Obama plans on having 10,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of 2015. If memory serves, wasn’t that the number of soldiers Xenophon wrote about? But then the Anabasis was a trip upcountry, into the interior, and getting our guys out of Afghanistan will be a trip down country to the coast, a Katabasis and maybe even a Kata-strophe.

On whose false word should we believe
The Afghans will not turn around
And shoot our guys down as they leave
And turn the roads to bloody ground
A fight for every little hill
An ambush waiting at each pass
A road bound army standing still
As tankers loaded up with gas
Are set aflame with RPGs
As choppers hunt the white robed host
Who disappear with practiced ease
The only guys who now can boast
They beat the Russians, made them run
The British too they showed the door
And now it’s us for whom the fun
Will lie in getting to the shore
Through bearded men who lie in wait
With IEDs by every road
With Russian arms to seal our fate
For tit for tat is nature’s code
Oh yes we’ll force it, mile by mile
With dozens dead for every one
Of ours who, leaden, fills the file
Of those who’ll never see the sun
The savagery will be insane
On either side no quarter shown
As bombs and shells come down like rain
Entire mountain ranges blown
To dust and rubble in the throes
Of savage fury gripped by men
Who know they’ve been betrayed by those
Who never loved them, now or then
A president who understood
That putting them where no way out
Of land locked country in time would
Lead to the trap where there was doubt
That any would survive the trip
Down country to the waiting shore
Where waited there the steel gray ship
Where they were safe forever more
Oh yes, they made it home at last
Though many lay beside the roads
But that was then and in the past
Just one of many episodes
Of criminal incompetence
And oftentimes of something worse
Still written in the present tense
As written in the ancient verse