The National Guard Goes to the Movies

The National Guard Goes to the Movies

This title is not from a new children's book or a South Park episonde. It is about their visit in amazing mixtures of sounds and team bravado, and smiling little Arab (Iraqi?) children who greet the Americans with gratitude, after seconds of fright.

It was an amazing contrast between the film we were about to see. The film was "Elegy", written by Nicholas Meyer and directed by Isabel Coixet, with Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz, Dennis Hopper, Patricia Clarkson and others. It is a sensual and sad and moving film. "Elegy" is reflective, and at times brutally honest and surprising; at others it's romantically photographed and acted to the sounds of classical music or no music whatsoever.

The National Guard left just in time, the tone of its commercial being filled with sounds of rock, and the beat of insistent pictures of our heroes who come to kick a soccer ball to a scared little boy who is clearly Arab, so he can smile. It is the old military giving out candy to children and freeing the world.

Of course it's the Guard of today, but it's about yesterday and about nostalgia. And it is mainly about drilling into the heads of the less than convinced and feeding the adrenalin of those already there, that if there's one thing about Americans, we fight to win, and to accept defeat is to die, and worse.
The rhyming has an end in sight but it what I woke up with today.



We Fight to Win (We will never be defeated)

We are Americans, say it again,
And Americans fight and fight and fight,
We fight because God says we're right
We fight where we are needed

Our motto is, bring freedom home
And we can never ever accept defeat
We give and give and give and give
And we will never be defeated

And if we find the war is wrong
Why we can never be defeated
And if we see the war is wrong, why
We can never be defeated

We learn at school to win and lose
And we can never be defeated
To share and pray and love our neighbor
And we will never be defeated

We use our words and not our fists
And we will never be defeated
Until the day our boys enlist
And we can never be defeated.

When we're at war we have to win
Accept defeat and you will sin
Accept defeat and you will lose
All the freedom we can choose
Accept defeat and you will meet
The enemy here upon our streets
Everything from church forget
Everything from school upset
Accept defeat we can't come back
We see the world in white and black
We want a President who knows to fight
And fight way after dawn's early light
We call this patriotism strong out proud
Where doubters are betrayers wowed
By propaganda from enemy lines
Elect the fighter, ignore the whines
The weak or those who cry and cry
They cry for peace but will not die
Like us who proud and wowed and strong, sing
We shall never be defeated