We now learn that General David Petraeus fancies himself a Dwight Eisenhower for the 21st century.
According to a report in London's Independent newspaper by the reliable Middle East observer Patrick Cockburn, the U.S. military viceroy in Iraq would like very much to return from his mission and -- like the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its aftermath -- mount a bid for the White House.
Petraeus has apparently been so open in expressing his "long-term interest in running for the US presidency" that Sabah Khadim, a former senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry who worked closely with the general in Baghdad, recalls, "I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'."
The mouth of the good soldier,
The stern jaw of the general,
The small particles of human dust
That move between them;
Better things than war
To the rotten film of floating flesh.
The bastard truth, in its last throes,
Had no teeth to gnaw at death
To release its harrowed grip,
And deceit had honed its razors
Slicing truth to its mortal nub,
Veracity fell out the bloody center
Uncorking the gushing liquid
now thickly oozing out of man.
This that moves us and machine
Is what drives the engine of betrayal.
It is not man.
It is not beast.
It is not breath.
At birth we suckle its oily nipple
Until we desire it more than food-
This; our liquid birth of machinery.
It is with that in mind and nothing else
That the stern jawed general let loose his guns.
With precision, from years of training,
He nailed his target, truth, between the eyes
And it fell back calling out a futile "help,"
But rescue would not be forthcoming,
It too had been felled.
Death stands now before them both
And places his fluttering lips close,
“Come. Join me now. You shall see
the horror within the mortal’s eyes
when, in the dark, you greet them.”
© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman
Betrayus ad infuriates some
Petraeus... or just a good soldier?
