Meltdown #16: Social World Order
Horrific scenes that the world clearly remembers
Twenty years ago on this day of all Septembers
Images so indelible
A country thought infallible
Bodies buried in rubble and smouldering embers
From the chaos that day of the 9/11 attack
To the infernos that followed, it’s time to think back
To those flaming twin towers
That inflamed the world powers
To avenge Afghanistan with fury and flack
Then they bombed Baghdad with shock and awe
But they won the battles and not the war
With no plan for the peace
Terrorists unleashed
In far greater numbers than they were before
Such ill-judged reprisals for the 9/11 slaughter
Destabilised lives, countries and the whole world order
Yet Iraq had no production
Of weapons of mass destruction
It wasn’t even an Al-Qaeda supporter!
And 9/11 was not spawned by Saddam Hussein
The delicate world order was never regained
Then Bin Laden fled Afghanistan
Found hiding in Pakistan
The Taliban war was a futile campaign
9/11 murdered three thousand innocent civilians
But the retaliation killed and displaced millions
A refugee flood
Red rivers of blood
Al-Qaeda insurgents with radical resilience
The world plunged deeper into terrorism crisis
Fanatics home-grown to attack and strike us
Ideologically deranged
They murdered and maimed
From Paris to Christchurch, disciples of ISIS
Troops finally withdrawn, no fanfare or bluster
A demoralised nation has lost its lustre
Left a world less safe
Refugees displaced
The war on terror was a half-baked disaster
Asylum seekers still caged in detention centres
But boat people were victims, not the offenders
Australia’s world order
Is to slam shut its border
To families fleeing wars that we had engendered
And now we’re bracing for a hospital surge
As chronic COVID continues to emerge
This vaccination blitz
Is our only fix
Last chance before lifting the lockdown purge
But Astra Zeneca is still on the nose
With a preference for Pfizer, their minds are closed
The more they procrastinate
The longer that we must wait
For the late Pfizer orders, when Scott dropped the hose
Fathers’ Day was cancelled again for some
The second year apart from a daughter or sons
Separated families
Some stranded overseas
No special day for Dads without loved ones
Yet Morrison jetted home for HIS Fathers’ Day
From Canberra to Sydney and back on Monday
His special dispensation
While we’re in isolation
Scott’s personal world order on clear display
Then after all the outrage thrown and hurled
Scott morphs as a messiah of the gendered world
We’ve a problem, sure do
Because of men, like you
Entrenched biased attitudes to women and girls
So what will be the greatest world failure of our time
Is it the health of our planet in rapid decline
Or our lack of preparation
For this COVID proliferation
Or the war on terror that frankly …. overstepped the line!
Kevin Holmes • 11th September 2021
