“Invitation”: A Benghazigate poem

Raymond Maxwell was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Maghreb (North Africa) Affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs from 2011-2012. He also one of the three Deputy Assistant Secretaries removed due the fallout over Benghazi.

Maxwell has written the following poem about his experience at the hands of “the Queen’s Henchmen”:

The Queen’s Henchmen
request the pleasure of your company
at a Lynching – to be held
at 23rd and C Streets NW
on Tuesday, December 18, 2012
just past sunset.

Dress: Formal, Masks and Hoods –
the four being lynched
must never know the identities
of their executioners, or what/
whose sin required their sacrifice.

A blood sacrifice –
to divert the hounds –
to appease the gods –
to cleanse our filth and
satisfy our guilty consciences.

Arrive promptly at sunset –
injustice will be swift.
there will be no trial,
no review of evidence,
no due process, and no
accountability.

Dress warmly –
a chilling effect will instantly
envelop Foggy Bottom.
Extrajudicial.
Total impunity.
A kangaroo court in
a banana republic.

B.Y.O.B.
Refreshments will not be served
because of the continuing resolution.

And the ones being lynched?
Who cares? They are pawns in a game.
Our game. All suckers, all fools,
all knaves who volunteered to serve –
Us. And the truth? The truth?
What difference at this point does it make?

In the event of inclement weather,
or the Queen’s incapacitation,
her Henchmen will carry out this lynching –
as ordered, as planned.

SCOTT adds: Mr.Maxwell’s blog, where this poem was first posted, is here. His about me page indicates that he served in the Navy before he went to work for the State Department and that he is a “shameless bibliophile.”

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