Richie Havens - Lives In The Balance lyrics

Ive been waiting for something to happen For a week or a month or a year With the blood in the ink of the headlines And the sound of the crowd in my ear You might ask what it takes to remember When you know that youve seen it before Where a government lies to a people And a country is drifting to war And theres a shadow on the faces Of the men who send the guns To the wars that are fought in places Where their business interest runs On the radio talk shows and the t.v You hear one thing again and again How the USA stands for freedom And we come to the aid of a friend But who are the ones that we call our friends-- These governments k**ing their own? Or the people who finally can't take any more And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone There are lives in the balance There are people under fire There are children at the cannons And there is blood on the wire There's a shadow on the faces Of the men who fan the flames Of the wars that are fought in places Where we can't even say the names They sell us the president the same way They sell us our clothes and our cars They sell us every thing from youth to religion The same time they sell us our wars I want to know who the men in the shadows are I want to hear somebody asking them why They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are But theyre never the ones to fight or to die And there are lives in the balance There are people under fire There are children at the cannons And there is blood on the wire