It all seemed so idiotic All the accusations of unpatriotic The fall well always remember Capitulating silence election November Before the winter Of the long hot summer Somewhere in the desert We raised the oil pressure And waited for the weather To get much better For the new wind to blow in the storm We tried to remember the history in the region The French foreign legion, Imperialism Peter OToole and hate the Ayatollah Were all we learned in school Not that we gave Hussein five billion Not of our new bed partner the Syrian And of course no mention Of the Palestine situation It was amazing how they steamrolled They said eighty percent approval But there was no one that I knew polled No one had a reason for being in the Gulf We waited for Congress to speak up Illegal build up But no one would wake up Our representatives were Milli Vanillis For corporate Dallas Cowboy Beverly Hillbillies With perfect timing The politicians rhyming their sentiments So nicely oil, gold and sand My sediments precisely.... We regretfully support the lunacy Im afraid there is no time for more scrutiny National unity preserve our community Teflon election opportunities Were in profundant abundance On January second the Bush administration Announced a recession had stricken the Nation The highest quarterly earnings in ten years Were posted by Chevron Meanwhile a budget was placed in our hands As the deadline in the sand came to an end So much for the peace dividend One billion a day is what we spent And our grandchildren will pay for it til the end When schools are unfunded And kids dont get their diplomas They get used for gun boat diplomacy Disproportionately black or brown we see Bullet catchers for the slave master Then the conservatives called up reservists To active service left families nervous But more importantly broke nine hundred a month But the check came late, army red tape you see This golden opportunity We watched the tube and read the newspaper The propaganda of the gas masked raper Was the proper slander to whip up the hatred The stage was lit and the lights were all faded The pilots in night vision goggles Kuwaited and Generals masturbated Til the fifteenth two days later they invaded Not a single t.v. station expressed dissension or Hardly made mention to the censorship of information From our kinder and gentler nation Blinder and mentaler retardation Disorientation The pilots said their bombs lit Baghdad Like a Christmas tree It was the Christian thing to do you see They didnt mention any casualties No distinction between the real And the proxy Only football analogies We saw the bomb hole We watched the Super Bowl We saw the scud missile We watched Bud commercials We saw the yellow ribbons Saw pilots in prison We never saw films of the dead At eleven Angela Davis addressed the spectators And shouting above a rumbling generator said If they insist on bringing us down Then lets shut the whole country down Marching through the downtown A hundred thousand became participants And we heard the drums of millions off in the distance Rushing through the cities Some of them did things that werent so pretty Most were there for primal scream therapy News men concentrated On the negative liked the jingoists more Peaceful protesters ended up on The cutting room floor Nintendo casualties of the ratings war More bombs dropped than in World War II Or in both Asian invasions New world order persuasion Business as usual for our nation Could you imagine a hundred fifty thousand dead The city of Stockton coffins locked in When we clocked in. Not to mention civilians The loss of life on both sides Pushed the limits of resilience The scent of blood in our nostrils Fuel of the fossil land of apostle The blackness that covered the sky Was not the only thing that Brought a tear to the eye or The taste of anger to the tongues Of those too young to remember Vietnam Is heroin better in a veterans mind Than the memory of the dying laying in a line Is it the smell or the shadows heaving and weeping That keeps the soldier from sleeping As he sings the orphans lullaby When the soldiers put down their bayonets The strings are chained to the marionettes Emir of Kuwait gets back in his jet We replace the dead with new cadets Will we hate those who did the shelling Or will we hate those who werent willing To do the killing When the leaders of the bald eagles come home to roost Will we sing a song of praise and indebtedness For our deliverance from evil? Or will we sing a song of sadness For the dreaded debt this mess Delivered us people?
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