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Disturbing the Peace
El Jones
26 Nov 2025
🖨️ Print Article
Colin Powell and Dick Cheney
Colin Powell and Dick Cheney Photo: Jose R. Lopez, New York Times

Written for the protest at the Halifax International Security Forum, November 22, 2025.

Dick Cheney’s finally deceased
He died at home in peace
He lied about WMDs 
And murdered millions of Iraqis

Don’t forget Guantanamo Bay
Where he sanctioned torture night and day
All for the oil that got him paid
He shot his friend right in the face

And if you refuse to mourn these ghouls 
Who brought death, destruction, and abuse 
Who even cut off baby food
They’ll try to get your job removed

Henry Kissinger lived a century 
Outside the penitentiary 
A war criminal incidentally
Who should live on in infamy

Instead, in his obituary
They sung his praises tenderly
His crimes are wiped from memory 
But we’re labelled the enemy

Inside where warmongers sip champagne
They named a prize for John McCain 
Who led civilian bombing campaigns 
Another war criminal who should be shamed

But it’s you and I who face arrest and trial 
Ehud Barak is in the Epstein files 
He raped young girls on Epstein’s isle
Virginia Guiffre died by suicide

Yet he’s invited here to speak 
A rapist genocidal freak 
Exposed like all the other elites
Who sit inside and laugh and feast

On all the wars they dream up next
To keep their boots upon our necks
They know warmongering pays their checks 
They traffic bombs and lies and sex

And they should all be in a cell
As a prelude to their time in hell 
Instead they lounge inside hotels 
And backslap other clientele

Who pledge loyalty to Israel 
And sign their names upon the shells
That land on hospitals and wells 
Eternal war is what they sell

And yet they label us extreme
For protesting their war machine 
And millions of dollars to police 
To stop us opposing their regime

The least we can do is show disgust 
And refuse to keep their horrors hushed 
The babies’ skulls that they have crushed 
They murder everything they touch

And justice never will be served 
Perhaps by God in another world 
But don’t we find it so absurd 
They die in peace and undisturbed!


El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She teaches at Mount Saint Vincent University, where she was named the 15th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies in 2017.

 

imperialism
US War Crimes
Dick Cheney

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