How does it feel to be the father of a thousand dead?

Young boys rest now, cold graves in cold earth.

How does it feel to be the father of a thousand dead?

Sunken eyes, lost now; empty sockets in futile death.

Your arrogance has gutted these bodies of life,

your deceit fooled them that it was worth the sacrifice.

Your lies persuaded people to accept the wasted blood,

your filthy pride cleansed you of the doubt you should have had.

You smile in the face of death because you're so proud and vain,

your cruel inhumanity stops you from realising the pain...

that you inflicted, you determined, you created, you ordered -

it was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered.

You never wanted peace or solution,

from the start you lusted after war and destruction.

Your blood-soaked reason ruled out other choices,

your mockery gagged more moderate voices.

So keen to play your bloody part,

so impatient that your war be fought.

with your stone heart so eager that the lesson be taught

that you inflicted, you determined, you created, you ordered -

it was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered.

Throughout our history you and your kind have stolen

the young bodies of the living to be twisted and torn in filthy war.

What right have you to defile those births?

What right have you to devour that flesh?

What right to spit on the hope with the gory madness that you inflicted,

you determined, you created, you ordered -

it was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered.

You accuse us of disrespect for the dead,

but it was you who slaughtered out of national pride.

Just how much did you care?

What respect did you have as you sent those bodies to their communal grave?

You buried them rough-handed, they'd given you their all,

that once living flesh defiled in the hell that you inflicted,

you determined, you created, you ordered -

it was your decision to have those young boys slaughtered.

You use those deaths to achieve your ends still,

using the corpses as a moral blackmail.

You say, "Think of what those young men gave,"

as you try to bind us in your living death,

yet we do think of them, ice-cold and silenced,

stopped by the violence that

you inflicted,

you determined,

you created,

you ordered -

it was YOUR decision to have those young boys slaughtered.

****

Apologies to the band, Crass... who wrote the original song "How does it feel" in 1982. Their tirade was aimed at Maggie Thatcher after the bloody Falklands war. The lyrics posted here simply replaced "mother" (Thatcher) with "father" (Bush). For more on Crass, visit: www.southern.com/southern/label/CRC/