AustinGranny.com - To the Forty-third President of the United States of America

TO THE FORTY-THIRD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Mr. President, our history speaks to us, the history of Chile
and China, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Somalia, Puerto Rico—
today, our solemn duty is to defy your willful aggression,
to parse provocative words and habits, your heroic battle
to distract us. Perhaps you think God will protect us
from the religious zealots who sanctify your rule,
from your opportunism and the race renewal,
the investiture you have assumed because, as
always, it is not yours. Let me ask
an obvious question.
If we are to establish peace
and security for our nation, must we not do
everything in our power to end
the beginnings of war, must we not allow
our imaginations to craft a lasting peace?
Are not the children you would choose
to incinerate our own? We try on masks
to trick our isolated, frightened selves,
to propagate our sacred uncertainties
among the children of this blue planet,
a world we create and ruin every day.
Mr. President,
where do we walk, where may we sit down,
where can we work or rest, weep or pray,
what field does a man sunder and seed
in a country living only in memory, dying
every day at the hands of those who profess
to love her most? They say God loves America,
and that this “old bitch gone in the teeth” is
heaven on earth; in preemptive violence,
in obstinacy, in entitlements for the rich,
this murdered land, this, the people's
earth, is our reward for being right
no matter how wrong we are.
What “urge and rage”
thrives in the American heart, that so many cheer
this obsessive, unilateral madness?
Even through
precise layers of glass, the TV peddling
a thrilling efficiency, we cannot see them,
the ghosts that inhabit our malnourished
statistics, inhospitable closets, cold kitchens
where we eat meat and raise goblets of wine
to celebrate our belief that they are not like us.
I want to spend more time with my daughter,
my five-year-old, I want to see her, to know
she is alive. It is her “evening of the morning,”
she is just fine, though she implores me to tell her
the “acommitation of naked truth.”
I imagine
Iraqis, weakened by sanctions, spending time
with their children. What do they play together,
what makes them laugh, what crude medicine
do parents spoon down fevered throats, when
they too are roused from nightmares of fragile
necklaces of bone, slung around the necks of
American fighters whose hearts we camouflage?
Who will witness the small charred bodies floating
in the Tigris, children writhing in pain, in smoking rubble,
in the ruins of Bab al-Wastani or the Mirjan Mosque,
severed limbs and glazed eyes that last night
followed their favorite story by candlelight?
Mr. President,
what does it mean when you say Saddam Hussein,
Butcher of Baghdad, official liar, terrorizes himself?
If he brings terror upon himself, will our dark angels
exterminate him or his already wounded people;
and would you answer Mr. Korb: What if Kuwait grew carrots,
what if Iraq's main exports were chick peas and cotton shawls
destined for American women
longing for the exotic?
To be honest,
I have forgotten from what we must abstain,
yet we know how to prevent conception. “C'est la vie,”
you say, saddled up, ready to ride with your posse
across oil fields just like those in Texas.
It appears the one thing we cherish

more than petroleum or our children
is the greased machinery of destruction.

Notes

“old bitch gone in the teeth”: Ezra Pound, from “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”

“urge and rage”: Anne Frank, from The Diary of a Young Girl (1947; tr. 1952), entry for 3 May 1944

“evening of the morning”: Kyra Gray O'Daly

“acommitation of naked truth”: Kyra Gray O'Daly

Bab al-Wastani: the last remaining of the renowned gates of Baghdad

Mirjan Mosque: ancient mosque, completed in 1358

“If Kuwait grew carrots we wouldn't give a damn.” Lawrence Korb, former U.S. assistant secretary of defense, on the motives for “Operation Desert Storm”

“The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.” George W. Bush

“C'est la vie” : “Either they are with us or not. Either one is fine. C'est la vie.” An aide to George W. Bush, quoting him

“I know some in Europe see me as a Texas cowboy with six-shooters at my side. But the truth is I prefer to ride with a posse.” One senior Bush aide, recalling President Bush's comment to Czech President Vaclav Havel in Prague (Fall 2002)

— William O'Daly