Cavemen

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Cavemen
A song by Peggy Seeger©2003 Peggy Seeger

Like splinters the buildings rise
Like spikes on the floor of a cave
Fly over our city in the dark of night
They sparkle like lit-up tombstones, crowded graves.

We know it’s not so (2)
Our city breathes
Our city lives
We know it’s not so.

Year after year our bombers fly
Like bats from the mouth of a cave
Streaming forth around the world
They’ve got a way of life to save.

We know it’s so (2)
We let them go
If it’s to our advantage
We tell them to go.

Down through history the cavemen march
For power, greed, religion, national pride;
Like locusts they sweep across the earth
Their god is money - and he’s is on their side.

We know it’s so
It’s forever been so
Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler and ....
It’s forever been so

Through countless years the cavemen claim
A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye
Toothless and blind, denying blame
They seek revenge until the day they die.

We know it’s so (2)
It’s in our name
It means YES
If we don’t say NO ---

We hold our breath as the tables turn
As the cavemen posture, as we learn to learn
As we cast about for someone to blame
And ponder that terrorists and patriots might behave the same.

Is it so?
Is it so?

Cry for the dead of Viet Nam
For the starving children in Iraq
Cry for the victims of Uncle Sam
In all the countries that WE’VE attacked.
And cry for the thousands
Who died among the rubble in New York.

We sow
We sow and we sow ---
You reap what you sow.

Notes

Many thanks to Peggy Seeger for permission to add this song to the Union Songs collection. This song is on the special CD "Songs for October 2004" which can be ordered from Peggy's website.

Words, music, copyright Peggy Seeger. Copyright is administered by Harmony Music, Ltd.

Peggy's website is at http://www.pegseeger.com

Historian William Blum compiled this list of countries that were targets for USA bombings since 1945

Korea and China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-1961
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1963
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Iran 1987
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1993
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
Yemen 2002
Iraq 1991-2003
Iraq 2003-05
Afghanistan 2001-05

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