America Owes An Apology

We can't mold the world to serve our interests,
We're supposed to be standing for truth and justice.
Tell the Shiites, the people of Iran, we're sorry
For installing the Shah and Savak's torturing.
Apologize to the Palestinians
For the murder of women and children
At Sabra and Chatilla.

Tell the Guatemalan Indians living in poverty,
We are so very sorry
For placing in power a repressive regime,
That did what we wanted back in the fifties.
Apologize to the American Indians for stealing their country,
To the people behind Allende for the overthrow of Chile.
We should respect the Third World's sovereignty.

Shame on those of us
Who protested the Vietnam War
For not protesting hard enough.
Shame on the people who resisted us.
Most shame of all for people who did nothing.
Never fight for your country unless you are sure
That a powerful enemy threatens to land on your shores.
Keep home your armies, there'll be no wars.

Tell the people of Nam we are sorry
From the bottom of our hearts.
Our Sectetary of State, under Eisenhower,
In a gross display of arrogance of power,
Denied Ho Chi Minh sovereignty over Vietnam proper.
Our boys weren't soldiers, they were unwitting cops,
Arresting the life of the poor, not the spread of Communists.

Say you're sorry for the Desert Storm mission
To the mothers of babies who died from dehydration,
When we embargoed food and medicine,
During our campaign to bomb Iraq into submission.
Could we have spared the Iraqi farmers,
Who were drafted and put on the front lines to die in their bunkers,
Whom we bombed and buried in the Syrian desert?
Elite Forces we allowed to escape were the murderers.

Do you like anti-Americanism?
Do you want credibility or to be a world leader?
Then give the world an apology,
Especially the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
For introducing man his doom through a nuclear catastrophe.
What could of been on President Truman's mind?
Was he giving a warning for the world to tow our line?
Did he see he was threatening the survival of mankind?

We didn't need to counter the Bolsheviks in 1917;
We could have lived in peace with socialist countries,
Our leaders were afraid of socialism's popularity.
We should by now be willing to admit,
It was wrong to support the abuses of Chiang Kai-Shek.
We started the Cold War and an ideological rivalry
That overshadowed all issues, the curse of the century.


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