Why'd You Have To Call It "Green Zone" (Because That's My Favorite Color)?

I don't mean
to continue
harping on it,
because for
me, the Iraq War
stopped being an
issue when my
sister made her
successful tour,
and so did her
husband,
and then I saw
The Hurt Locker,
which went on
to win the Oscar.

I stopped caring
about other
people's opinions,
right around they
stopped being
able to affect
G's approval
ratings.

What could
possibly have
been the point
of continuing?

I knew what I
thought, and
that was it,
especially
when I learned
how impassioned
a man like
Christopher Hitchens
had been in defense
of the whole thing.

But then came
Green Zone,
a movie marketed
to lure Matt Damon's
Jason Bourne fans,
but was really
intended to
regurgitate
all the old
wounds the left
liked to pick at
for five years,
their ideas about
why they had
all the right
in the world
to protest the war,
how no WMDs
were ever found.

Throughout this film,
it's made clear that
even those, at least
from this perspective,
who were charged
with the search
at the start of the war,
the military, were
skeptical, or evasive,
or downright
posturing over lies,
never once suggesting
that these weapons,
no matter the bad
intelligence anyone
might have relied on,
had been free to
move wherever
they liked, for
months and years
(perhaps decades?).

...I don't want to
go over it again.

I want this chapter
to end, to leave it
for posterity and
perspective to
examine anew,
when we no longer
have agendas
(except the new ones
old politicians will make),
when history will
be a matter for
historians, and
not histrionics.

But as the title
suggests, my only
regret is that
the color green
must be impugned
in all of this.

Was that
really necessary?

What did this color do?

Leave the reference
alone and find
another metaphor,
perhaps in the valley
of Elah, where the fierce
god Ellah resides
and still, even
in this hour, abides.