Our Fathers War

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[Verse 1]
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Came out of arrivals was somethin' in his eyes that wasn't
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there and you'd been waitin' for him   beneath the white florescent
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glare he throws his bags down he picks you up he's spinnin' you
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around holdin' so tightly to you, bet you cannot even make a sound
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this is your favorite mem'ry, of him polished beautifully,
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you thought about it often both reflexively and dutifully
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you didn't care who he was fighting or who he was fighting for
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only that your father finally come home from your father's war

[Interlude]
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[Verse 2]
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now 18 years have passed and we're still in Afghanistan
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With IED's and armored HUMVEE's, Burger Kings, quicksand
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and the folks who started up the fight are getting old and dyin'
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and it's harder to remember just why the hell we're fighting
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so we wrap the reasons in the flag, show films of 9-11
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every Sunday they remind us that all soldiers go to heaven
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is a heaven for Americans, the ones who please the Lord
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Remember even Jesus had to fight his father's war

[Interlude]
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[Verse 3]
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You meet a man you love, who reminds you of your father
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the way he used to be before his outlook got so dark
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he sweeps you off your feet, carries you across the threshhold
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of a new life then he ships out, you are 22 years old
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he calls you when he can from an undisclosed location
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then somethin' happens and he's sent home, put on medication
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he wakes up every night and they are 15 in his chest
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with your head upon his shoulder you can hear your father's war

[Interlude]
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[Verse 4]
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but now laser guided missiles, beams, snuff films of their emulation
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fossil fuel removal architecture runs of radiation
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lines of code all stowed away down deep inside a terabite
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an economic serfdom has conferred upon the non-compliant
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you don't have to understand it all, that's okay, no, but it does,
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it's hard for souls to comprehend the horrors they come in
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and thus they do their work behind the wall behind a screen, behind the door,
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so they don't see what he saw when it was your father's war

[Interlude]
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[Verse 5]
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so he'll finish off his tour of duty, in an office in Maryland
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facilitating drone strikes in the border towns of Pakistan
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this is all he's told you and it's amazing he's said anything
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but you've seen it on the cable news, the hospitals and weddings
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at first you think he'll be alright, he'll come home from work each evenin'
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but he's no longer all love and light, he's silent or he's seethin'
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and you love him more than anything, but you've seen this all before
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and in every way that matters this is still your father's war

[Verse 6]
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this is still your father's war, it's still your father's father's war
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and it's his father's war, and his father before his father's war
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and this is how it's gonna be, right down through generations
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war improvement only on it's cruelties with innovation
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lay the dead, and talk to dead, like flowers on cut roses
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improve the weak, and take revenge, and slaughter without notice
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and have everything we want, and with what's left we'll wipe the floor
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so maybe it's just easier to fight our father's war

[Outro]
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