Stuck Between Iraq and a Hard Place

In 1991, George Bush Senior launched the Iraq War prequel. Basically, Iraq was sucker punched by the U.S. to help us get over our “Vietnam Syndrome” of feeling bad about pushing our weight around through massive state violence. I believe the war’s military codename was, “Approval Ratings are Down — It’s About Time We Had Another War” (ARADIATWHAW). Just like his son’s latter Iraq War, this one had an air of inevitability about it. The U.S. administration was going to invade Iraq and they weren’t going to let public opinion or international law stand in their way.

Here are two raps I wrote during the buildup to the invasion. The first, Stuck Between iraq and a Hard Place, was featured on Maximum Rock’n’Roll radio and on The Gulf Crisis TV Project, an anti-war video compilation by Deep Dish TV that aired internationally. When you read these poems, think back to the year 1991. The Berlin Wall had just come down and Apartheid had crumbled in South Africa. The Cold War had ended, and the the military industrial complex was scrambling to find reasons to keep making and selling weapons of mass destruction and avoid a “peace dividend.” After the Reagan administration had been exposed for illegally selling weapons to Iran to finance the Contra terrorists in Central America, former CIA boss turned President George Bush Sr. had invaded Panama and arrested its leader, who, like Saddam Hussein, had been an ally of the U.S. Alaska was still reeling from the 10.6 million gallons of crude oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez, and the PGA golf tour had just announced…