[Newspoetry] A War in Review -- five years later?

[DL Emerick]

http://www.harpers.org/Afghanistan.html#20030929233932-2577240279
 
In Afghan fields, the poppies blow
where it blows in poppy snows.
 
We have won the war there.
Bush says so.  Rumsfeld says so.
It must be true: we run the news.
We built 12 military bases there,
just to make sure war stays won,
and went to fight our war of choice,
one in Iraq where targets were better.
 
We have sat by and let Bush proclaim,
"It's about freedom for Afghans."
The dead children listen attentively,
dead parents roll over in their graves;
Afghan PoWs tortured, mutilated, killed
know the price of freedom is high.
 
Laura Bush says "Afghan women are free"
ignoring what the puppet regime is doing,
which is nothing to liberate women there,
but she is too benignly dumb to seek truth.
 
The WarLords raise poppy production,
by over a 1,000% -- the US buys some,
and lets the rest escape in free markets,
for Afghan's GDP relies 50% on opium,
the rest is prostitution and white slavery.
 
Osama escaped, too, despite everything.
It makes you wonder what they smoke,
there in the White House Wonderland,
where the wise-crack head guys rule,
and the poppies are flowering in rain.
 
"There is  <http://www.harpers.org/Weather.html#20040106-542132970216> rain
coming," said Sebaghatullah Mojadeddi,
council chairman, "and
<http://www.harpers.org/Drugs.html#20040106-542132970216> flowers are coming
from my body."
A video recording was released that showed U.S. soldiers
in Afghanistan shouting insults through a loudspeaker
after setting alight the corpses of two
<http://www.harpers.org/Taliban.html#2005-10-20-5791442492854525E8> Taliban
fighters.
"Wow, look at the blood coming out of the mouth on that one,"
said a soldier. "Fucking straight
<http://www.harpers.org/Entertainment.html#2005-10-20-5791442492854525E8>
death metal."[The Guardian
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1596556,00.html> ]
<http://www.harpers.org/WeeklyReview2005-10-25.html#2005-10-20-5791442492854
525E8> >
 
Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun militia chief {aka warlord},
was sworn in as the interim leader of Afghanistan.
"Let us be good to each other," he said.
"And be compassionate and share our grief.
Let us forget the sad past."
A <US>  <http://www.harpers.org/Marines.html#200502087-197948948720> Marine
general described
the pleasures of shooting Afghan men.
 
Mawlawi Qudratullah Jamal, the {former}
Taliban's minister of information and culture {sic!},
noted that "it is easier to destroy than to build."
Bush and Rumsfeld learned that from him?!?
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