Leaving Beirut

C                    E              E7
Are these the people that we should bomb
F              G
Are we so sure they mean us harm
C                     E             E7
Is this our pleasure, punishment or crime
F                          G
Is this a mountain that we really want to climb
C                 E           E7
The road is hard, hard and long
F
Put down that two by four
G                                       C
This man would never turn you from his door
           E       E7
Oh George! Oh George!
F                              G                                C
That Texas education must have fucked you up when you were very small

C                E                 E7
When I was 17 my mother, bless her heart,
F                             G                           C
Fulfilled my summer dream she handed me the keys to the car
                                  E                  E7
We motored down to Paris, fuelled with Dexedrine and booze
F                                   G
Got bust in Antibes by the cops and fleeced in Naples by the wops
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C                               E                E7
But everyone was kind to us, we were the English dudes
F
Our dads had helped them win the war
G                                      C
When we all knew what we were fighting for
                                E             E7
But now an Englishman abroad is just a US stooge
F                                G
The bulldog is a poodle snapping round the scoundrel's last refuge

C
Is gentleness too much for us
       E             E7    F
Should gentleness be filed along with empathy
   G
We feel for someone else's child
C                                 E               E7
Every time a smart bomb does its sums and gets it wrong
F                             G
Someone else's child dies and equities in defence rise
C                        E               E7
America, America, please hear us when we call
F
You got hip-hop, be-bop, hustle and bustle
G
You got Atticus Finch, you got Jane Russell
C
You got freedom of speech, you got great beaches,
E                E7
Wildernesses and malls
F
Don't let the might, the Christian right,
G                                              C
Fuck it all up for you and the rest of the world

C                         E                E7
Not in my name, Tony, you great war leader you
F                          G
Terror is still terror, whosoever gets to frame the rules
C                            E                  E7
History's not written by the vanquished or the damned
F                          G
Now we are Genghis Khan, Lucretia Borghia, Son of Sam
C                       E               E7
In 1961 they took this child into their home
F                                   G
I wonder what became of them in the cauldron that was Lebanon
C                         E            E7
If I could find them now, could I make amends?
F                  G            C
How does the story end?