There are people under fire
They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are
There are people under fire
Where a government lies to a people
There's a shadow on the faces
But they're never the ones to fight or to die
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
And there's a shadow on the faces
And a country is drifting to war
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
I want to hear somebody asking them why
You might ask what it takes to remember
These governments killing their own?
You hear one thing again and again
And there are lives in the balance
Where their business interest runs
I want to know who the men in the shadows are
The same time they sell us our wars
On the radio talk shows and the TV
They sell us every thing from youth to religion
They sell us the president the same way
To the wars that are fought in places
They sell us our clothes and our cars
When you know that you've seen it before
There are children at the cannons
Where we can't even say the names
There are lives in the balance
Or the people who finally can't take any more
Of the wars that are fought in places
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
But who are the ones that we call our friends
Of the men who send the guns
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
Of the men who fan the flames
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire
