Ammunition Analysts

Once again, the bean counters are having a field day
Ever since the tanks started rolling across the border
Every bullet, every missile, even if wayward, must be tallied
Every drone, every tank, every bomb matters in this accounting

Overflow flights, satellites pressed into service
High resolution images, surveillance analysis
Logistics is all in reality, feel free to talk strategy
Paying lip service to achievable political objectives

Ammunition analysts expound on dogma and distress
Manpower conservation and combat effectiveness
The fool's paradise of precision munition
The ultimate hubris of force projection

The subtle difference between annihilation
And the term of art, the war of attrition
Distinctions raised between regrouping and retreating
Sustained gains by ground forces and unit cohesion

Summoning tallies of the losses and casualty rates
Execution with poor coordination amidst endless debates
Fuel shortages and the care of the supporting cast
Envelopment of forces along the axis of advance

Armies need to be fed, there's the danger of diffusion of effort
The arrayment of infantry troops and their artillery support
Planning salient offensives and platoon positions
Competing priorities of squads, their bounds of operation

A crying shame, as ever,
   That we have normalized the machinery of death
Even the global pause was only temporary
   Viz the return of this madness
Futility, the marshaling of doctrine
   In service of chimeric victories
For when it comes to blood and sin
   There can only be routs and defeats

War, a playlist

A soundtrack for this note (spotify version)

• War by Edwin Starr
• Louder than a bomb by Public Enemy
• Choice of Weapons by Guru
• This is Madness by The Last Poets
• Isn't It a Pity by Nina Simone

A nice coda with reflective piano is The War of Northern Aggression by Van Hunt but sadly that isn't available on streaming services. Nina does the honors here to close things out, isn't it a pity?

...

I wrote this piece in 2022, it strikes me as perhaps even more timely today as I check the headlines. Isn't it a pity?

File under: language, war, culture, observation, perception, bureaucracy, military, economics, capitalism, absurd, outrage, blood, Observers are worried, The Rough Beast, poetry, toli

Writing log: April 3, 2022