CRUEL WAR MAKES PEACE SECURE
Only peaceniks and fools
are against the bombings
they say
Softies who just don't
understand what a good
bombing
can do
Softies who just can't
see that killing
is necessary for the advance
of civilization.
Senator John McCain
wanted ground troops
many Republicans and
Democrats
were eager to get Bill to
stop the foreplay
stop the masturbating
and go the whole hog!
Now Dubya owns the missile.
And the Big Hard Boys
tell us that civilization
is made safe by
war, by killing,
by hard blows against the
enemy
like, well, Genghis Khan and
Tamerlane wiped out those
thousands
of Persians and made Central
Asia
civilized.
And the Turks, you know they
solved the Balkans' problems
when they beat the Serbs at
Kossovo
in 1389, there's been peace
ever
since
And the Romans invaded the
German forest
didn't they and taught those
tribesmen
a lesson, making the
Mediterranean
and Gaul and Helvetia safe
for ever
after from Germanic invasion
Oh but Napoleon raged back
and forth
across Europe, all for
fraternity
and equality, bringing an end
to all those little wars between petty states
marching all the way
to Moscow to show the
Russians
that Bonaparte means icy
peace!
And the US Army marched
the Cherokees, Creeks,
Choctaws, and
Chickasaws from their
homelands
to Oklahoma, making the South
the
home of the free, the brave,
and the
slaves, and, you know, there
never was a civil war!.
Let us tell of the French,
British and Turks sacrificing
thousands, the flower of
youth,
in the charge of the light
brigade
in the Crimea, against the
horrible
Russians, saving the Black
Sea for
civilized men.
Shall we relate how the
French
calling up their troops
in 1870 to prevent the German
Empire
from unifying as with peans
of
glory they lost
Alsace-Lorraine and
guaranteed a century of
peace!
And after an Austrian
archduke died
the European powers called up
their
troops and launched a major
world-wide blood-letting, to
make the whole earth know the
benefits
of an era of peace, the
annihilation
of the Prussian war machine
forever!
But the Japanese sent armies
pouring
into China and all of Asia to
show that an East Asia
Co-prosperity
Sphere will grow from the
profound
silence of many honorable
graves.
So it is that any fool can
see
that war and might and bombs
and tanks and missiles are
civilization's building
blocks,
that war makes peace, war
builds
bridges of understanding,
war heals wounds, war makes
thoughts of revenge
disappear, war
cleans, purifies, that
"Cruel war makes peace secure"
"la guerra dura haze la
paz Segura."
Old Kim Il Sung thought that
with guns he could unify
Korea
while Dugout Doug
was sure that by pushing to
the Yalu
he could bring China into the
war
and thus, with immense armies
slaughtering
each other, the Chinese and
Korean peoples
could be dragged into the
sunlight of unity and peace.
For Saddam has taught us:
War makes peace
War will win the hearts of
Iranians
War will bring the Kuwaitis
to our bosom
War will teach the Kurds the
joy of
being Iraqis
And the Turks agree, killing
Kurds
and George Bush agrees,
killing Iraqis
and Bill Clinton agrees,
killing Sudanese,
Afghans, Iraqis, Serbs.
And so, century after
century,
Politicians and generals,
our august leaders,
have taught us the sure
recipe
for love and reconciliation
--
bombs! not words!
bullets! not dialogue!
Pride must be protected!
Credibility must be
maintained!
Faces must be saved!
For it is better that mothers
should die
that babies should starve
that children should perish
that men should be scarred
than that our leaders of
state
should suffer one moment
of embarrassment
one crack in their masks
of mastery!
--
28 April 1999, revised 8
October 2001
Jack Forbes