The War Crimes Triology


I Three Amigos

What makes for true camradery
What gives it that special bonhomie
What makes us love our fellow men
Is having a lot in common.

Take the three of us, Winnie, Addie and Joe.
Now any student of history knows
That often we three came to blows
But a close look at the record shows
That this impression’s just a pose
Love, like hate, as everyone knows
Breeds conflicts between amigos.

Winnie made it first, or course.
Good family background, money and status.
But you could tell from the first he was one of us.
Full of action, ruthlessness and fuss.
A member of parliament
First day in the Cabinet
Imagine the balls,
Wants to castrate alcoholics, mentally ill and criminals.
Got to protect society from such social ills.
This from a future manic-depressive, alcoholic war criminal.

“We learned a lot from you!”
Chime Addie and Joe.

But the British have their traditional
Respect for the individual.
So Winnie failed to achieve his potential.

Then he got his opportunity.
They made him Lord of the Admiralty.
And in the Great War, you see,
It wasn’t just the brutal creativity
Of his failed master-stroke at Gallipoli.
Winnie didn’t mind killing Australians, anyway,
They had no say on election day.
Very American, in his way.

You see, being himself part Yank,
He knew exactly how to turn their crank.
Winnie’ld do anything in his power
To prolong the life of the British Empire.
The simplest way to keep it up?
Get the Yanks to prop it up.

Let’s violate the Laws of War
Dress warships up as merchantmen
The Kaiser’ll have to sink on sight
No matter country of origin
If they back off, we’ve won the war
If they torpedo Yanks – all the better.

“Now Winnie, how’d you know”
“They wouldn’t blame you for that show?”
Information’s power.
The facts are complex and obscure.
“We learned a lot from you!”
Chime Addie and Joe.

“Now comes the good part,” Joe intones
“I was just a thug then, a drone,
A hit man for my Bolshy crones.
Haven’t changed much, I suppose.
But Winnie’s got him so perplexed,
The Kaiser sends Lenin to feather my nest.
Money and weapons for my Bolshy friends,
My time as a jailbird finally ends.”

“And where would I be?”
adds Addie poetically
“Without Winnie?
An impoverished wastrel
Albeit adept at watercolor
Struggling against the cruel whims
Of unsmiling Fortune.
But destiny summons forth
I still hear the clarion’s tune
My Master Race of the North
At last shall show its worth.
I shall crush all those who oppose me
Reduced to earth and dust
Because all those who cannot see
My refined sublimnity
Must simply cease to be!”

“So what did you think of Trotsky?”
queries Joe.
“A dangerous mountebank
Too drunk on power to really think”
Is Winnie’s view.
“You oughta know!”
Chime Addie and Joe.
“A stinking, filthy, devious Jew
superficially brilliant, but once you knew
The vile Race from whence he came
It was easy to understand his game
A rat, a parasite, poisoning our race
Brother of scum, humanity’s disgrace”
“If I were you Addie
I wouldn’t say that to his face”
Joe replied with casual grace.
“Twenty years it took to crush his face
Beneath my heel
Tribute to my political skill
And ruthless will”
“I crushed four thousand enemies
in a single day!”
Boasts Addie.
“We were both very impressed Addie.”
Chime Joe and Winnie.
“It made me regret our failure to click
Back in nineteen-twenty-six”
“A meeting, Winnie, I had to scratch
Since you were besotted with Jewish trash. ”
“Nobody’s perfect, Addie,” admonishes Joe.
“We neither of us were anything
Before Winnie did his thing
You never would have come to power in Germany
If I hadn’t held their Communists at bay,
And you really should never have broken with me.”
“And it was only the desperation of the British people
Come face-to-face with you two jackals
That brought me into power once more.
They knew I was a dangerous agitator
Who’d brought them disaster in the first World War.”

If only we three could work together!
But then again we always did,
All the twentieth century’s disasters
Directly stem from our three heads
“They’re only Jews!”
“They’re only Germans!”
“They’re only Kulaks!”
was what we said
The Consequence?
One Hundred Millions Dead.

© Copyright Jerome Raymond Kraus 2005

II Just Business

I’ve never seen a sky in flames
Like orange starfruit after winter rains
A quiet morning is gently flowing
Through eastern mists with swiftly growing
Platain groves entrenched within our harbour’s cove
And all around we see with love
A tenderly entrancing sea of doves
All carefully enacting their peculiar
Rituals and ministrations here, in Khmer.

But though the sky around is not in flames
We hear the sound of guns and planes
And war’s around us in our land
A conflict we can’t understand
Though it all seems to be planned
By men who trade in distant lands
Enslaving those beneath their hand
Intransigence, you understand
Just any thing that comes to hand
They use them, they’re a slick device
Entrapping all within a vice
Of fear, and pain and war and sin
Sometimes they’re called Republicains.

All wars are economic they say
About economics, anyway
They have to find a way to pay
Our salaries, come election day
A special breed, the CIA
Can always help to pave the way
With guns and butter, carefully placed
There surely can be no disgrace
In helping purify the race
There is no need to stem the tide
Of oriental genocide.

Let me just tell you one word – Plastics!
There’s nothing they can’t fix.
They can plug a hole, fix a leak
Just the kind of thing we seek
In our little experiment
Pol Pot’s going to attempt
To forge a perfect polity
A new kind of society!
Just one problem
Plastics’ll solve em
They’re all those people
Who don’t seem very agreeable
But plastic’s got airtight qualities
Especially covering the face and eyes
We’re going ahead with our experiment
All thanks to the people at Dupont!

But somehow, there are those who fail to see
In our glorious society
Those noble, great ideals
That all left standing feel
Those pesky Viet Cong
Let’s face it, they’re wrong!
With both China and the U.S. to back us
They can’t possibly attack us
Why, that would be completely insane
And what would they have to gain
Simply to stem our people’s pain
This simply makes no sense at all
Their absolute, unmitigated gall
To block our sacred, noble course
Why, they’re interfering with commerce!

There we go, it’s okay now,
Big brother China’s joined the show
One billion strong, it’s over now
The People’s Army’ll show them how
They’d better leave us on our own
To wipe out everyone at home
The U.S. doesn’t give a damn
The Soviets? Well, we hadn’t planned
On them showing a moral side
But what’s really worrying us besides
The People’s Army, in ten days,
Has one hundred thousand casualties
Now genocide has taught us math
If China keeps along this path
They’ll pretty soon have nothing left!

Well, Pol Pot lost, as we all know
The Khmer Rouge took longer to go
China backed them all the way
And they gave Pol a place to stay
The U.S. didn’t really care
After all, they’d got their share
And who ever heard of war crimes courts
Taking to trial their biggest supports?

Oh, and by the way
Should you make a film about all this play
You might wind up dead on the streets of L.A.!

© Copyright Jerome Raymond Kraus 2005

III Ring around the Rosie

The Plague has come
I knew it would
There’s a fever in the blood
Power and ambition
Conflict with rational cognition
It’s not really fear, that appears
It’s anger
Based on danger
Of loss of self.

Piles of bodies
Outside Kigali
As General Kagame
Passes through the country
It’s really no great revelation
There’s a temptation
To take out one’s frustration
On women’s bodies.

There’s something particularly satisfying
About the smell of blood and urine
If you’ve an inclination
To find salvation
In the surreal landscape of destruction
Deriving from the utter corruption
Of all that lies inside us
Of all that makes us blessed
And leaves the rest.

How much do you hate your brethren?
Enough to kill their children?
Enough to go through months of days
Hacking their heads off with machetes?
Enough to make a profession
Of killing off a nation
With no motivation
Other than satisfaction?

General Kagame’s Napoleon
The RGF is Satan.
General Kagame’s God incarnate
The Rawandan Government’s the Devil in Hell.
But isn’t God merciful?
Yes, but we all have free will.
We all must choose the proper path
As God pursues his warlike wrath.

And there really is a difference.
Kagame’s acting in self-defence
Only goes on the offence
For military purposes by popular consent.
The RGF have no real goal
They really only want to kill
It’s desperate rage
The final stage
For a manic-depressive.

Have you ever heard a radio play
Whose plot has the simplicity
Of good and evil, night and day
That prompts you to destroy your prey
A threat to your nationality
Killers to be brought to bay
By you and your whole family?
Now that is true insanity!

But why should the world really care
Why interfere in other country’s affairs
Haven’t we enough problems of our own
Hasn’t history consistently shown
That nations like people
Must fight to survive
That no sacred principle
Keeps them alive?

But there’s a key
To this specialty
The innovative use of Technology
That brings a special fear
Of the genocidaire
Whether it’s poison gas
Or plastic bags
Or fire bombs
Or radio songs.

Because Technology’s a two-edged sword
The power and triumph of the Lord
Human progress depends
On our innovations
Always strive for Good
We are a nuclear brotherhood
If not…

we all fall down

© Copyright Jerome Raymond Kraus 2005