"Saddam, Bin Laden, Pinochet:
all were funded by the CIA"
to gain the power or skills
that they now abuse -
and we're looking to blame someone else?

The School of Americas
in Fort Benning, Georgia,
where we train Latin American soldiers
in the methods of assassination and torture,
military that are now putting into practice
those methods in their native countries,
against their native citizens.

The matter of the Kyoto Treaty,
a method to reduce carbon dioxide emissions
and hence, slow global warming,
which many other countries agreed to
and which many Americans were in favor of,
but which, somehow, our government
did not endorse.

The real story behind the Gulf War,
where we had our own soldiers
use shells made of depleted uranium,
which we knew to be toxic,
and which caused severe medical problems
for so many of the Gulf War veterans;
shells, too, that still lie, radioactive,
among the broken landscapes of the Gulf,
where children, playing among the brokendown tanks,
come in contact with them every day.

We say we don't target civilian infrastructure -
yet looking at the Gulf War,
we specifically targeted
hospitals and water treatment plants,
which, due to embargos, have still
not been rebuilt to their former standards.
And yet we fight another war
because we are concerned
for the suffering of those same citizens?
We caused it.

The endorsement of companies like Starbucks,
whose platform of free trade coffee
over fair trade coffee
suffers the workers in places like Columbia to
be paid less than a living wage -
we may have abolished slavery here,
but that doesn't stop us from endorsing it elsewhere.
A simple matter of profits over human rights.

And above all,
the government's constant ignoring
of the raised voices of so many of its citizens
against its actions -
a government that, bottom line,
is supposed to be the will of the people.

I love America, I do.
I am glad I live here
and can enjoy these freedoms
of expression and speech.
But no matter how you love this country,
don't suppose for a second
that its government
is without a dark side.

05/11/2003

Author's Note: The bit in quotes at the top is a chant from a peace rally I went to. For more information on any of these issues (no, I'm not making it up), just send me a note and I'll send you the links.

Posted on 05/12/2003
Copyright © 2024 Amanda J Cobb