london

america and england send its men and women into afghanistan and iraq
with bombs and tanks and helicopters and missiles
and kills thousands and thousands of innocent civilians
and the western world goes
oh well, had to be done

al qaeda (if it really was al qaeda)
sends its troops into the london transport system
and kills 50 people
and the western world wrings its hands gnashes its teeth
and tears out its hair
at the barbarity that people can stoop to

there is really no sense in which the people of baghdad
did anything more to deserve to die from allied bombs
than the people of london did to deserve to die from al qaeda bombs

other than being darker skinned
having a different name for god
and being far away
of course

yet overwhelmingly
this is not the sense i get from manistream western news media
or the bloggers whose emotional agenda is thereby derived

wake up and smell the hypocrisy