Armies of Mohammed

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Armies of Mohammed

“It is the sacred duty of all Muslims to kill U.S. citizens,

civilian & military, & their allies.”--Osama Bin Laden.

On a cold crisp morning,

         September 11, 2001        three American airliners

were hijacked & like a terrorist trinity, they flew

         as unwilling kamikazes,

                             carrying death mantled in suicide

                             to thousands of innocents;

toppling the twin towers,

                             tearing a cheekbone out of the Pentagon,

while in the third plane passengers turned

                             desperation into bravery,

                             from victims into victors,

as someone uttered “Let’s roll,” 

attacking their abductors with a ferocity

that brought them down to glory

in a quiet farmer’s field in Pennsylvania.

Clearly         for thirteen clenched years,

                              we have slept & lived with unrelenting 

                              Fear, & found ourselves participating in

& supporting the holy War on Terror--in some cases forced

to do so by a handful of overzealous militant Muslim murderers,

whose names have been too often

                              on our tight lips, too often

smearing our media outlets with horrendous

                              acts of unspeakable evil;

Hezbollah out of Lebanon,

Al-Gamaat out of Egypt, the

Taliban & Al-Queda out of Afghanistan, & today the meteoric rise of

ISIS--          stronger, wealthier, more powerful, more savage 

                   & ruthless than seemingly any group before them

as they actively slaughter, rape, rob, pillage, murder, & behead

all that stand in their path, waging such a successful

                   psychological campaign of fear

that armies & militias & freedom fighters

                   abandon their weapons & allegiances

                                   as they flee before them.

Are we all inhabiting the New Millennium Crusades

            predicted by Nostrodamus? 

Have we not been lied to, deceived, manipulated

by our trusted leaders, forced to

                                     send our youth to die out there

in a sand dune Hades, in Medieval villages, or a firebombed

city under siege?       We hear the mantra in our nightmares,

            We do not negotiate with terrorists!

Yet they do not provide us 

with protective head & heart gear

            as a torrent of bull shit rains down upon us daily;

for Obama put boots on the ground yesterday in Iraq,

            in fucking Iraq,

            in a non-combat status--

            boots that will too soon tread in harm’s way.

I seriously fear that too many of us

will not live long enough

to witness closure on all this hysteria.

We can only hope

that our children will.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets MTB

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