MAY WE SPEAK CLEARLY HERE
Listening to our Winter Soldiers
May we speak clearly here may we talk
about poising ourselves on the border
between Kuwait and Iraq with the voice
of President Bush screaming into our ear
that Saddam Hussein and his evasive weapons
of mass destruction send us house to house
in search of any insurgency that will lead us
to the man of the house get him out of bed
and sometimes we catch them exposed
in their night garments which was embarrassing
even though eight out of ten times families
this is all they were families not insurgents
so a lot of these raids were not productive
we were going in there disrupting their lives
shoot everybody an old man a few children
and a woman we do not know who the enemy is
but they do know who we are so if the US hadn’t
been there my daughter would still be alive then
the majority of US soldiers do not fit in we do
not fit in most of us are not Muslim we are told to give
these people democracy and the bottom line most
US soldiers aren’t seen as peace-keepers but as invaders
animosity growing the solution to remove us and
ourselves from Iraq so now the message to Congress
you can stand with Bush or you can stand with the American
people deploy improvised explosive devices security
element casualty development point look for weapons
look for literature in every closet you’re looking for
even though you can’t read Arabic bang a sledge hammer
in a wall to make it sound like an explosive soften
them up for interrogation the majority of prisoners
in the wrong place at the wrong time sometimes
they got turned in because of family feuds thinking
we’ll put an end to war the way Buffy Sainte-Marie’s
“Universal Soldier” of your green Chapala days
the world flaring up in flames hate-ignorance ignites
new energy splashing into our world where you kill
the mother by shooting drive-by into a moving car
by shocking three surviving daughters fatherless
Al Young
Copyright © 2007 and 2008 by Al Young
