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NEW WORLD ORDER

One summer day I woke up late
And heard Iraq had seized Kuwait,
A tiny piece of real estate
Smaller than New Jersey.
What seemed another Arab feud
Was of much greater magnitude,
Involving too much proven crude.
May the Lord have mercy.

Both of them are OPEC nations.
Both had pledged cooperation;
Both were bound by limitations
Called production quotas.
Kuwait was pumping, it was found,
Too much oil from underground;
And though this drove oil prices down,
They cared not one iota.

Their biggest oil field is, in fact,
Mostly underneath Iraq;
So Kuwait simply pumped it back
From their side of the border.
To stop this outright theft of oil,
Iraq attacked Kuwaiti soil,
Claimed it as their own, and spoiled
George Bush’s new world order.

Some of us are dreamers,
And we wistfully recall
How joyful Germans danced and sang
Upon the Berlin Wall.
When suddenly world peace
Seemed almost within reach;
Democracy, free speech,
Free elections, open borders.

To Bush, the new world order
Means a chance for global power;
And he has turned what might have been
The free world’s finest hour
Into a show of force
Where the president, of course,
Like a king upon his horse,
Gives the world its marching orders.

But Bush still needs a rationale
For being such a rowdy.
At first he said he would protect
The oil fields of the Saudis.
For a sheer defensive mission
He arranged a coalition,
Then abandoned this position
Right after the election.

He also said we’re fighting for
The American way of life.
It depends on how you look at it;
This time he might be right.
The right to use more than we need,
And to be shameless in our greed,
Is this the true American creed?
Is this what needs protection?

Bush said he would reinstate
The royal family of Kuwait,
Whom he calls the legitimate
Rulers of the emirate.
They are a feudal monarchy
From the eighteenth century.
This is not a democracy;
It’s more of a hypocrisy.

Bush said he would liberate
The suffering people of Kuwait.
He would oppose aggression,
With occasional exceptions:
Like Palestine, Afghanistan,
Eritrea and Kurdistan,
The Baltic states, and any land
Without oil beneath its sand.

Make no mistake about it:
It is oil we’re fighting for.
Other reasons may be valid,
But they don’t explain the war.
Go there if you want to.
Shed your blood on Arab soil.
You too can be a hero.
You too can die for oil.

Tijeras, New Mexico, 1991