How To Murder A Country

There are so many ways to murder a country

So many tools to get it done.

You can buy its people with bright lights and rainbow flags

Walmarts and MacDonalds,

You can get them to kill their leaders, to sell themselves

For a visit to your country without a visa, and a chance

To clean your gutters so you don't have to,

Or you can starve them with sanctions

Bomb their medicine factories;

There is little a parent will not do

To not have to watch her sick baby wither and die,

And if she does not kneel, it's just more proof

That she's a savage who deserves whatever you want  done.

But sometimes even that will not work.

Then you must use the gun.

Bring on your freedom fighters

Arm them with media and missiles

Put white helmets on their heads

Call the government a regime,

Say the regime has lost legitimacy,

And proclaim that the time for regime change has come.

And then when the bombs fall

When the black flags fly and the beheaded corpses roll

When the oil money flows into your coffers and the slaves fill the markets

When the economy is given to your cronies to enrich themselves

When the poppies sprout in fields instead of food

When children are chained to cots as a tame warlord's sex slaves

Then the country is murdered

Then your work is done.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2020