To Be, or Not to Be in Afghanistan

By Dennis Loo

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler to receive the Peace Prize

And sling drones and missiles at innocents,

Or to take arms against a sea of Taliban

And by opposing them multiply them? To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache, the deception, and the thousand natural

shocks

That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream of change: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil

Must give us pause: there’s the respect for president’s

promises

That makes calamity of so long life;

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pangs of disprized love, the rule of law’s delay or

annihilation,

The insolence of office and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bayonet? who would Marines bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life of misplaced

illusions,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover’d Afghanistan from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will of soldiers

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

Of shall we look carefully at what in our names has wrought?

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action

Or to be replaced by fury at the injustice?

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