I've often had cause to be embarrassed about my country. America, the home of trailer park chic. Where we revere the myth of the founding fathers and preach the idea of the self made man, while teaching in every schoolyard and every boardroom the power of mob rule. Where we are loud, ignorant, arrogant, prideful, and xenophobic.

But until Abu Ghraib, I was never ashamed to be an american.

I have no words, no bile strong enough to condemn the soldiers who committed these acts. I have no punishment fitting for the commanders who ordered it, or their commanders who turned a blind eye, or *their* commanders who squinted long and hard at the Geneva conventions and decided that there was plenty of wiggle room here, and even if there wasn't any room over there, well, it just meant that that part couldn't possibly apply to *us*, now could it? We're americans, we make the rules. Doesn't mean we have to follow them.

I have no fitting words for anyone who would try to justify these actions. You never want to believe that someone who looks and sounds just like you could do something like this. Like a small child, you refuse to look at it, wiping it out from your own personal reality. And when there are no places left to look that are not crammed full with the images of ugly truth, well then - someone must've made 'em do it! They *deserved* it, didn't they? 'Cause of those airplanes and those suicide bombers? 'cause they're out to get us, an' we gotta get them first!

It's ugly, isn't it? And now, it's never going to end. They did to us, we did to them, and now they have to go and do to us again. And again. And again.

The last comfort some had was in the idea that even though the country was going to hell in a hand basket, even though our government was clinically insane, we could look at the next person, even some stranger who just happened to be passing by; and know there was an even chance that they were, at heart, a decent person.

No one wants to believe in that ugliness, believing opens the door for the awful question "If that person, who looks and talks just like me, could be party to these awful things, what does that say about me? Do I have that same ugliness buried inside me?"

Yes. You do. You feed it with every denial, every protest, every attempt to turn the blame or hide behind rules of procedure.

My disgust knows no bounds, but neither does my lack of surprise, nor my cynicism regarding the shrub's moral indignation. Because, of *course* our ill trained, damm near drafted, wanting to come home service people are just so perfect that they would never abuse, torture, or humiliate prisoners of war protected by the Geneva conventions. That only happens in other places, where the pure, upstanding american military hasn't come to save the day.

My ass.

And they're Waltzing Matilda....

Pssst... erm, Mr. Bush? Maybe you should have tried looking here for those pesky little reasons for going to war.

It's not enough that we're becoming a nation of knee jerk, reactionary, xenophobes, but now the house of representatives is trying to dig up the bodies of fallen US solders buried in France and bring them home.

Incoherent profanity removed.

Seriously - does no one in charge get the fact that we are *becoming* the thing we have spent the last half century railing against? That eventually the world *will* come together under one banner and with a common purpose.

To get rid of us.

Because, the delusions of our leaders aside, America is not the Roman Empire, and attempts to re-create ourselves in Rome's image are doomed to a messy failure.

Oh, and by the way - France is not the enemy. The worst enemy we have right now is our own selves. We are going to bring ourselves down and accomplish what no other nation, fanatic, or terrorist could do and we are going to do it wrapped up in a flag with a cloak of self righteousness.

Ashcroft online, ver. 1.0 - the future is now, kiddies.

Terry Jones applies the logic of Bush Jr. to his own neighborhood.

What happens when a clueless First Lady invites the wrong poet to the wrong event? You get Poets Against the War and A Culture of Resistance.

You also get some interesting parallels between the current attempts to marginalize antiwar artists and the attempts to do almost the same thing with the same arguments to the punk artists almost 20 years ago.

I've been tossing around the idea of diving into verse to try and order my thoughts on the mess that is current politics, but nothing worthwhile has come of it. However, what *did* get my dander up were varous comments in a few Op-Ed pieces and from the First Lady's office that injecting some current political debate into a literary event was inappropriate. That politics and art should remain separate and involiate. To which I reply:

Art should not be political?
What would you have art be, then?
Useless, sitting in a corner or
worshipped from afar on ivory pedestals?

Words have power, and images too
that once were acknowledged with honor.
Would you squander such a resource
hiding with your nose in the air?

Foolish academic with your airs
come breathe less rarefied air
and use your art for something better
than proving your own stodgy worth

Prove to me that the blood of bards
runs strong and bold in modern day
and art is worth more than the posturing
of puffed up academia.

Else regulate yourself to forgotten
dusty corners with your fellows
while youth, vibrant and immature though it be
moves the passions of the world - without you.

Having failed to make Amiri Baraka resign, the NJ state legislature is abolishing the position of poet laurete. Wow. Once again we prove that we are, indeed, the armpit of the union.

So it's a good thing I just found a good source. I give you.... It's My War.