27 Mar
Again Libya
It is that time
It is that time again
to call a spade a heart
Protecting the people of that desert country
by killing them
Doing so with righteous zeal
these faux servants of the UN
Humanist hawks and nostalgic imperialists
gather in a single tent
To once more break bread spill blood
Yes, but:
Qaddafi a genuine monster on the prowl
a demented killer
Addressing his tormented people as ‘rats and dogs’
Promising a hunt ‘alley by alley,
house by house, room by room’
Decreeing death for those fools
who dare snuff his candle
But war for whom? For what? Whose war?
For the clouds above
and their shadows below
For those who breakfast on oil
For surly arms dealers with mean grins
this war pleases merchants of death
As surely giant purchase orders will follow
Almost as the guns fall silent
The ‘rebels’ cheer the advent of missiles
but who are the rebels
Even their flags seem ill-chosen, evoking a lost past
Their struggle seems real, their bravery real
And yet does it matter– it is no longer their war
It has become our war to win lose or draw
They asked for this happening perhaps unknowingly
Didn’t they? Didn’t we?
As night falls Mars keeps smiling
Unlike some gloom at the Pentagon
where past lost wars are less easily forgotten
And yet these sullen military faces cannot bring peace
nor even rouse their tasered citizenry to dissent
Nor ban news channels glutted with agit-prop
at best a few wisely searching elsewhere for the real
Even sports or animal shows tell more truths these days
III..27…2011
Richard Falk
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He initiated this blog partly in celebration of his 80th birthday.
