Third attempt...

To All The Young Warriors

How say you, young men and women surging to fight,

Fleeing countries that may have bullied you

Or may have not,

Countries that might have invaded or at the least

Benefited by it?  Countries full

Of men, women and children who cannot

Guide those that choose to act upon

Lands far from their suburban homes and televisions set

While they watch the Politicians and Fanatics claim

Actions done in The Name of The One True God

(Who is not your God) to mask the stealing of oil or gold,

Or the acts performed out of fear of losing control.

How say you, young men and women who think you

Are the first? That this Righteous Fight has never been

Fought. That your blood lust is precious and original.

That the words you hear have never been heard.

That the swelling inside your chest fit to burst

Has never been felt before; has never bloomed

And you now think it does in your time alone?

Do you truly believe that your blood

Taking other blood will quench a thirst?

How say you, as you stand there with your weapons

Praying to deliver a victory by killing innocents?

And what of the terrorized women fearing rape,

For they know they will be, they always are,

And have no say in this?

And what of the children who will be maimed, killed

Or sent homeless and orphaned

Into the smoldering ruins of an uncaring world?

You think you are the first, but you are not.

Not even close.

Think of those ancient warriors who heard the call

And gathered before the colossal walls of Troy

With their shining armour, the lustre

As bright as the souls you claim are your reward,

Their swords catching the sun

As you think you catch the eyes of Your Lord.

Think of the littered dead of El Alamein, those broken bodies

On both sides, soldiers poor or ignorant or seeking glory

Or thinking they had only one life to give for God and Country;

Did they not heed the call as you now do?

Think of the Dixie greys running towards a slaughter

Or the Zulu warriors running against the bayonets

The Crow or Aztec, the Indigenous or weary transcript;

Each young man and woman, each warrior or farmer or son

Or daughter or lost one thought they had found the cause

And fought the fight that was Just, fought the fight that must be fought.

And what did they gain…these young men and women who flocked

As you now do,

To lands scattered as far as any bird has ever flown?

Death to themselves and to those they fought.

Peace sometimes but never for long.

Pain to those they loved and to those they didn’t.

And their Gods —

Did they rejoice in the death? Do you truly believe that?

Who profited from all those deaths?

Someone’s God? Or is it that He or She that has had many names

And many forms always finds Themselves as a banner

For those that go to war, is that what a God is for?

And what of those who say they fought for their Homelands

Desert or Forest, Farmland or Savannah? Do you think

A Country needs so much blood, that it needs a generation

To fall like leaves and smother the ground for Its cause?

Could it be those who have always profited on the dead,

Who have always fed the minds of the young, urging them

To chase the shadows, young minds

Led along by the cruel whispers of the hiding men,

The lurkers in shaded corners, the bean counters, the weapon makers,

The givers of orders, the heedless of consequences,

Might not they be the ones you are really fighting for?

I ask that you reach down and grasp a handful of sand,

Count the grains, each one a warrior such as yourself

Turned to dust, each with dreams that matched yours —

And while we may remember Achilles, remember

He knows nought

But blows across the ruins of Troy, mingling himself

With Hector and the bones of others who also died.

And think on this, young warriors wanting to fight,

Think of all those others who stood upon or beneath

Those mammoth walls of Troy and thought they too fought

The Good Fight that would change everything

And found, or died before they could, that it did not.