War Post

by Lynn Chu, via the Writers’ Representatives and just published in Harper’s.  

Because to depose a murderous despot is a good thing.
Because the UN resolved to do something a dozen times and didn’t.
Because we are the only nation in the world with the decency and strength to do it.
Because we did so with a minimum of human loss.
Because other nations, rueing their past glory, are envious.
Because I believe in nationbuilding.
Because the left has always insisted on this.
Because I harbor no animus toward Muslim peoples.
Because we must seed the world with democracy, for it is right.
Because Mesopotamia, the cradle of civilization, deserves no less.
Because we destroyed mountains of conventional WMD and averted the sure redevelopment of worse.
Because we halted the UN’s corrupt partnership with tyranny, in the sham of Oil for Food,
Under which the Iraqi people suffered while Saddam and his new business partners sipped oil.
Because containment is impossible in a globalized world.
Because dictators are easier to topple than covert networks.
Because war is best conducted there than on the streets of New York.
Because sanctions were crumbling.
Because in truth the world respects us for it, however they moan.
Because received opinion will change on a dime.
Because Iraqis are an educated people fully capable of democracy,
As is all of humanity.
Because the war and rebuilding can be self-financing with oil.
Because one out of three in the axis of evil is 33.3% better than zero.
Because it makes the left crazy to see the U.S. succeed nobly against a tyrant,
For they love tyranny when it suits them.
Because Saddam financing bin Laden to harry us was only a matter of time.
Because if Saddam had the bomb in 1981, he would soon have it again.
Because a stitch in time saves nine.
Because we needed to finish what we started in 1991.
Because half-measures can be worse than none.
Because America is as brave and competent as it is reasonable to expect of clumsy imperfect humans.
Because in 1948 the UN created Israel, to world acclaim, whose existence is just and must continue to be defended,
For the evil of antisemitism still lurks in the world, in radical Islam and elsewhere.
Because the new kind of war will be sporadic, desultory and covert,
And will bore us, but complacency is dangerous.
Because to them their jihad has only just begun, and crush it we must,
For Osama Bin Laden is not Deng Xiao-Ping.
Because diplomacy is sometimes the path to a solution, but just as often isn’t.
Because our nation is strong enough to shrug off the malice and subversion and sophistries its heedless factions devise.
Who style themselves heroes and whistleblowers.
For their vanity and venality betrays them.
Because this war’s lessons will assist in transformation, which must continue.
For the emasculated CIA and bloated DOD must be reformed.
Because the idea that the world has outgrown war is a fantasy.
Because if we cannot do Iraq then we can never do Rwanda or Darfur.
Because we need to pick our fights.
And there is nothing immoral about making a list ordered by need and self-interest.
For all politics are a balance of factors moral and practical.
Because, when the world is ever really in trouble, fashionable anti-Americanism will fall away.
For all know that America is not the source of evil in the world.
Because people just like to exaggerate
And nowhere is the human condition more on display than in a democracy.
Because all of these considerations are matters for our elected representatives to manage.
Because partisans lie and lose their souls and trick the rest for only a moment.
Because we won in Afghanistan, whose economy is starting to boom.
Because Iraq begs us to stay.
Because the carping elite are hypocrites about all of this, but love to second-guess and criticize.
Because they will do so regardless.
Because the pundits all have other agendas.
Because Iraq must continue to "balance" Iran in that region.
Because we can use a middle east base.
Because avoiding the responsibilities of empire has invoked our enemy and laid the seeds for failed states.
Because failed states harbor criminal gangs.
Because propping up dictators no longer brings "stability."
Because we can no longer countenance killing fields.
Because we must learn how to replace chaos with democracy.
For democracy is both stable and just.
Because civilization is always effortful.
Because we will not and need not suffer a draft to fight the mother of all wars, the very jihad of our enemy’s dreams.
Because this demand shows the critics’ bad faith.
Because their perverse, fervent, secret wish is for another Vietnam.
Because small war is an art, one we need to master.
Because the same will be required of us again, and we must study its statecraft.
Because the UN will save no one.
Because wordsmiths overestimate words.
Because politics is always war by other means.
Because we must expect only carping and ingratitude and have infinite patience.
Because it is the right thing to do and the sophists’ words will vanish with the wind.
Because lies however big, are only temporary.

"Waiting for the Marines"
Fadel K Jabr
Translated from the Arabic original by the poet

Twelve years have passed
And the Iraqis are turning over
Like skewered fish
On the fire of waiting.

The first year of the sanctions
They said: The Arabs will come
They will come with love, flour, and the rights of kinship.
The year passed with its long seasons
The Arabs never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The second year of the sanctions
They said: The Muslims will come
They will come with rice, goodness, and the predators’ leftovers
The year passed with its long seasons
The Muslims never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The third year of the sanctions
They said: The world will come
They will come with manna, solace, and human rights
The year passed with its long seasons
The world never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The fourth year of the sanctions
They said: The Americans will come
They will come with hope, sugar, and warm feelings
The year passed with its long seasons
The Americans never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The fifth year of the sanctions
They said: The opposition will come
They will come with victories, water, and air
The year passed with its long seasons
The opposition never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The sixth year of the sanctions
They said: We will sell whatever is extra
We will be frugal until relief comes
The year passed with its long seasons
The Iraqis sold all unnecessary things
Relief never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The seventh year of the sanctions
They said: We will give up our semi-necessities
We will be patient until we get support
The year passed with its long seasons
The support never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The eighth year of the sanctions
They said: We will sell some of our organs
We will be strong until the coming of justice
The year passed with its long seasons
Justice never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The ninth year of the sanctions
They said: We will sell some of our children
We will sacrifice until the coming of mercy
The year passed with its long seasons
Mercy never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The tenth year of the sanctions
They said: We will emigrate
To the wide world of Allah
We will entertain ourselves with hope
Until the coming of the gods’ orders
The Iraqis separated east and west
The year passed with its long seasons
The gods’ orders never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The eleventh year of the sanctions
They said: The best thing for us is to die
We will stay settled in our graves
Until the coming of the day of judgement
The year passed with its long seasons
Cancer, tuberculosis, and leukæmia consumed their bodies
The day of judgement never came
And sent no explanation for the delay.

The twelfth year of the sanctions
The Iraqis found nothing to wait for
They said: Now is the time
For the earth’s worms to devour us
They might rescue us from this hell
Where we are turning over like skewered fish.

 
Via The Middle Stage.

"Temporary Poem of My Time"
Yehuda Amichai, 1924-2000

Hebrew writing and Arabic writing go from east to west,
Latin writing, from west to east.
Languages are like cats:
You must not stroke their hair the wrong way.
The clouds come from the sea, the hot wind from the desert,
The trees bend in the wind,
And stones fly from all four winds,
Into all four winds. They throw stones,
Throw this land, one at the other,
But the land always falls back to the land.
They throw the land, want to get rid of it.
Its stones, its soil, but you can’t get rid of it.

They throw stones, throw stones at me
In 1936, 1938, 1948, 1988,
Semites throw at Semites and anti-Semites at anti-Semites,
Evil men throw and just men throw,
Sinners throw and tempters throw,
Geologists throw and theologists throw,
Archaelogists throw and archhooligans throw,
Kidneys throw stones and gall bladders throw,
Head stones and forehead stones and the heart of a stone,
Stones shaped like a screaming mouth
And stones fitting your eyes
Like a pair of glasses,
The past throws stones at the future,
And all of them fall on the present.
Weeping stones and laughing gravel stones,
Even God in the Bible threw stones,
Even the Urim and Tumim were thrown
And got stuck in the beastplate of justice,
And Herod threw stones and what came out was a Temple.

Oh, the poem of stone sadness
Oh, the poem thrown on the stones
Oh, the poem of thrown stones.
Is there in this land
A stone that was never thrown
And never built and never overturned
And never uncovered and never discovered
And never screamed from a wall and never discarded by the builders
And never closed on top of a grave and never lay under lovers
And never turned into a cornerstone?

Please do not throw any more stones,
You are moving the land,
The holy, whole, open land,
You are moving it to the sea
And the sea doesn’t want it
The sea says, not in me.

Please throw little stones,
Throw snail fossils, throw gravel,
Justice or injustice from the quarries of Migdal Tsedek,
Throw soft stones, throw sweet clods,
Throw limestone, throw clay,
Throw sand of the seashore,
Throw dust of the desert, throw rust,
Throw soil, throw wind,
Throw air, throw nothing
Until your hands are weary
And the war is weary
And even peace will be weary and will be.

Translated from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav, in A Life of Poetry: 1948 - 1994, New York, HarperCollins, 1994.