The Afghan war is winding down, and since Pakistan has closed its roads to us, an ally of sorts, we are obliged to arrange for passage home through Central Asia, through Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, to Europe and then home. Our ancestors once traveled this same route, when they left the horse lands of endless grass ofCentral Asia and made their way west until they ran into the Atlantic Ocean and could go no further. And there they stayed, building a civilization the like of which the world has never seen. That civilization is now, again, under attack from Islam, as it has been in the past, but the retreat from Afghanistan is seen by many as a repositioning of our forces for the battle ahead, a battle that can only result in the eradication of the Islamist threat forever.

 

Through Central Asia, ancient home

Of our Germanic tribes

The weary homeward wend their way

Their passage bought by bribes

To chieftains, aides and presidents

Whose lands through which we pass

The ancient horse land that we left

The land of seas of grass

Like Xenophon we march for home

And like the tribes of old

We follow rivers flowing west

We march though heat and cold

Except of course it’s different now

We’re loaded onto trains

And passing quickly through the night

We see not of the plains

That carried our ancestors west

Until they met the sea

And there they built the western world

That led to you and me

The you and me whose children now

Will carry on the fight

Against the Mahdi and his men

Until they see the light

The light that dims the nearest sun

And turns the night to day

But briefly ‘fore the dark returns

And life returns to clay