Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Pete Seeger
It's Veterans Day, 2007. As of this afternoon 3860 members of the US military have given their lives in Iraq. At least 30,000 have been wounded and countless more have returned with PTSD. Up to 1 million Iraqi civilians are dead and as many as 4 million Iraqis have left their homes.
All at the hands of the money changers in the name of the empire.
For My Country
I met a young man with a hook for a hand
and only one eye from which he could see.
To him I said with a feeling of dread,
“How did your hook come to be?”
Then came his reply with a pained look in his eye,
“My hand was lost for my country.”
And I knew very well that he’d been through hell
in a land far across the sea.
For there were more who returned from that war
in no better shape than he.
But then I thought of the reason he fought
so far from you and me. I asked,
“What country’s so grand as an eye and a hand?
What nation my friend can it be?”
And then he cried from his only eye,
“No nation, no nation is worth it to me.”
I met a young man with a hook for a hand
and only one eye from which he could see.
To him I said with a feeling of dread,
“How did your hook come to be?”
Then came his reply with a pained look in his eye,
“My hand was lost for my country.”
And I knew very well that he’d been through hell
in a land far across the sea.
For there were more who returned from that war
in no better shape than he.
But then I thought of the reason he fought
so far from you and me. I asked,
“What country’s so grand as an eye and a hand?
What nation my friend can it be?”
And then he cried from his only eye,
“No nation, no nation is worth it to me.”
Greg Banks 1971
