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It’s been over 50 years since Bob Dylan wrote and first performed “Masters of War.” Millions of people have heard the song and many have applauded it; but judging by world events the song has had less peacemongering effect than a hill of beans. That’s because people, including me, thought it was enough to voice disapproval in eloquent terms, and didn’t take the message as a call to action beyond the pianissimo “You tell em, Bob Dylan–we’re with you–we’re gonna march on Washington; just you wait and see.”

Knowledge is power. How many Americans know the name Sarkis Soghanalian, an ACTUAL Master of War, and his tango with Spiro Agnew, disgraced former Vice President of the United States, and his later tango with the Clinton administration? Finding out is a mere Internet search away. Go ahead–I dare you.

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Just this minute I did an Internet search on Syria. Floating to the top was the headline “In Syria, Anger and Mockery as Obama Delays Plan.” Dare Ya, Dare Ya, DOUBLE Dare Ya–which is about at the same level of maturity as Now Look What You Made Me Do.

For fifty years, intervention has been a colossal failure. Treating a symptom often does nothing for the disease–and with such as insecticides and 9/11, it exacerbates.

So here is yet another never-does-any-good-but-I-gotta Anti-War message. Standing up to be counted is important for everyone, though almost valueless as a tool for change.

Here are the words:

THE WAR OF MADNESS, AND VICE VERSA

7th Street has traffic lights some amber
There’s an antechamber bright & fissile
How the jackals howl to hear a panther hum
Eventide brings humming of a missile
Magistrates may murmur of chrysanthemum
But their yen: a limbered-up Haboob
Ebb tide brings its jetsammed torpid tube
Ridges are a favored place to clamber

The words only make sense as metaphor. They do make more sense than what is happening in battlefields past, present and future.