{"id":197298,"date":"2021-10-18T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2021-10-18T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=197298"},"modified":"2021-10-12T05:58:16","modified_gmt":"2021-10-12T04:58:16","slug":"a-poem-for-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/10\/a-poem-for-9-11\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"

I.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

11 September, iconic date
\nLike 7 December 60 years before,
\nRushed us to judgment and a bloody war
\nAs if war had been our unchosen fate.<\/p>\n

11 September, indelible date,
\nLike New York\u2019s twin towers, was well designed
\nTo fill the sky of everybody\u2019s mind
\nAnd endless printed pages dominate.<\/p>\n

11 September, infamous day,
\nTwin tower digits date looms large in minds
\nAnd now, two decades later, still reminds
\nThat predators sometimes may be the prey.<\/p>\n

Bloody revenge against alleged attacks,
\nA policy beloved by MIC,
\nUnwarranted as far as I can see,
\nIs only one of our mistaken tracks.<\/p>\n

But does the government actually err
\nOr just do bidding of corporations
\nFor corporate welfare, not the nation\u2019s?
\nI think it\u2019s the latter.\u00a0 Do you concur?<\/p>\n

For twenty years now, the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d
\nHas drained our treasury of two trillions
\nWhile devastating the lives of millions.
\nIt\u2019s been a war of horrible error.<\/p>\n

On 9\/11, year 2001,
\nFour planes were hijacked–so the story goes–
\nBy 19 Muslim hijackers, fierce foes,
\nYet every one of them without a gun!<\/p>\n

That twin thin-digit date subtly reminds
\nUs of abhorrent crime which, we were told
\nRepeatedly before the day was old,
\nWas done by Muslims with their evil minds.<\/p>\n

So we waged war against that slandered foe
\nFor 20 years, wasting two trillion bucks,
\nThen ending with abandoned guns, planes, trucks
\nAnd Afghan millions glad to see us go.<\/p>\n

\u201cGraveyard of Empires,\u201d far Afghanistan,
\nOnce more proves merit of that epithet,
\nThat warning so disastrous to forget.
\nShame, shame to learn anew from Taliban!<\/p>\n

Their mountainous fortress, Afghanistan
\nHas thwarted most attempts to conquer it.
\nThe fierce Afghanis never will submit.
\nThey\u2019ve thwarted each attempted conquest plan.<\/p>\n

Their natural castle, Afghanistan,
\nIs safe in mountains of the Hindu Kush,
\nWhere all invaders die in high ambush.
\nSo it has been since history began.<\/p>\n

II.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, Persia tried to add Afghanistan
\nTo it\u2019s great empire years before the Greeks.
\nMore lands, more riches every empire seeks,
\nCreates as many vassals as it can.<\/p>\n

Darius the Great, 515 BC,
\nMade satraps of some in Afghanistan,
\nExtracting its wealth from many a man,
\nYet didn\u2019t succeed to a great degree.<\/p>\n

Alexander the Great conquered afar,
\nEven Bactria, 330 BC.
\nBut all that remains of his memory
\nIs city he founded, named \u201cKandahar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arab Muslim soldiers, for centuries,
\nRaided and invaded Afghanistan,
\nKhorasan, Sistan and Tokharistan,
\nAdding to their armies and treasuries.<\/p>\n

Ibn Amir in 650 AD
\nMade peace for 600,000 dinars.
\n(Such tribute is a motive in most wars.)
\nPeace was as lucrative as it could be.<\/p>\n

The Mongol onslaught was more merciless,
\nAs Genghis Khan\u2019s 100,000 men
\nWould massacre in every battle, then
\nPlundered survivors with all thoroughness.<\/p>\n

Some stayed to be the people of today.
\nTheir fierceness has repelled invaders since,
\nHas caused all would-be conquerors to wince
\nAnd ept prospective new rulers away.<\/p>\n

From 1839 through \u201942,
\nFirst foolish move in infamous \u201cGreat Game,\u201d
\nThe British Army of the Indus came
\nTo Kabul\u2014which they also came to rue.<\/p>\n

The Second Anglo-Afghan War began
\nIn 1878 and ended when
\nThe Brits beat Ayub Khan\u2019s revolting men.
\nIn their new buffer state, he was their man.<\/p>\n

A century on, in 1979,
\nSoviet soldiers attacked Afghanistan.
\nThings failed to go according to their plan.
\nThwarted, they left in 1989.<\/p>\n

October 7th<\/sup> of 2001,
\nU.S. GIs struck poor Afghanistan.
\n\u201cOperation Enduring Freedom\u201d began
\nAnd a U.S. debacle had begun.<\/p>\n

Now, 9\/11, 2021,
\nCantankerous Afghanistan is free.
\nInvaders, once more beaten, bleeding, flee
\nBut shamelessly proclaim that they have won.<\/p>\n

III.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three digits, 9-1-1, now signify
\nA kind of serious emergency,
\nA feared event of utmost urgency
\nThat\u2019s only just began to terrify.<\/p>\n

To most Americans, that date recalls
\nA day traumatic, unforgettable.
\nWe aimed to make it most regrettable
\nFor perpetrators\u2014show \u2018em who had balls.<\/p>\n

We said, because 3,000 died that day,
\nThat many thousands more would lose their lives.
\nWe\u2019ve made a multitude of mourning wives
\nAvenging 9\/11, made them pay.<\/p>\n

—X—<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what is said may not, in fact, be true.
\nThe actual enemy was from within.
\nFor some, to gain more gold, there is no sin
\nToo great that it will limit what they do.<\/p>\n

What government and media declare,
\nMuch of it, if not all of it, is wrong.
\nAlas, the mass of people go along.
\nA healthy skepticism now is rare.<\/p>\n

And independent reasoning is, too.
\nTo leave the mainstream means to lose some friends.
\nDisputing facts is where some friendship ends.
\n(This case, of course, does not apply to you.)<\/p>\n

On 9\/11, traitors ruled the day,
\nThen blamed the Muslims for their evil acts,
\nAs you can see when you get all the facts
\nThough propaganda points a different way.<\/p>\n

This subject here is much too big for verse.
\nConsult instead, dozens of books in prose
\nTo truly know how that attack arose.
\nThe crime was so incredibly perverse!<\/p>\n

We all want justice to prevail someday.
\nI\u2019ve sought it 80 years; it hasn\u2019t come.
\nWe must do far more work for such outcome.
\nIt\u2019s not nearly enough to hope and pray.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, most people act as they think right.
\nWe\u2019re lucky that so many are decent.
\nAs for the motives of the One Percent,
\nThey\u2019re wealth and wealth\u2019s associated might.<\/p>\n

God made this world to see how we will act:
\nLiving the way we want others to live,
\nThinking of what we are able to give,
\nOr plotting instead what we can extract.<\/p>\n

Justice may lie in a different sphere;
\nBut we won\u2019t know until after we die.
\nDon\u2019t wait, however, for pie in the sky.
\nLet\u2019s work together and create it here.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Robert Cable was born in South Dakota, where he heard, read and loved rhymed verse from his early years. From 1958 to 1962, he earned a B.A. in English and Spanish at Harvard College, and then joined the new U.S. Peace Corps.\u00a0 In Peru, he began a long, varied, peripatetic career of teaching, which he eventually did in Minnesota, Texas, Massachusetts, Washington DC, Saudi Arabia and Iran. During a year of study at the American University of Beirut he met his Palestinian wife, Layla (now divorced).\u00a0 After retirement in 2015, he began to write occasional verse, which currently to a repertoire of about 500 pieces.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 September, iconic date
\nLike 7 December 60 years before,
\nRushed us to judgment and a bloody war
\nAs if war had been our unchosen fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":115837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[182],"tags":[2477,1344,867,868,70],"class_list":["post-197298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-format","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-truth","tag-anglo-america","tag-poetry","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}