By Dennis Loo (thanks to W. Shakespeare for the literary inspiration)
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;
Or shall we look carefully o’er 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 th’ injustice?