You believe that evil exists,
that you are inherently good;
with nothing to warrant your virtue,
morality is misunderstood.
So too must evil be inherent.
You believe that free will exists,
because you know that you must choose;
recalling decisions in the past,
free will is sufficiently proved.
Morality becomes self-evident.
You are inherently good,
they are inherently evil;
the Lord gives you power to choose,
and yet, judges all of His people.
Ignore the contradiction.
Your neighbors are at war,
time to exercise free will;
a red planet before you,
or blue stars, rendered still.
You’re free to accept the choice made for you.
Independence is not viable,
only allegiance or rebellion;
in a world of good and evil,
neutrality is the transgression.
Independence is the crime; neutrality, the evidence.
The enemy does not hunger,
or suffer exploitation;
their only motivation,
is conspiring against your nation.
Ignore the contradiction.
An elected official,
giving peasants back their land;
For United Fruit Company,
government bonds just wouldn't stand.
A CIA-engineered coup,
gunboats sent for United Fruit;
four-thousand communists registered,
a nation of millions to loot.
A reformer in Guatemala, painted red.
You often cite Vietnam, though Korea came before,
a napalm-soaked blueprint for burning villages in war;
occupied, then abandoned, by both red and blue,
on the 38th Parallel, a kingdom split in two.
A mad king's fortress, painted red.
A man on his knees, 25th President, McKinley
seeking a solution for America's first colony;
cleaning the mess that Spain's withdrawal left,
begging his God to sanctify theft.
Decades pass for the colonized,
war returns with a different lie;
in need of food while protecting their lands,
farmers rise to thwart enemy plans.
It's the people who bear the load,
trampled by boots and legal code;
farmers starving, their futures sold,
red pawns turned blue, in a War gone Cold.
A peasant in the Philippines, painted red.
For Iran in 1953,
right to oil and land was the nation's plea;
to kill the serpent, remove the head,
“no more Mossadegh” the CIA and MI6 said.
In Tehran’s streets the crowds would grow,
to fight for an outcome they could not know;
where truth and theater are intertwined,
their attempt at democracy, ultimately denied.
The Shah returned! The West proclaimed.
Mission accomplished! A nation saved;
a coup, smuggled under freedom's wing,
in decades to come, the pendulum would swing.
Democracy for Iran, painted red.
Syria was guilty for standing alone,
no intent, nor crimes, nor evidence was shown;
marked as a nation whose allegiance could be sold,
the CIA would test, with power, influence and gold.
Whispers filled the desert air, as paranoia would grow,
the left will rise; brainwashing! infiltration! Absolute control!
Officials refused bribes, a luxury scarcely afforded;
a moral victory for Syria, gone mostly unrecorded.
Syria's neutrality, painted red.
An attempt to bring Indonesia to heel,
Sukarno refused to take Washington's deal;
10 people killed, several grenades lobbed,
the assassins failed to do their job.
Bombs and guns might be too loud,
sex and lies will stir the crowd;
a blonde, sent by the KGB,
a sex tape, attacking credibility.
The scheme failed, but the bombs still fell,
a downed American pilot had stories to tell;
the documents he carried, listing multiple confessions,
extracting from the Americans, a number of concessions.
Sukarno's flamboyant nature, painted red.
In '62 Red was beset on all sides,
in part by the South-East Asia anti-communist alliance;
Cuba was eyed as a tactical reprisal,
for the Soviets to use as a de facto missile silo.
The Cuban people would see the light,
a regime-change invasion would inspire them to fight;
the "Bay of Pigs", a miscalculation, a fiction,
so the people were strangled with embargos and restrictions.
Commandos from the sea, tactical bombings from the air,
numerous covert operations, standard CIA fare;
targeting ships at dock, and warehouses of grain,
civilians pay the price, a long and covert campaign.
The island of Cuba, permanently red.
In 1950, there came a call,
a century-old colony was about to fall;
the French sought out America's aid,
a strategy against China, the debt would be paid.
Ho Chi Minh sent the Americans a request,
in return for his aid to the OSS;
the French in Indochina had helped the Japanese,
he believed these facts were sufficient to appease.
Independence was what Ho Chi Minh was after,
the ultimate sin! A Cold War disaster;
Eisenhower refused to leave it to chance,
supporting the south, he sided with France.
Asymmetrical warfare bolstered the Vietcong,
the decades changed, the conflict prolonged;
the Gulf of Tonkin, Washington's false-flag graft,
to rationalize the war, and justify the draft.
From Agent Orange to My Lai,
atrocities and massacres of all kinds;
obfuscating the foundational lie,
declaring it a war of "hearts and minds".
The land of Vietnam, soaked in red.
Divided by veins of ore and tribal lines laid down,
Congo's independence, a jewel reclaimed from Belgium's crown;
blessed by nature's riches, just dig and take your fill,
a curse upon its people, chaining them against their will.
Three US presidents saw a communist threat,
$100k to oust Lumumba, the CIA placed its bet;
skin color and imperialism, threatening the status quo,
a budget signed, a mission set, the prime minister had to go.
The wealthy province of Katanga was looking for secession,
a bloody fight for minerals, no halt to the aggression;
Lumumba was weakened, falling victim to a coup,
a leader backed by Washington, strongman Joseph Mobutu.
A man who has the people's trust, power cannot abide,
against an imperial war machine, it's futile to run or hide;
surrounded by his enemies, no trial, appeal, or barter,
Lumumba sentenced to eternity, as an African nationalist martyr.
A treasure trove of resources, stained red.
Before the assassination of JFK,
Prince Sihanouk rejected all American aid;
based on his denouncement of CIA lies,
their link to an assassin from the Khmer Serei.
The war in Vietnam, operations gone wrong,
across Cambodia's border, in pursuit of Vietcong;
Sihanouk walked the line, insisting on neutrality,
a Communist insurgency was not yet a reality.
The tide would turn, Sihanouk overthrown,
a military coup, claimed CIA-grown;
a dispute over the role that Washington played,
much clearer were the subsequent bombings and raids.
Enemies split like fractured bone,
the Vietcong, no longer alone;
the Khmer Rouge, marching blood-soaked ground,
Pol Pot's shadow, where US relations drowned.
Cambodia's killing fields, drenched with blood.
A handful of interventions,
select pieces, dozens more;
from death squads in Brazil,
to shadow Leftists in Ecuador.
Chile's "economic miracle";
hunting Che in Bolivia;
attempts to assassinate Charles de Gaulle,
altering the future of Algeria.
The carpet-bombing of Laos;
raiders from Cuba on Haiti's land;
the enemy of my enemy is a friend,
Papa Doc's repression will stand.
The end of Sukarno,
black blades slashing in the night;
mass slaughter by the G30S,
CIA blacklists come to light.
Communism was ripe with horrors,
the ends justify the means;
the White Army tried suffocation in the crib,
with the 20th century in its teens.
Good would eventually prevail!
We believe that freedom exists,
God ordained the West to be free;
the interventions, with forced hands,
the cost of liberty, repression for thee.
They just hate our freedom!
Evil has no cause,
good needs no justification;
many extraordinary interventions,
by an exceptional generation.
Just ignore the contradictions.
Two Faces of Communism, published by The Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (1961)
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Your poem is a brutal and meticulously sourced indictment but what gives it its real weight isn’t the catalog of interventions but the theological framing. The Cold War wasn’t simply a geopolitical contest. We can state today that it was a morality play conducted by people who had outsourced their conscience to an abstraction. “They just hate our freedom” is genuine belief, and that’s precisely what makes it so dangerous. Sincere conviction is the most reliable anesthetic for moral reckoning.
You also expose the structural function of the enemy. The communist threat didn’t need to be real in each instance, it needed to be available. Available as a category, as a paintbrush, as a procedural override for democracy. Arbenz wasn’t a communist. Mossadegh wasn’t a communist. Lumumba, Sihanouk, Sukarno… men whose primary offence was the audacity of neutrality. The label was a verdict issued in advance, with the evidence arranged afterward. This is what distinguishes imperial logic from mere hypocrisy. Hypocrisy still acknowledges the standard it violates. Imperial logic abolishes the standard while preserving its language.
The free will stanzas are the sharpest philosophical cut here, and my favourite (if I were to choose). You have identified what political theorists rarely state so plainly…. binary systems don’t constrain choice, they do simulate it. Allegiance or rebellion. Blue or red. The theatre of decision-making maintained while the outcome is structurally predetermined. What was offered to Guatemala, to Iran, to Vietnam was a menu with one item disguised as sovereignty.
I admire what you have accomplished here and deserves recognition: the formal daring, embedding a philosophy of moral epistemology inside a historical indictment, and making neither subordinate to the other. Most protest poetry sacrifices precision for passion. You have refused the trade, and we have got a 10,000-word essay under the form of a 1,000-word poem. This is original and much more fascinating for me, Andrew!
Staggering writing, Andrew. A catalogue of sins compressed into searing poetic code. Brilliantly executed. Each line cascades into revealed history, not taught in schools, but lived in global lives. The history is long and brutal and, ultimately, shameful.
Poetry at its best opens itself to the reader, offers interpretive arrays, all valid, all contributing to meaning. Poetry at its best does this also: unveils content that is hard to read in easy to read lines. There is something anthem-like in its rhythm. It's a reckoning without redemption, or even remorse, so the weight of it lands heavy on the body, just by association; I am American, America did these things, I hold part of that guilt. That does not digest softly. It sits hard.
I love your subtitle images: a black book -- the bible? (the ones in the tradition I grew up in were all black), a black list? (reminiscent of Dulles's targeted heads of state, and McCarthy's book of names, academics and cultural writers in Hollywood and publishing), or metaphorically, the whole history sealed in black files redacted from view? And all painted red -- in blood? murder and cruelty across the globe, or labeled as communist horde, the Reds?
What you have accomplished here is laudable for its courage, its craft, its crushing revelations. I offer my full applause and standing ovation.
Your poem is a brutal and meticulously sourced indictment but what gives it its real weight isn’t the catalog of interventions but the theological framing. The Cold War wasn’t simply a geopolitical contest. We can state today that it was a morality play conducted by people who had outsourced their conscience to an abstraction. “They just hate our freedom” is genuine belief, and that’s precisely what makes it so dangerous. Sincere conviction is the most reliable anesthetic for moral reckoning.
You also expose the structural function of the enemy. The communist threat didn’t need to be real in each instance, it needed to be available. Available as a category, as a paintbrush, as a procedural override for democracy. Arbenz wasn’t a communist. Mossadegh wasn’t a communist. Lumumba, Sihanouk, Sukarno… men whose primary offence was the audacity of neutrality. The label was a verdict issued in advance, with the evidence arranged afterward. This is what distinguishes imperial logic from mere hypocrisy. Hypocrisy still acknowledges the standard it violates. Imperial logic abolishes the standard while preserving its language.
The free will stanzas are the sharpest philosophical cut here, and my favourite (if I were to choose). You have identified what political theorists rarely state so plainly…. binary systems don’t constrain choice, they do simulate it. Allegiance or rebellion. Blue or red. The theatre of decision-making maintained while the outcome is structurally predetermined. What was offered to Guatemala, to Iran, to Vietnam was a menu with one item disguised as sovereignty.
I admire what you have accomplished here and deserves recognition: the formal daring, embedding a philosophy of moral epistemology inside a historical indictment, and making neither subordinate to the other. Most protest poetry sacrifices precision for passion. You have refused the trade, and we have got a 10,000-word essay under the form of a 1,000-word poem. This is original and much more fascinating for me, Andrew!
Staggering writing, Andrew. A catalogue of sins compressed into searing poetic code. Brilliantly executed. Each line cascades into revealed history, not taught in schools, but lived in global lives. The history is long and brutal and, ultimately, shameful.
Poetry at its best opens itself to the reader, offers interpretive arrays, all valid, all contributing to meaning. Poetry at its best does this also: unveils content that is hard to read in easy to read lines. There is something anthem-like in its rhythm. It's a reckoning without redemption, or even remorse, so the weight of it lands heavy on the body, just by association; I am American, America did these things, I hold part of that guilt. That does not digest softly. It sits hard.
I love your subtitle images: a black book -- the bible? (the ones in the tradition I grew up in were all black), a black list? (reminiscent of Dulles's targeted heads of state, and McCarthy's book of names, academics and cultural writers in Hollywood and publishing), or metaphorically, the whole history sealed in black files redacted from view? And all painted red -- in blood? murder and cruelty across the globe, or labeled as communist horde, the Reds?
What you have accomplished here is laudable for its courage, its craft, its crushing revelations. I offer my full applause and standing ovation.