In December of 1876, the Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck, was asked if Germany would involve itself in the war then ongoing in the Balkans, and Bismarck replied that the Balkans was not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Today, Syria is not worth the bones of a single American soldier.

The grave is wide, and long and deep
Where tens of thousands lay in sleep
To join the thousands gone before
Why should we wish to add some more?
In Normandy white crosses sweep
To the horizon, where they keep
The memory of what is war
And what it is worth fighting for
A graveyard is the Middle East
Where rats and worms and ravens feast
On what were once young grenadiers
Who lie in watered graves of tears

No one knows anything about how geopolitics works these days because the rules have changed, but the solution is obvious. The Romans never made a critical decision until after the examination of the entrails of a bird to find if the auguries were propitious. I spoke to a bird today and he said he would be happy to give his life if it would help, but cautioned that an augury depended not on the condition of the entrails but on the astuteness of the examiner in determining what the Emperor wanted to hear.

The Norks are building awesome nukes
Of 1940s fissile
To charge the foe like Mamelukes
Atop an early missile
But even so there’s danger there
With luck they might hit something
And so we surely must take care
To never do a dumb thing
Like looking off the other way
As Kim goes sabre rattling
As we believe that on this day
He’s testing a new Gatling
And so the Carl Vinson now
Near by the Nork coast loiters
And looking darn convincin’ now
To both the Times and Reuters
The president has given word
The augury’s propitious
Trump smiles and says the little bird
Says don’t get too ambitious

Darkness, like death, has no boundaries; it is limitless and unending, without beginning and without end. So too is the darkness of delivered truth, in which there is only one permissible answer, with the stake the reward for heresy. The steady march of the hate-filled religion of progressivism, only briefly and episodically interrupted, continues apace, leading ultimately and inevitably to the darkness of the soul and the extinguishing of the nation.

Darkness is the death of light
The loss of consciousness of sight
The dread of living in the lengthening night
Where memory is all
A nation, too, can into darkness fall
And see the death of its clear shining light
Slow darkened death of what was once so bright
In hands of those who claim they have the right
To say what one may think or may recite
And memory is all
Their truth is written in the living stone
To live in marrow and in bone
No opposition will those truths condone
Redress a darkened pall
We have what’s left of what was once before
When men could choose from either or
With freedom dying on a lonely shore
And memory is all

Fear comes in many guises. There is groundless fear, and then there is the grinding fear that something terrible is hiding in he trees.  The unfounded fear that Nork artillery could destroy Seoul and kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in the first few hours of war is absurd. An account of the Battle of Berlin, mid-April 1945 to capitulation in May, tells of the siege of Berlin by three Soviet army groups that continuously bombarded Berlin with 8,000 artillery tubes, augmented by fire from several thousand tanks. Above the city, thousands of bombers from three Soviet Air armies flew lazy eight bombing runs. When it was over, and the casualties counted up, after a solid month of incessant shelling and bombing of a city swollen with refugees, the final post-war tally was about 10,000 civilians killed. The North Korean artillery threat is a Potemkin village. When the first shells fall on Seoul the population will head for shelters and survive, as did the vast majority of Berliners in 1945. The North Koreans must know this, and they also must know that carrier battle groups beyond the horizon, bombers on Guam and tactical air based in South Korea constitute more than just something in the trees.

Full hidden in the vasty deep
Deck full of folded wings
So still she seems to be asleep
But cruel iron death she brings
On Guam the B2s stealthy climb
Into the glistened air
As silent as a painted mime
For all to know they’re there
The trees are full of hidden death
Of horror, sudden pain
At night the trees, as in Macbeth
Will come to Dunsinane