Commentary on DeenPort Haiku

The war’s fourth birthday…
Congratulations? ka-boom!
(all predicitions true)…

While some celebrate, others mourn, and others die – many, many others. My incomprehension soars that anyone could continue to support this war except for covert reasons that never seem to get articulated. Iraqi and American lives have been massively and tragically disrupted, the middle-class intelligentsia of Baghdad have fled and are trying to flee to neighboring countries, never mind the country that invaded them and created the chaos in the first place (only 400 plus immigrations allowed into the United States in four years. That’s 100 per year!… has America lost its conscience completely?).

So what is this war we are trying to win, and what constitutes the much vaunted victory? I see, from my naïve perspective, three goals: Oil control, Israel protection, Permanent bases. Securing the first two should be obvious, though I think that ironically our involvement may actually jeopardize Israel more than help it in the long run… But as we speak, and as villages and large parts of Iraq are struggling just to eat, get hospital care, leave the house and return in one piece, out in acres of Iraqi land America has built huge cities behind great barricades (we never see the photos) with movie theaters, bars selling alcohol (in a Muslim country!), prostitution, and electricity, water and perfect efficiency, all the things to keep soldiers well-fed and happy, since tomorrow they may die… And we talk about keeping these mini-metropolises permanently! Is this why Bush is holding on like Odysseus lashed to the mast of his boat, until the last concrete barrier is in place and we can say, definitively, that we’re here to stay and we’re never going to leave… and to hell with everyone else! “The New Middle East?”

It’s too easy to say this is a Crusade, though the religious component in Bush’s mind cannot be dismissed completely. But he’s a crude Christian to wreak such havoc on others with so little real concern (by his actions in spite of his occasional furrowed brow). It’s a total embarrassment all around… and it seems only tepid resistance by any in positions of influence. And the weasel that rolls around in the water breaking shells on its stomach is that all of this was predicted by veterans of the 60s and modern experts in think tanks and in the field, that a precipitous and unprepared invasion would bring about exactly the results we see today. Not abstractly, but exactly!

My wife and I, in our mid-60s, reminiscent of the mid-60s in America, marched with the global millions against this war at the beginning of it, to which Bush later responded saying that he doesn’t listen to “focus groups.” Now we see that he doesn’t listen to the American public, the Congress or the Constitution of the United States either, and that he “doesn’t care,” he is above such concerns. He has said that he listens to a “higher power,” but I think we should check more carefully where this voice he listens to is coming from… like, say, from under the floorboards, with the lick of flames and the smell of sulfur seeping through…

In all of this we must remember that only Allah has power…hard as it may sometimes be to see. Even Iblis is on His leash. I actually find it hard to bring myself to say this, given the horrors abounding. To try to see a positive outcome of such overwhelming tragedy and extensive Diaspora stops me, though time will certainly tell. But this is always the case, and those in the actual midst of it know it far more acutely than I. May they be comforted by His Mercy and the radiant Light of His Face.

Categories: Poems, Misc