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.
