The Protest Song - Rustdawg73

The Protest Song
She burned her draft card on the steps and raised her fist to the sky,
and the photographs ran front page and the editorials asked why,
and the veterans watching on the television had a complicated face,
because the protesters were right about something they had traced.

There is a tension in a country between the sending and the going,
between the ones who make the policy and the ones who are not knowing,
whether the objective is the thing the generals said it was,
or whether it is something else with a different kind of cause.

The protest song, the protest song,
it says the war is wrong and the sending has been long,
the protest song, they walk down Main Street here,
and the veterans watch and some of them cheer,
because the right to say the war is wrong is the thing they went to keep,
the protest song, it is the price of the republic, bittersweet and deep,
the protest song, the protest song.

I do not begrudge the ones who burned their cards and stood,
I begrudge the men who started wars while other people would
starch their pressed clothes and watched the flags go by from safe sidelines,
while the draftees took the casualties behind the general lines.

The protest song and the soldier are not as far apart,
as those who send them both out want to keep them in the heart,
both of them are asking something that deserves a real reply,
the protest song says stop the war and the soldier asks us why.