Georgie Porgie

Georgie Porgie
pudding and pie,
kissed the girls
and made them cry,
when the boys
came out to play,
Georgie Porgie
ran away.

Who gets favored with George Bush's kisses of death and destruction? Iraq, of course. All the people he's trying to bring to democracy. Even if it kills them. Even if, as I've heard, Iraq mothers caution their children to be good or democracy will come get them. Women, children, the elderly. They get kissed with bullets, land mines, mortars. And Afghanistan, too. That country has been getting increasingly kissed.

And the boys are coming out to play. The guerilla fighters, suicide bombers, roadside bombers. George is desperately searching for a way out of Iraq without seeming to run away. He's trying to find another gullible and pliable nation like Canada to take his place in Iraq as he has in Afghanistan. With Stephen Harper in office George figures that like Mikey in the old commercial, Canada will eat anything. He just needs a few more countries like Canada so George himself , now that he's plunged almost the entire world into conflict, can cut and run.

Yes, of course we need a Canadian debate on what the hell we're doing in Afghanistan in the first place. War? Have we declared war on Afghanistan? Peace keeping? As far as has been reported in the west (I'll admit, that doesn't necessarily mean a lot) Afghanistan was at peace after the Russians tried to impose their notion of democracy. And that's why Canadian forces are there? To impose democracy? Why don't we just let the Afghans tackle that one? Is it to liberate Afghanis women? Don't make me laugh. As though women over here haven't had to fight like hell for their rights. And if Stephen Harper wants to liberate women why doesn't he try to stop old guys from legally raping teenagers through forced marriage in Bountiful, BC? And do something about the "kiddy stroll" in Vancouver? And at least one good thing the Taliban did was to stop the cultivation of poppy fields.

However, as soon as the Americans took over they liberated the poppy fields. Now under US protection, Afghanistan is back to producing between eighty and ninety per cent of the world's heroin, most of it going to illegal trafficking. You will have to forgive me, gentle readers, for thinking that the Taliban stoppage of heroin production was at least one of the major reasons for US invasion. The full resumption of this heroin prodution under the US is played out on Vancouver streets every day. Even if you haven't spent time in prison as I have and leared of the pimps who addict women (and children) and then force them into prostitution you just can't close your eyes to our downtown East Side. Oh, no. It's all there. The heroin addicts, the pimps, the pushers. They come to us with George Bush's kisses. All the way from Afghanistan. Via the Hell's Angles, of course. And other terrorist groups like them.