The wheel of History turns, sometimes as poetry, sometimes as farce, but always as irony. We once defended Greece from the Germans, and now, in light of the imminent Greek government debt crisis in which Greece is about to default on its massive loans to European banks, we are begging the Germans to come to the rescue. In 1941 Churchill sent sorely needed divisions from North Africa to Greece to keep the Germans out, and was sharply rebuffed for his pains when the Fallschirmjaegeren gave the New Zealanders a bloody nose in Crete. And here we are, seventy years later, begging the Germans to take it once more.

Failing countries cheek by jowl

Crying for the savior now

In Valhalla Hitler smirks

See, he smiles, my way it works

Stalin puffs his meerschaum pipe

Smiles and says that Greece is ripe

For a taste of Stalin rule

And Churchill says don’t be a fool

It’s socialism that’s at fault

Where once was money in the vault

There’s nothing now but IOUs

In moments now they’ll light the fuse

And Europe will then be no more

And God the Maestro fold his score

And bravely said, FDR cried

For Greece is now the German bride

How odd it is that we once fought

To free what once the Germans thought

Was theirs to own, do what they will

And here they are, they have it still

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The Greeks are again standing before Germany with a tin cup, with the Germans and everyone else knowing that if Greece defaults on its debt obligations, German and French banks will fail, American banks will be sorely stressed and the world economy will be laid waste. Greece has laid down the ultimatum: pay us or we’ll default and the banks will tumble like little children tumbling down a hill. Will the Germans cave in and give the Greeks the money? I say let them fail, for paying them off again will only make things worse when they ultimately do default on their debt, as they must when the Germans run out of money. Let them fail, let them stew in their own socialist dreams of retiring on the wealth of others. Let them fail, and pick up the pieces and move on. The world has had enough of wooden horses.

They wheeled the horse up to the gates

Then sailed their ships away

Astonishing the Trojans when

They sun rose the next day

The horse was carried into Troy

As celebration ruled

But what the people did not know

Was they would soon be fooled

Brave Hector though divined the trick

And grabbed his trusty sword

He’d slay the foe this day or death

Would be his last reward

Alas brave Hector does not live

Achilles too is dead

And Greece no more by honor lives

But panhandling instead

Pay us now, the masses scream

Or we will bring you down

And so is wheeled the wooden horse

Up to the gates of town

Filled not with Agamemnon’s troops

But Euros head to tail

There’s no brave Hector here to say

Goddammit let them fail

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