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Brian Turner, an infantry officer who served in Iraq for a year, wrote an incredible poem called Here, bullet, which I first read weeks ago on boingboing. He has published this and other poems in a book by the same title.

Here is another poem of his. The title means “friend” in Arabic. The poem is prefaced with a quotation from Sa’di, a 13th century Persian poet.

Sadiq
It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more.

It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.

American media won’t show the caskets or ravaged bodies of the wounded, so it’s easy for Americans to ignore what’s happening. Thanks to this poet, at least we can see what war does to a soldier’s heart.

I found this poem in a Salon article entitled Where’s the Outrage? It’s a question you should all be asking yourselves. The article says one of the reasons why there is no serious anti-war movement in the US is that there is no longer a draft. The author suggests that only a draft would get people to take to the streets. As it is, since generally only poor and clueless kids are enlisting in the military, the comfortable classes have no motivation to protest. The draft was the last remaining check against delusional governments engaging in meaningless wars.

This argument makes so much sense to me that I almost want the draft reinstated. Bush doesn’t have the 20,000 troops he needs for his surge. However, even if the draft were reinstated, Bush’s constituents, “the haves and the have-mores,” still wouldn’t suffer, unfortunately. They’d just make a call or two to an influential pal, write a check… You know the drill.

That would leave the middle class to bear the responsibility of protesting the war. The ones with draft-age kids are old enough to remember Vietnam and many of them probably protested against that war.

This war should break their hearts.

But from what I’ve seen, nowadays they’re too busy getting their cars and legs waxed to be bothered.

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