America has never suffered in war like other countries
Sure, we've sent our boys off to die.
But other countries have suffered that
and much more.

The closest we came to having the sky fall down
Was when nineteen crazy Muslims
Crashed three planes on September eleventh two thousand one
And more than three thousand people died
In the rubble of our most famous buildings.
That's the closest.

But for all our duct tape and plastic sheeting we still can't seem to imagine
What it would be like to have
A thousand 9/11's all around us
Not just in New York but in Wichita and Fergus Falls.
To have not three thousand dead but hundreds of thousands.

We don't have to imagine what it is like in other countries.
We can see on TV what it's like
To live under a rain of bombs
If CNN dares to show it,
Really show it.
But brown bodies crushed under the rubble
And Arabic screams of pain don't seem to move us the same way 9/11 did.

If America knew what it was really like to suffer in war
If we remembered what it is like
Like the French and the Germans and the Russians and even the Brits do
Perhaps we would be less eager to do it to others.

But then again, 9/11 made us crazy.
Perhaps if we had suffered a thousand 9/11's
We would be a thousand times hungrier for blood.
But if that is true here,
Why would it not be true in Baghdad?