THE WILLING SUSPENDERS OF DISBELIEF
photo by Buck Sargent
The Willing Suspenders of Disbelief
The Tao of Modern War part III
(Parts I and II can be found here and here).
We meet in an evil land
That is near to the gates of hell.
I wait for thy command
To serve, to speed or withstand
And thou sayest, I do not well?
-Rudyard Kipling, Evil Land
As conditions on the ground shift as extra boots gained a step
Expect not to hear how indeed they've made a dent
When one can form their own opinions
Why not then their own sit-reps?
That's the way it was
Hence, always has it went
Stay tuned for The War (as mostly seen on TV)
A blurred reality cooking show with fancy sat-com IEDs
Long-range ballistic missives straight from the mêlée to your telly
Improvised Exploitive Dispatches
Fresh dread made up daily
All the sedition that'll fit the morning edition
Reporto ergo sum
From their position...
On the way...
Click
Send
'BOOM!'
'As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch'
They soon won't be the only ones left reminiscing the stench
All those downsizing layoffs at the Baghdad morgue
Must mean another disappointing quarter for MoveOn.org
With their discounted prattle they claim our leaders have betrayed us
Smearing generals on the battlefield while they rhetorically flay us
1st Amendment haters who think its defenders the real traitors
Roger, those guys love soldiers like Picard loved the Borg
But when troop slander fails
Shift fire to contractor bogeymen
If your shtick isn't sticking
Cry havoc and lie, lie again
Gunning down innocence in cold blood
Just like them Haditha Marines
Ain't that right, Judge Murtha?
You dishonorable excuse for a human being
Halliburton no longer the corporate devils of the hour
Harsh interrogation reserved only for real life Jack Bauers
Those soggy bottom boys need their gunslinging immunity holders
How else to keep their heads down and squarely on their shoulders?
For security I'd take the Contractor Curts and the Blackwater Bobs
Any day of the week over Pvt. Joe Snuffy and the karaoke kings of the FOB
But the rule of media momentum equals mass times atrocity
The shortest route to reaching any narrative’s terminal velocity
Earnest reportage still no match for editorial conniving
If at first you don’t succeed
Trust me, don't take up skydiving
***
Osama has-been Laden and his grotto fabulous quack
Still namedropping every single last "sectarian" attack
Didn't they get the memo?
AQ's got nothing to do with Iraq!
So sayeth Messrs. 'Potamia and their NY Times peeps
Cutting room hacks with the knife perennially at our backs
Truthier facts emanate from The View's heifers during sweeps
Quite a semester indeed for Columbia U.
Ahmadinejad? Welcome!
ROTC? Hiss, boo!
Real courage must be defacing what you don’t have to fear
Congrats to the whole faculty
'07 Madrasa of the Year!
Another '20 headless bodies found':
Just one more enemy authored byline
A whopping 19,000 bad guys toast:
"Science fiction worthy of Heinlein"
MoH heroics and battleground stoics aside
Nothing to see here, no cause for undue national pride
Witness Navy SEAL Lt. Michael P. Murphy’s Law:
Less press for Dunham, J. and Smith, Paul Ray
Than for Durham, N.C. and Anna Nicole's baby's pa
'Troop, Civilian Casualties In Rapid Decline!'
And other such headlines, buried on page A10 you'll find
Remember Lost: Al Anbar?
Well, then in you’re in plenty of bad company
Neither does Reuters, Time, AP, or McClatchy!
But whatever did happen to Wild West Ramadi?
File not found/404
Beam us up, Scotty
From rocket propelled grenades to unity parades
And nary a newsworthy MSM story?
I suppose calm & reconstruction is much too last season
Yawn, nothing to see here, bor-ring
Sure, it likely never will be mistaken for an idyllic arcadia
But all things considered
I'd still rather not be in Philadelphia
***
Iraq's still a blight with NO END IN SIGHT
Or so says former Gen. “Ridin’ Dirty” Sanchez
Though a toss up still whose war service was more valuable:
His, Germany, or France's
Dare we recall a time when retired also meant retiring
And not just more whining about one's own de facto firing?
Media villain or DoD fall guy, who's to say?
It'll take a lot more than lava
To scrub Abu Stains from one's resume
Through a plethora of triple-starred, quadruple-holds-barred sissies
Did it take to finally unearth GW’s own present day Ulysses
A Patton cum Grant, no Westmoreland come lately
None of that tell us what we want to hear and we'll reward you accordingly
The Surge'on General
Surge Projector
Aka, Insurgency Home Wrecker
Dismantling AQI via PowerPoint and a cordless Black & Decker
His team of Ph.Ds in ass kickery deemed precisely the trick
The Petraeus ex machina of this overbudget war flick
And speaking of projects ending in multimillion $ zeros
Where are the Duke Waynes to honor today's military heros?
From the stalwart Bruces and Sinises
Not even a paltry movie-of-the-week?
Yet stuck with Best Dramatic Feces
From the likes of DePalma, Redford, and Streep
Patriotic producers:
Indeed the most endangered of left coast species
But Americans vote with their pocketbooks
And not simply through polls
May Hollywood's only war casualties
Cut them straight to their souls
Their investment in the latest cinematic antiwar crop
M1 tanks at the box office
Full metal ticket sales flop
Fess up all you boomer antiwar protest re-enactors
Aging hippies, Botoxed chippies, and detoxed over the hill actors
This pretense that you care about our safety and our lives
Is as shallow as your idealism
As retreating as your hairlines
Having once pitted your might against your own generational fight
Though only to the extent your own hide could be drafted
Experiencing not even a twinge once a whole populace got shafted
Now older but no wiser
And yearning for a sense of shared sacrifice
How better to mask your guilty conscience
Than with leftward guile, denial, and artifice
***
Three visits to Iraq, what in Crawford was he thinkin'?
Q: Name the last CinC to grace the battlefield
A: Abraham Lincoln
Though if national security devolves into a game of internecine chicken
No Hand Left Untied dictates mean both aisles will surely lose
So long as rules of lawfare inhibit throwing the habeas out with the Baathwater
Count on mullah militia neighbors to keep playing Nebuchadnezzar Scrooge
Legislators on frequent holiday
Political reconciliation unthinkable
Landlocked spoils,
Deadlocked oil,
All deemed patently unworkable
Unsecured borders,
Politically launched mortars,
Gridlocked parliamentary morass
But I digress,
Enough already about our own Donkey Kongress...
All those who were for it before they were agin' it, say "aye"
Or until the next election when you'll go back on your lie
You know it's time to return to the private sector anew
When le President de France sounds more pro-American than you
The cris de coeur of your colleagues to raise the white flag
And storm the sands of Ima Vajina passed off as a gag
It's said the wish is often the estranged father to the deed
Et tu, Senator Harry (D-feat, NV) Reid?
But four years of investment in defeatathon rhetoric
Can't be undone with sardonic milblogger metrics
Employing logic and reason, albeit quite spherical
Legally blind to the nascent Iraqi quagmiracle
Shrill obsessed floggers of the choose-to-lose motif
Ye judge who sports the willing suspenders of disbelief
***
Are we your modern day Hercs or just more play-for-pay mercs?
Pax dispensers for hire with little else which to aspire?
The middleground we occupy between pacifist and jihadist
A dirty job some of us do regardless of mad lib blue state ire
Still, the retail cost of freedom has been relatively stationary
Even as prices and participation so often have varied
But those who serve when called rarely require an airtight rationale
Hell, we'd take out our own grandmothers if they joined AQ Internationale
True, 'tis likely I'm but a throwback to a romanticized age
When the country demanded surrender on the double and on the page
Of the enemy, that is, not of our very own military
To fight when called upon, to see through the battle’s end
Never leaving a single comrade, an alliance, or a friend
Against all enemies: foreign, imported, or domestic
A volunteer force, never in history more majestic
In defiance of anonymous t'rollicking colics
That’s what you call old school broke-the-mold warrior politics
To all those menstruals of constant sorrow
Bad news bearers of little else
Whenever BDS rears its ugly mug so smug
Simpatico bores, vainglorious and shallow
Still their schadenfreude is of but very low import
To concerned local citizens as Iraqis again do rejoice
Listen intently and inshallah you may hear
Somewhere a mara chibiira
Patiently warming up her voice
