
well before the last hurrah,
the wicked people of Iran
had ditched their saintly Shah.
with forty million fervent
Shia Muslims on the boil
the West preferred the Sunnis
to be managing the oil.
& Rumsfeld came to Baghdad
in nineteen-eighty-three:
"we'll help you to stand up to
Ayatollah Khomeini;
"this letter from our President
tells all there is to say.
Ronnie & the Pentagon
will back you all the way.
"all the arms & money
that you could ever need,
& patriotic principle,
& where that fails, there's greed."
they cosseted, supplied him
they armed him to the teeth,
lauded & hero-worshipped him;
they stoked his self-belief.
the CIA approved him
a golden boy was Saddam;
they gave him a list of lefties
& straightaway he shot'em.
he wanted something nuclear--
"right here! inside the gate?"
(it stayed; UN inspectors found it,
nineteen ninety-eight.)
"we know you don't mean any harm,
- though if perchance you did
be sure we'd come & get you
& screw down your little lid.
"you'd like to use a chemical?
we wouldn't make a fuss--
this gink is fighting on our side
he's just like one of us!
"what's he doing that's out of place?
we'd really like to know--
didn't we use agent orange
not so very long ago?"
they didn't throw their hands up,
they didn't roll their eyes,
they didn't point a finger
at "evil undisguised."
they didn't turn their face away
they never mentioned guilt--
& they didn't just encourage him
they backed him to the hilt.
Sydney Bernard Smith lives in Dundalk, Ireland. Smith can be reached
at: sydneybernard@esatclear.ie
Election Day in America
by DAVID KRIEGER
Most Americans chose not to vote.
By their absence they voted against the system.
They thumbed their nose at democracy
And democracy thumbed its nose back at them.
By staying away from the polls
They assured the continuation of corporate power,
Privilege for the few, and obscene military might
To defend this power and privilege.
Most Americans who did vote
Cast their votes for one of our two military parties,
The Democrats and Republicans, assuring
The continuation of our country's war machine.
By our absence and by our votes
We again ratified power over reason,
Privilege over justice, and corporate greed over
Fundamental human rights and dignity.
Surely, if only we had thought more about
our world,
So weighted down by poverty, weaponry and war,
We could have done better by our democracy
Than we did this election day in America.
David Krieger
is president of the Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation. His latest book is Choose
Hope, Your Role in Waging Peace in the Nuclear Age. He
can be contacted at dkrieger@napf.org.
Liberate Iraq (Rap)
by M. JUNAID ALAM
They say: 'Liberate Iraq!'
So goes the stock
Slogan of those holding the unfolding
Banner of Empire--guns for hire.
How revolting is this notion bathed in colonial lotion?
Let me save the commotion and begin
To set the lies on fire.
Liberate or incinerate?
This innate 'mystery' is revealed to me
Through Imperial history
From Plymouth Rock to Kuwait.
They said: 'Liberate the Indians!'
Then sparked a dark killing spree
At Wounded Knee and with disease
Got creative in slaughtering the Native
In the name of white-supremacy
And Destiny-Manifest
Justice took two to the chest at the settler's behest.
The untamed objects of 'liberation' became
Subjects of extermination
In the name of our nation.
They said: 'Liberate the Philippines!'
Crushed their national hopes and dreams
With irrational supreme swaggers, daggers,
Bayonets and racist epithets.
White Man's Burden was here penned by Kippling
As Filipino blood came trickling
Off our spears of arrogance.
They said: 'Liberate the Blacks!'
Stole them in sacks
Pulled their weight in the pain of chains as freight
Into slave ships as millions of lives slipped and dived
Into the abyss of the ocean waves, before their brethren arrived
On our shores as slaves.
Rehearsing Biblical verses we kept cursing
And whipped them merciless.
For four centuries, they bore the miseries
Of our 'liberation', soaring through the line of time
To penitentiary from plantation.
They said: 'Liberate Vietnam!'
And dropped napalm in cold calm upon old and young.
Civilians labeled enemies
Lives dangled under the star-spangled sword of Damocles
M-16s, Vietnamese, and working-class casualties.
They spread the dread of Agent Orange
Locked up the contagion of truth in cold storage
To warm Wall Street and GE with blood-hot porridge
They say: 'Liberate Iraq!'
Where the rain of tears
W hen they supported Hussein for years?
More contorted lies, sent assorted spies
To UN inspection sites.
Let me remind you in kind,
From our sanctions half a million children died
But Madeline Albright advised the '60 Minutes' guy
It was worth the price-oil lines.
An aside: who pays these bills
For the thrills of oil drills
Doubling as death mills?
I say: 'Liberate America!'
From Bush's sunk moral character
Made of Teflon dunked in endless Enrons
And false elections whose direction should've led
To the House of Corrections.
'War on Terror': slogan worn-out as ever
'Axis of Evil': even less clever to tether
To another Republican feather
Blown away in our anti-war weather.
As provided by graphic illustration
Divided into elastic oration
The call of 'liberation' by the Bush administration
Is a racist lie.
A creation concocted so that you and I
Get locked in mindless war cries
As Iraq's core dies.
Yet this is why
Spread out against the toxic war skies
This war of so-called 'liberation'
I will never cease to defy.
M. Junaid Alam
is a Political Science student at Northeastern University and
a member of the NU Campus Against War and Racism. He can be reached
at: alam.m@neu.edu
Yesterday's
Features
Bruce Jackson
Don't
Mourn, Bake!
Anthony Gancarski
Jeb
Bush: Left-Liberal?
William Evan
A Diplomatic
Strategy
How Carter and Castro Could Avert War on Iraq
William A. Cook
Blinded
by the Right
Pierre Tristam
Hypocrisy
at Camp Delta
Mayor Walid Hamad
Settlers
and Trash
Matt Siegfried
Questions
of War
Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair
Nosedive:
the Democrats the Day After
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
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October 26
/ 27, 2002
Michael Wolff
A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
Bali Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
Crocodile Tears
Hope Shand and Silvia Ribeiro
The Great Containment:
GM Fallout from Mexico to Zambia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Wolf Who Cried Wolf:
Charging Anti-Semitism & Extending the Iron Wall
Gavin Keeney
The Fusion Thing:
Landscape + Architecture
Adam Engel
A Good Man is Hard to Misfit
Anis Shivani
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Jason Leopold
Is Thomas White Fit to Lead the Army?
Philip Farruggio
Let Them Eat (Crumb) Cake
Josh Frank
The Grassroots of Hope
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: episode 5
Night School
M. Shahid
Alam
The Civilizing Mission
October 25, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Pappy
Bush on Wellstone:
"Who Is This Chickenshit?"
Stuart Timmons
Harry
Hay Dead at 90:
He Paved the Way for Modern Gay Activism
Vanessa Jones
Australia
Votes Green:
Historic No Vote to US War Plans
Ben Terrall
Rep.
Tom Lantos' Big Lie
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Behind
the Drive for War:
The Escalating Bush Military Budget
Will Youmans
Israel's and Divestment
Norman Madarasz
Lula
on the Verge
October 24,
2002
Jo Freeman
How the
Christian Coalition Boosts Israel
Ben Tripp
George
W.: Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Harry Browne
Ireland's Dreary Yes to Nice
Anis Shivani
A Guide
for the Perplexed:
the Major Countries of the World as Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
T.W. Croft
America's
New Improved War
William Hughes
A Free
Press, But for Whom?
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush and the Environment
October 23,
2002
Daniel Wolff
Pataki,
Witt and the Indian Point Nuke
Wayne Madsen
A Saudiless
Arabia
Sam Bahour
and Paul de Rooij
Abritrary
Imprisonment
Chris White
Why I Oppose
the US War on Terror:
an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
Anthony Gancarski
Back to Bali
Adam Engel
Twilight
(of the Idols) Zone
Robert Fisk
How to Shut Up Your Critics
October 22,
2002
Jack McCarthy
A Letter
to C. Hitchens
Carol Norris
This Message
Brought to You by Breast Cancer, Inc.
Joanne Mariner
Just
Say "Not Until We're Married":
Legislating Morality and Understanding HIV/AIDS Prevention
Kathleen Christison
Excuse Me?
How Israel Justifies Killing Palestinians
Linda Heard
Iraq War
Mongering:
A Game of Chess with Lives at Stake
Roger Peacock
Marketing the War on Iraq
Resources:
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About 9/11
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
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