Monday, July 27, 2020

day TWELVE HUNDRED and EIGHT SEVEN


THE SENATE KILLS A BIPARTISAN BILL TO END THE WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
“Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace”
          American historian Charles A. Beard

Following the NY Times’s recent June 26th article
About Russians paying the Taliban bounties
To kill American soldiers in Afghanistan,
A cloaked propaganda hit piece aimed at Comrade Trump
For wanting to bring the troops home by election day,
Citing no sources and no evidence,
The House and the Senate
With bipartisan support,
Without a whisper of public debate,
Kills legislation to end the war
In Afghanistan,
Extending the 19-year war
Into a never-ending war.  

Congressional Senate members,
Sensory neurons misfiring in their primate brains,
Suffering memory loss,
Their bicameral chambers cleaned and erased,
Forget as if they had ever remembered
Reading the Washington Post’s December 9th, 2019 edition,
The Afghanistan Papers: The Secret History of the War,
Claiming the war unwinnable with no exit strategy.  

The Senate, immersed in power,
Their eyes on the prize,
Recognizes a deal
They can exploit,
Gifts the corporate defense industry,
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing,
With access to more tax-free profits,
Keeping the Imperial weapons machine humming.

Why pull out of Afghanistan now
And bring the troops home,
Saving the American taxpayer
Trillions of dollars
That can be spent
On our crumbling infrastructure
And federal safety net programs
For the middle class and poor
When Afghanistan, rich in resources
Like lithium, copper, cobalt, and gold,
Has never been fully exploited
Because of decades of discord and violent chaos?

Senate legislators, patriotic collaborators,
Funnel profits into the coffers of big corporations,
Persuading American consumers
To buy the next smart phone or laptop.

Now in its new role in the forever war
The US military, paid mercenaries,
Stand guard for the corporate elite,
Promote a hard sell
It is their right to strip the ground
And mine three trillion dollars
Worth of minerals.


--Victor Henry

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