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
