[Newspoetry] Waiting for the SubAltern Continent to Speak

[Donald L Emerick]

India and Pakistan closely monitored and observed
the recently concluded war in Iraq with great interest,
each eyeing the other, warily with guarded suspicion,
as they imagine that they might do unto each other
as Bush as taught them, do it ere it's done unto you.

A news arm race will unfurl its unflagging pennants:
each will race to build a more superior air-war power,
pour billions into air superiority combat fighters,
and missiles like Tomahawk, JDAM, and HellFires,
the allegedly precision-guided munitions (PGM).

What the Iraq War proves: AirPower is everything;
he who controls the skies controls the land below.
For world class powers, rapid mobile transport, too,
and reinforcing waves from the sea is also essential,
but that case does not apply to the IP KashMir-Age.

We can predict, then, intensified arm-race stresses
on the SubAltern Subcontinent for some 5 to 7 years,
as each "race" races to re-model its armed forces so.
Then, along toward the end of this far-flung decade,
an escalation of the statistics of this deadly quarrel
will finally erupt, as the two mini-Leviathans entangle.

One of them will be right or fast enough, this time,
for there is no difference under Bush-do-it-doctrine,
between being pre-emptively fast and being right,
that the other will come to a mortal fear of losing,
even if winning could not ever be rationally defined.

Under the gloomy clouds of such catastrophic loss,
the SubAlterns will speak sub-alternatively of war,
of dire necessity to keep from losing, at all costs,
and they will say, then, "Throw the Nukes at them,
stop their Armies of the Night before they advance."

The outcome of this final War, a holocaust to come,
has already been decided, as an event now certain,
one that has been scheduled and programmed to be,
one that history is powerless to halt, given the shape
of the world, its present allocations of political forces.

Oh, there's a remote chance that Bush will fail in '04,
to win re-election, but the long odds favor him, now.
So, absent any kind of wisdom, there in Washington,
an ab-sense most likely to be re-inforced in Congress,
when Bush sweeps more of his party ticket into office.
there will be nothing wise at the seat of world power
that might restrain this ever-nearing coming holocaust.

Lesser nations, noting the schedule of this war-to-be,
will note that such conventional warfare is pointless,
because the budgets for it far exceed their wealth:
they will aim to build, buy, borrow or steal BCWs,
wherever they are sold in black-arts-arms-markets.

They will time their plans for their foolish attacks, too:
for they know the US fears no nukes, but trembles,
shudders and shakes at the horror of loose BCWs,
spread upon them, turning their land and lives dead:
death in war is only for the other guy and his family,
not for you yourself, or for most of your own world.

The second decade forecast is also an easy call:
the US will engage in small nuclear panic-strikes,
first at this far-away place, then at that one there,
as war and rumors-of-war are forward from a field,
an intelligence machine for pre-emptive do-it-nows.

Hint: invest in no foreign markets nor any assets,
unless it is for the very short term, or in Chinese,
as those investments will not pay you dividends:
they will not pay you back even your long capital.

I am No-stra-damn-us today,
but thanks for listening,
to a bleak in-house report,
Donald L Emerick

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