[Newspoetry] What Matters, in the End?

[Donald L Emerick]

What Matters, in the End?

Some say Bush and his team knew almost everything
about what bin Laden and his team were going to do,
because surely the CIA and the FBI, and some others --
the less well known and often unnamed intelligence arms
(ears?, eyes? -- it depends on what they do) of the USG --
are perfectly competent to pick up all sorts of stories,
to investigate their origins, or assess their specific gravity.

Some say, well, yes, but it's a jungle out there,
trying to get this or any President's attention:
You'd sooner communicate with autistic kids
than with this particular president and his team,
for they live in a dreamworld, teneted by ideology,
everything passes on, but through strange refractions.

Others say, we always know, so this is nothing new,
that the president and his pals knew it and had to know it,
however, we never compromise our intelligence gathering arms
by acting on any of the secretive intelligence that we learn,
because that would put the intelligence arms out of business.

But, this is not the era of liberal courage, of Watergate,
to ask of that six-gun smokin' Joe in a WhiteWashing House,
What did you know and when did you know it,
and what did you do, when you knew?

For, I have always believed that
if your enemy is going to help you,
by doing something really stupid,
like hijacking one of our planes,
and hurting a few of our fellow citizens,
and letting you seize the upper hands and higher grounds,
where political morals are militaristic economics, 
so you can act like the grieving widow of a martyr,
even if you helped may have helped kill your spouse,
by doing nothing to help that spouse dodge a bullet,
and if you can get away with doing nothing much,
to stop your enemy from being a blithering idiot,
then you may be one of history's big heroes.

Now, this is what Machiavelli probably says to GWB,
hissing in his ear: let the enemy make the first mistake,
by moving first, like that, stupidly, and you win, Big Time.

And, the minor fact, that you did not know
what damage they were going to inflict,
and largely did inflict, hardly matters, anyway,
because you got everything you wanted.
transforming a nebbish, failing presidency
into an even more potent electoral force,
which will allow you and your team
to run over everyone not in the autocracy,
while their short attention is diverted,
their weak eyes turned elsewhere,
their stubborn hearts unwilling to think:
"We may have been betrayed,
by cynical opportunism
or gross incompetence..."

No, I favor an even more evil picture.
They were ignorant, but only saw it all,
after the facts had indelibly appeared,
as something that did not matter at all,
as long as they could exploit it, profitably,
to boost their many and varied fortunes.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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