What...? Not this Old Beast again?

War! What's it good for?
Say it, say it, say it again...

So... this song, below, is certainly not one of my best songs, by a stretch. And, yet, I've posted a slug of versions of it here on the AYoS parade of songwriting shame...

What gives?

It's this damn war, I tell you.

Like the overwhelming majority of US citizens, I'm sick to death of it, sick of the suffering of others, sick of the squandered sacrifices of our men and women who feel called to fight, sick of the lies, and sick of the excuses of those politicains and legislators who claim they were fooled into supporting it.

That, my friends, is a sock full of shit.

The truth about what US intelligence analysts really thought about Saddam and the supposed threat he posed to the the Middle East and the US was known then, as it is known now.

It was, indeed, in -- if not all the papers -- certainly in responsible, mainstream publications like the Christian Science Monitor and plenty of others, even if the supposedly liberal New York Times seemed to focus all its energies on promoting this most foolish of modern boondoggles of death, destruction, and cynical profiteering.

And it was well covered in the British and Australian press who had a lot less temerity when it came time to speak "truth to power" and seemed far less worried about offending those whose first response to the 9/11 attacks was to rain death and destruction indiscriminately on any handy villains, guilty or not.

Now... don't get me wrong.

I did support the incursion into Afghanistan to get the people who our intel officials did think were behind the 9/11 attacks -- and who, in fact, were bold enough to take credit for it. Hell, I thought just the act of claiming credit was worthy of some serious ass-kicking...

But there was -- in the words of our very own intel and security experts -- "little or no credible evidence" of Saddam Hussein's purported involvement with the attacks.

Yet, there we were, confronted by the sorry spectacle of not just the idiot-president's own party of warmongering lackies (full disclosure: I am a Republican) rushing to join the gangpile of those willfully ignoring the truth -- but the "loyal opposition" -- the then-Democratic Congressional leadership joining the festival of deception and disingenuity, rushing to vote for war against a nation for which there was little or no credible evidence of involvement in the monstrous attacks on New York and Washington.

So... yeah... this Old Beast, again...


A note about today's version: This recording was actually made in early 1998 as part of the AYoS precursor, TK Major's Song of the Day. Unlike the mostly acoustic/folk AYoS, the SotD project was all over the map, production and style-wise but this song, with its string arrangement (OK, synthetic strings, to be sure, I'd already spent the retirement money I could have devoted to hiring a real string section) and putatively soothing background vocal harmonies, was an odd duck, even for that polystylistic culture jumble.

Have You Embraced the Beast?
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previous versions
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Thursday, January 11, 2007

lyrics
Have You Embraced the Beast?

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?
Do you serve the war machine?
Have you embraced the beast?
Did you trade in your soul on (for) the finer things?


Have you embraced the beast?
Do your taxes buy bullets for fascist death squads?
Have you embraced the beast?
They'll be coming to your hometown before too long . . .

Have you embraced the beast?
I see the mark is on your face
Have you embraced the beast?
Are you a slave of greed and hate?

Have you embraced the beast?


(C)1984, 2007, TK Major