After the imperialist invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, some groups of peace activists set up grim reminders of their toll. In Long Beach, California, pairs of boots were put out once a week with names on them to remember soldiers who had been killed for the empire. In Santa Monica, crosses were stuck in the sand. If only these displays were enough to stop the bloodletting. No, it will take the replacement of the predatory, ruinous capitalist system, through mass struggle.

This song is dedicated to lawmakers, pundits and others who cheer on wars that they don't have to fight in.

The apartment mentioned in the first line was across the street from the adult school where Larry Moore was a teacher of English As A Second Language.

That old saying, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," keeps getting proven every day.

We've seen it again and again. When the imperialist powers decide on which nation to invade next, the propaganda machine goes into action, with the inevitable comparison of the target country's leader to Hitler. Of course, getting their hands on the nation's resources is not the goal; the intervention is "humanitarian" with every excuse in the book thrown at us.

On the 40th anniversary of the double war crime of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a group of Japanese A-bomb survivors (known in Japanese as Hibakusha) toured Southern California to talk of their experiences. This song was written to honor them.

This is a musing upon a bumper sticker that used to be seen around the time of the Iraq invasion: WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. Maybe not for the working class, but for the various ruling elites . . .

@buckdebosses2407