In Ohio

I live in Ohio,
not by accident of birth,
but by choice, the heartland
over the coastal megalopolis.
I am a veteran, a tax payer,
and a voter
in small-town Ohio.

I saw two parades today,
here in Ohio,
each with its silent
procession of Marines
in dress blues,
dozens of police cars,
lights flashing without sirens,
long black limos
and a horse-drawn hearse.
Two in one day,
the third I’ve attended
in just one month.

Here in Ohio…

This is what you call
hitting home.

When Sadaam attacked Kuwait
I thought we were right
to intervene.

When Sadaam complained
that the children of Iraq
were starving, I took note
of his dozens of castles and said
don’t lay this at our door.
We had him under our thumb
and I agreed.

But whenever anyone suggested that,
unprovoked,
we should violently intervene
in the internal affairs
of another country
in the name of human rights,
I wondered about our own
questionable history.
Where was the Axis of Evil
when we were ethnic cleansing,
hanging our own citizens
for the color of their skin?

Shock and awe..?
Let me engage for a moment
in a bit of sacrilege:
This war is illegal, ill conceived,
and poorly carried out.
This war is the screw-up
of a screw-up president
and his politician friends.
We have gone from WMDs
to the nine-eleven connection,
from ousting a dictator,
to installing a democracy
in a land that doesn’t want one,
when it’s really about oil, Israel,
and Dubuyah’s personal agenda.

Close to two thousand
Americans dead,
another fifteen thousand wounded,
and so many Iraqi casualties
no one can count them.
“Victory is ours!” Bush proclaimed
nearly two years ago
and they’re talking about another year,
another eight billion dollars,
another who-knows-how-many lives…

Who the hell are we
to attack another country
without provocation?
The last super power?
The leader of the free world?
Who is setting the example,
the invaders?
If they came here,
they’d be calling me insurgent!

Why Ohio..?
Why so many young soldiers
fighting in a sandstorm
half-way around the world
from Ohio..?
Because we keep our mouths shut
and grieve in silence?
The last time we protested
the same kind of screw-up,
the Governor sent in troops
and twelve lay dead
in Kent,
hitting home
in Ohio.

We are a safe state.
We are in the President’s column.
As Ohio goes,
so goes the nation.

There will be more parades in Ohio
today
and tomorrow.
The newscasters will interview
friends and relatives,
all who want to believe
these kids died for a cause.
We are a red state,
the one that put the President
over the top.
No one wants to say it…
No one wants to believe it…
But this is just one big screw-up!
They died because of a screw-up.

The government won’t allow pictures
of the coffins.
They tend to dishearten the citizenry.
They may be able to stop the photographs
of the neat rows of flag-draped boxes
in the bellies of C-130s,
but they can’t stop
the parades.

They can’t stop
that funeral procession
coming soon
to a town near you.

August 14, 2005