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I was thinking about Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian who raised the flag at Iwo Jima and returned home to die in a ditch of untreated alcoholism... And I was thinking about a story I read about Sgt. Brian Rand, an Iraq war veteran suffering from untreated PTSD who blew his brains out the other day.... And I was thinking about the cold ststistics I had read that  2,000 Iraq war veterans committed suicide in 2007 and the thousands who are returning whom with PTSD and missing limbs and burned faces..... And I was thinking about the friends I worked with in the Army at the end of the Vietnam war who had just returned home and didn't want to talk about their experiences at all....... And I was thinking about the carnage and human destruction I witnessed second hand on a moviola viewing screen editing combat footage in my little cubicle at Fort Monmouth eight hours day.  I didn't have to work this weekend. Maybe I had too much time to think.......  ..

www.truthout.org/article/memories-iraq-haunted-so ldier-until-suicide

 "According to the Army, more than 2,000 active-duty soldiers attempted suicide or suffered serious self-inflicted injuries in 2007, compared to fewer than 500 such cases in 2002, the year before the United States invaded Iraq.

   " A recent study by the nonprofit Rand Corp. found that 300,000 of the nearly 1.7 million soldiers who've served in Iraq or Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or a major mental illness, conditions that are worsened by lengthy deployments and, if left untreated, can lead to suicide.

    "Soldiers deployed from Fort Campbell have served up to 15-month stints and have fought in such heavy combat zones as Basra, Mosul and Al Anbar province. Some soldiers, like Brian Rand, have been deployed multiple times since the war began."

Ira Hayes

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Gather round me people there's a story I would tell
About a brave young Indian you should remember well
From the land of the Pima Indian
A proud and noble band
Who farmed the Phoenix valley in Arizona land

Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira's peoples' crops
'Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin' water stopped

Now Ira's folks were hungry
And their land grew crops of weeds
When war came, Ira volunteered
And forgot the white man's greed

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
Two hundred and fifty men
But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

And when the fight was over
And when Old Glory raised
Among the men who held it high
Was the Indian, Ira Hayes

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Ira returned a hero
Celebrated through the land
He was wined and speeched and honored; Everybody shook his hand

But he was just a Pima Indian
No water, no crops, no chance
At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
And when did the Indians dance

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Then Ira started drinkin' hard;
Jail was often his home
They'd let him raise the flag and lower it
like you'd throw a dog a bone!

He died drunk one mornin'
Alone in the land he fought to save
Two inches of water in a lonely ditch
Was a grave for Ira Hayes

[CHORUS:]
Call him drunken Ira Hayes
He won't answer anymore
Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
Nor the Marine that went to war

Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes
But his land is just as dry
And his ghost is lyin' thirsty
In the ditch where Ira died

 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hayes

The song was written by Native American folk singer, Peter La Farge, and made famous by Johnny Cash. The video is by the late Townes Van Zandt.

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"Where Do We Go From Here?"

I wrote this song a few months ago, after the las protest march I attended. I've been giving the lyrics out to friends. Anyone who would like to sing this song is welcome to...

I think this country is mesmerized by the presidential election, thinking that the next president is going to bring big changes. I think that a lot of people are going to be severely disppointed if they think the next president is going to bring this war to a conclusion. The majority of Americans want the war to end. My message is that the war will end when we decide to end it ourselves.

The photos are from marches that I went to in Los Angeles. The video is me playing at the Kern River Preserve in Weldon.

Where Do We Go From Here