[Newspoetry] Why not Peace, Now, in Iraq?

[DL Emerick]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902792.html?

It's a fact: We lost the War in Vietnam.
Bombs stopped falling from Heaven like manna.
Bullets stopped flying into people and cows.
Dying fell back into its rutted ways.

Forests popped up from broken stumps and limbs.
Unexploded bombs were found and exploded.

Life returned to normal when the bleeders left.
People started smiling, cautiously at first;
Laughter rang out in ever louder ap-peals;
Boys and girls got married and had kids.

Jobs sprang up, covering the economy in wealth;
Trading partnerships were formed and reformed;
Even the old enemies became business friends,
as life in both countries was much better.

*****

When that war was on they told us nothing but lies.
They said honor was served by continuing to die,
so that every death demanded yet another to honor it.

They said we'd not have to fight commies at home
if we's just stand up to them in Vietnam, dying there.

They said Vietnam was a magnet for foreign fighters,
that the Soviets and Russkies, global commies,
were testing our resolve, in death-wish sacrifices.

They said freedom was advancing in SouthEast Asia,
that Vietnam would be a shining example everywhere,
of how a country could have freedom only by war.

They said we fought against inhumane monsters,
against ever malevolent commmies who hate all life,
who were willing to kill all for their evil cause.

Everything they said was a lie -- a knowing falsehood.
And, yet, here we are 30 years later, in Iraqi War.
Everything they say, except for the names of places,
is completely unchanged: every lie is being retold.

If Americans apply the lessons of Vietnam to Iraq,
we'd surely know that terrorism has no global aim,
because terrorism is about oppressed peoples,
fighting to be free of their foreign oppressors,
those who prop up a government against the people,
by bayonets and bombs and bullets propping it up,
by hunting down and killing native freedom fighters.

All politics is local and all wars are regional,
because war is merely a continuation of politics.
That is the saying of the Western War Theorists.

They know the truth, that global military control
requires a looming practice of global militarism:
the arms must stay vetted, the bayonets sharp,
and blood must drip and flow in every generation,
or else all wars and their wastes will surely end.

It frightens men who are used to planning deaths,
who are death-dealers, pure and simple, willing to kill,
but of course, always and only for a "true" cause,
whichever one inspires the homicidal leaderships.

In Iraq, tens of thousands have died, are dying.
In Iraq, bombs and bullets destroy houses and lives.
In Iraq, incomes have fallen and unemployment risen.

And, yet, they say, by lying words, we're winning.
What, my friends, is winning about any war ever?
War is no game: it has no positive profit payoff.

The only way to win a war is to stop it,
to stop it now before you waste even more.
War is only about losing, about dying in defeat,
and every soldier who dies knows death as defeat,
every civilian who dies knows death masters him,
for death is the worst kind of slavery of all,
a slavery eternal, an indentureship never ending;
hence, the biggest lie is that war frees anyone,
when it forces the ways of death upon others.

Oh, there may be exceptions, to history's truths,
that war is never of any use to mankind's society,
but the exceptions are still so few and so rare.

The liars, though, take the exceptions as a rule,
and deny the truth of the rule that defines them.
Lies begin and once they start, truth dies first.