Syria, 2013

There’s an uncivil war in Syria, one hundred thousand dead
Millions of refugees without a roof over their heads
Proxy armies flowing in to a country open wide
You got Al-Qaeda and America fighting side by side
You got Saudi monarchs and French socialists on one team
You got Russia and Iran backing the regime
You got the Arab League having another meaningless debate
Saying let’s just see what happens if we wait

But now the west says gloves are off, it’s all become too real
Now Cameron and Obama are dictating the deal
Now red lines have been crossed, now it’s time to act
Now it’s time to have a few million tons of impact
Now it’s time to do the thing that the west does best
Time to step in the hornet’s nest

We don’t know who did it, but there has been a war crime
So we’ll bomb an Arab country one more time

What we know is this: there was a chemical attack
Kinda like the ones that happened in Iraq
Like the white phosphorous we used on the people of Falluja
Or the chemicals we sold to Saddam for Halabja
But this time it’s a different story, this poison gas in Gouta
Our allies would never do this, those foreign fighters in Al-Qaeda

Chorus

We don’t know who did it, but we know who to blame
The Baathists are the party, Bashar Asad is the name
We don’t know who did it, we can figure that out later
we’ll turn Damascus into a smart bomb crater
We’ll fix them with Cruise missiles, like in Baghdad and Mosul
Where they now have peace, prosperity and democratic rule

Chorus

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“Syria, 2013” appears on the Bandcamp album, Spies Are Reading My Blog and on the CD, If I Had A Hammer (2013).

One of two songs I wrote in the days after the gas attack in Ghouta that the US was using as a pretext to bomb Syria.  At the time, if you recall, they were trying to blame the Syrian government for the gas attacks.  Later many of the same people blaming the Syrian government admitted that the gas attack may very well have been carried out by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nousra Front rebel group.