Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose... Sitting around on a fourth of July evening as the bombs begin bursting in air over Gasworks Park and Elliott Bay, I ran into this article (from a London newspaper) at BaptistLife.com: The Rogue State, and was reminded of Tom Lehrer's 1965 piece, "Send the Marines". As far as I can see the lyrics aren't anywhere in the Mudcat, though I did find one post from a couple years ago that mentioned the song, so here goes:

SEND THE MARINES

(Spoken)What with President Johnson practicing escalatio on the Vietnamese, and then the Dominican crisis on top of that, it has been a nervous year, and people have begun to feel like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis. Fortunately, in times of crisis like this, America always has its number one instrument of diplomacy to fall back on. Here's a song about it:

(Sung)

When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve,
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,
They have their place, I guess,
But first - send the Marines!

We'll send them all we've got,
John Wayne and Randolph Scott;
Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
To the shores of Tripoli,
But not to Mississippoli,
What do we do? We send the Marines!

For might makes right,
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
Till somebody we like can be elected.

Members of the Corps
All hate the thought of war;
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
Stop calling it aggression,
We hate that expression!
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo.
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt,
Send the Marines!

Liland
who sometimes wishes history would wait longer before repeating itself