The New Manchurian Candidate

Fierce Pashtuns, over time

Teach us what we should mark well:

All invaders, in their prime

Find Afghanistan is Hell.

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Since Alexander and Genghis Khan

Empires laid plans to attack

But a donkey borne to Mecca by divan

Remains a donkey, when it comes back.

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Regression, Poverty, Heroin, Despair

Its GDP, after the Great Game;

Until a parochial tribe assumed the care

Of benighted lands, to general shame.

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For a very few years the only folks

To be pained by this, were local tribes

Who stood as Shia or told the wrong jokes

Or encouraged girls to read or be scribes.

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But on 911, four jet airplanes

Flew into American flesh and soil,

A plot hatched in Afghanistan

Caused all western blood to boil.

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So in they went, outraged and seething,

Desperate for al-Qaeda blood,

And via our example, democracy, teething

Would bring enlightenment for their own good.

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After bin Laden slipped through fingers

Hiding out in friendly Pakistan,

Several Presidents thought that he who lingers

Wins hearts and minds in Afghanistan.

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The finest training, and the fully fit,

The best equipment, all bespoke

Cannot cope with a tactic to attrit

When rigid tribal fanatics meet the woke.

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But after a fashion stability arrived,

A kind of peace descended like a stone;

And every vested interest connived

To leave the joint; to leave them on their own.

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Evacuations are a tricky proposition,

Not all come-off with success like a Dunkirk

But looking at Kabul, tis the very definition –

Not sloppy or careless; it’s the Devil’s work.

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     You close an airport, secure and safe,

     Pursuant to Satan’s foolproof Plan:

     Controlled by US Marines who chafe

     To check-mate the Taliban;

     And then you also leave behind

     A cache of high-grade military gear,

     Not booby-trapped but calibrated

     For use by those that persevere.

     And then you let the enemy go

     And have the country really rip,

     Content its takeover will be slow

     And all stays in your imagined grip.

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The President gripped the podium

And staunchly set his jaw:

He poured a stream of odium

And promised to withdraw.

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“We planned for all contingencies,”

He slowly, staunchly, said;

“And a myriad exigencies,”

From the autocue he read.

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“It won’t look anything like Saigon,”

To the World he did declaim,

In this the President spoke the truth,

It was totally the same.

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They aimed to repatriate the troops,

Ticker-tape and White House dances,

So they made no plans for any other groups,

Those folks had to take their chances. 

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And so catastrophe ensued,

The desperate, pleading, anguished crowd,

Wailing at the roadblocks, who were viewed

As dead – dead meat – without a shroud.

---

The black hawks hovered overhead,

The airport gates were shut.

In the street, the people bled,

Supply lines were all cut.

---

People hung on departing planes

And dropped out of the sky,

Passports were torn; peasants took the reigns

And their subjects began to die.

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And then bombs took the place apart;

An evil genius

With a brilliant brain and a wooden heart

Could not create this mess.

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A plague rat posed as president

Talked tough and seemed upset;

Instructed to bow in embarrassment

He described a marionette.

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So they bombed two Afghans in a car

To keep the press agog,

Were they ISIS-K or an avatar?

Was it merely “Wag the Dog”?

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Now the entire country is aflame,

It might cauterize the sores,

China, Pakistan, Iran, and same

Have new allies to their cause.

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Joe Biden is the man who was never there,

Sulphurous smoke marks where he’s been:

“Joe, why not pass the time with some Solitaire:

And wait for the Red Queen.”