LES BARKER

The Folk Worlds Poet Laureate

 

THE COURT OF CRIMINAL STUPIDITY

There upon the scales of justice
In the Hague; a coat of rust is
Forming; there’s disuse for all to see.
What we need to have today,
And chiefly for the USA’s
A Court of Criminal Stupidity.

Where do I begin? In Chile?
Nicaragua? Well, really,
Maybe this time just the middle east.
But Palestine and Israel’s
A story far too long to tell,
I’d have to write a symphony at least;

First, melud, we have the shower
Here who put Saddam in power,
Then sold him the arms to fight Iran.
I think I would, on the whole,
Have never sold the bloke E Coli;
As for anthrax, not a single can.

That’s all right, his allies told him
When he used the gas they sold him,
Or they’d not have sold it, I would guess;
He’s their friend, or then he was
Because he fought Iran because
Iran was not a friend of the US.

It was overly islamic
And to boot, undemocratic,
All the things from which one might recoil;
Let’s go back in history
And see how all this came to be;
Something, I believe, to do with oil.

Mossadeq, who’d been elected,
One day found himself ejected
By the CIA, as is the way;
And from this decision follows

Lots and lots of ayatollahs;
Cocked it up again, I have to say.

Then it seems we must attack
The evil ruler of Iraq,
The friend of Mr Rumsfeld long ago.
Upon arriving in Baghdad,
We find he’s not got what he had;
We really should have sold him more, you know.

And I think it’s worth complaining
‘Bout the arms, yes, and the training
That the Taliban received before
We went to Afghanistan
To fight against the Taliban;
I think perhaps the plan contained a flaw.

Now if you will beg my pardon,
I will mention O. Bin Laden;
Did they not finance him at the start?
Looking in as an outsider,
Helping to set up Al Qaeda
I would not regard as rather smart.

Off to pay the wrong Somalis,
George’s bunch of proper Charlies,
Something I suspect they’ve done before.
Year on year, they’re none the wiser,
Never faced a trial either
Ain’t it nice to be above the law?

The acts of folly seem to mount if
No one’s held up to account, if
No one thinks that there’s a price to pay;
In the Court there ought to be,
Of Criminal Stupidity,
Your honour, I present the USA.

Published in '101 Damnations'