Twelve long years

Twelve long years since the towers fell, since a sense of safety burned,

twelve long years in which it seems that not a thing was learned

Twelve long years of perpetual war that’s fanned the flames of hate,

twelve long years of a state of fear that we’ve all helped to create

 

Have we learned the age old lesson that the enemy of our foes

does not always an ally make, as we’ve seen these winds that blow

will often change direction, bringing back what we’d set free,

narrow views that lose all sight of what may come to be

 

Have we learned that dropping bombs does not equate with liberation ?

That freeing those oppressed through death is not a sound equation ?

That killing those you’re supposed to save will win no hearts or minds,

and its not your fancy speeches, but your actions that define

 

Have we shed the childish notion that it’s our freedoms that create

the animosity and hatred into which these acts translate,

that whilst it is indeed freedom that drives this lust for blood,

it’s the freedoms we deny to those we trample in the mud

 

Twelve long years and all we’ve learnt is that money rules the day,

big business works the strings of all the puppets on display,

all the bullets and the bombs create such wealth for those invested,

as democracy’s slowly strangled by the rot that has infested

and blurred the lines between the corporate world and those that lead,

and as long as we allow this taint we’ll continue to bleed,

dropped in the line of fire by those we trusted to protect,

sacrificial collateral damage whilst the profits they collect,

its greed disguised in the tattered guise of humanitarian concerns,

the wolves are in the pasture as the farmhouse slowly burns