(from the archives: Sept 2006)
If I could turn time's hands to days before the quaking of the ground
And rewind screaming engines, fires, clouds of concrete and that massive sound
We could not be wiser, nor could we imagine sleeping that our fate
Might rest between this fiqh or that Islamic dream of mighty Caliphate
Could we have known a thousand soldiers born to die a martyr's death
Would cross the globe advancing every opportunity to plot our death?
We made no time to mind what Sunnis thinks a Shi'ite might be all about
And for this lapse a nation's grasp of deadly enemies remains in doubt.
Of Hezbollah and Ikwan
Of Yemenis and Taliban
Zawahiri, Zarkawi, Ahmadinejad
Haditha, Mosul, Fallujah, Samarra & Baghdad
Sunni, Shi'ite, Alawite, Fatah & Hamas
Madhi Army, Baathists & Egyptian Madrassas
Tora Bora, Peshawar, Al Jazeera, Al Anbar
Dhimmitude & Burkas and I've gone only half as far
And half as deep as I must go before I sleep...
And in my homeland marching all about the common ground I see
A million doubting fingers pointing left and right as if there couldn't be
An enemy more intimate or willing to run through the beating heart
Of liberty's sweet promise just to jealously defend their party's part
Within this house divided may we tell
Recalling lives upon that day destroyed
The tragedy of why the towers fell
The blind sheik's eye, the gaping moral void
Remember how we vowed that we'd obey
The call of duty rising in us all
To honor them defending all the way
Our very finest freedoms from the fall
So to that end we brandished every sword
And used but few available to us
Charging ahead on Colin Powell's word
To hell with those who won't get on the bus
Our Eagle's fury venged with wrath but blurred by righteous mourning tears
So many dead fell hapless to our shock and awe and mounted muslim fears
That we might satiate a hunger to devour nations fueled by christian hate
And so joined in the foolish fatwa muslim madmen lining every state
They came to fight like lemmings wailing to Iraq after Afghanistan
From Syria and Iran hailing, brainwashed brigand boys their first jihad
Joined up to displaced Baathists and al Sadr how they ran
To meet their doom under the hand of Odierno run roughshod
Yet to this tale of desparation we add blue-thumbed voting hope anew
For in the truth of liberation there is mighty public work to do
Such work begat a Constitution. Iyad Allawi stood before the house
With sovereignty delivered now Maliki's bosom wears new freedoms blouse
Blind blind my brothers I must protect their ignorant souls from their perverse goals
Deaf deaf my sisters mumbling yadda into their decaf, immune from the draft
Dumb dumb my cousins sitting on their arms claiming enlightened pacifism
Weak weak my neighbors shriek a cowards yellow streak backbiting when I speak
All my relatives live in relativism
And nobody asks why until they die
I cannot finish
I cannot stop
There is no art in the frustrated hand
I can only press forward a new tack
Until perhaps they understand
There is no turning back
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