Good Golly, Les Mis Mali

Today, this blog's poet-in-residence, Calvin Trillin, looks at the French adventure in the Republic of Mali and senses a disaster just over the horizon. There has already been blowback to the French incursion in Mali: the disastrous hostage-taking of hundreds of foreign workers by Al Qaeda-linked militants in the Sahara Desert. The hostages worked at a remote BP gas refinery and the Algerian government shot first and sorted the bodies later. The U.S. Benghazi-Hawks in Congress have been notably quiet about this quagmire-in-the-making. Where's the outrage over Victor Lynn Lovelady, Gordon Lee Rowan and Frederick Buttaccio (U.S. citizen-victims in the hostage crisis)? Actually, it's because the Dumbos don't have a clue as to an appropriate response to the tragedy at the Algerian gas plant. If this is a (fair & balanced) revelation of Dumbo-hypocrisy, so be it.

[x The Nation]
A Message From Americans To France
By Calvin Trillin

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action americans calvin capacity commitment france french hear independence intervene mali message military perhaps pleased praise pride sort style times trillin troops wearied york

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“As French troops intervene in Mali, the French take
pride in their military capacity and in their independence
of action.” —The New York Times

We’re pleased to hear you like to intervene.
We praise both your commitment and your style.
Ourselves, we’ve wearied of this sort of thing.
Perhaps you could take over for a while. Ω

[Calvin Trillin began his career as a writer for Time magazine. Since July 2, 1990, as a columnist at The Nation, Trillin has written his weekly "Deadline Poet" column: humorous poems about current events. Trillin has written considerably more pieces for The Nation than any other single person. A native of Kansas City, MO, Trillin received his BA from Yale College in 1957. He served in the army, and then joined Time.]

Copyright © 2013 The Nation

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Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.



Copyright © 2013 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves