POEM: The Wrong Interview

W is back
Hawking his memoir
With the same self-satisfied certainty
The same smugness
He had when he declared “Mission Accomplished”
Now he re-tells facile lies about the threat Iraq
Posed to the U.S.
Insists that invading was the only option
That it wasn’t a mistake
Because Saddam is gone and 25 million
Iraqi’s are free

The American media is interviewing the wrong
Man

Ask an average Iraqi citizen about shortages
Of water and electricity
Of neighborhoods destroyed
Of families and friends gone
Of lives forever upended

Ask an Iraqi widow if life is better for her now
Than it was before America unleashed its fury
Find out how she feels about her freedom
As she maneuvers around concrete blast walls
Security checkpoints
Shootings
Bombings
Carnage

Ask questions that matter of people
Who suffer the consequences of W’s monumental
hubris

Ask Iraqi’s who languish in prison
How they feel as days become years
With no charges filed or due process
Allowed

Instead of talking to W
Go deeper with people who cannot
Walk away from the war
Settle into a quiet retirement on the ranch
Down in Texas

Ask the American mother whose only son
Was killed in Fallujah
If W’s invasion was worth it
Ask the American father whose only son came home
From two tours of duty
A ghost of his former self
If W’s occupation was worth it

For W it’s all about talking points
Spinning a tale
Burnishing his image
Convincing us that we are safer now
Better off
Never about the death and suffering he unleashed
On thousands of human beings