We Fucking Meant It

[Verse 1] Twenty-five years, I still remember where I was Watched that second plane hit and knew what it was Firemen running up while everybody else came down Strangers digging for strangers when those towers hit the ground And before we knew where any of this would go A whole generation said, “Tell me where. I’ll go.” [Chorus] So we answered the call That’s what we said we’d do We were young and pissed off And we believed it too We’d find the ones who did it Make damn sure they paid Maybe leave our kids a world A little safer than that day Twenty-five years later Here’s what I know— You can kill some evil men But evil doesn’t fucking go [Verse 2] Afghanistan, then Iraq, twenty years went by Missed Christmases and birthdays, buried too many friends of mine Some came home in wheelchairs, some looked perfectly fine Some survived the damn war, then lost themselves with time We thought all that sacrifice would mean something in the end Maybe our kids wouldn’t have to do What we did back then [Verse 3] Now there’s grown men and women who weren’t even born that day And kids who learned September Eleven from a page They don’t remember what this country was before Before twenty years of sending people off to war I don’t blame them, hell, how could they understand? They know the world that came after We remember what we had [Bridge – band nearly gone] We really fucking believed it. That if we fought hard enough, lost enough good people, maybe our kids wouldn’t have to do this shit. We were wrong. [Final Chorus] But we answered the call And don’t you rewrite that Before the politics and bullshit And twenty years of looking back There were firefighters climbing stairs Knowing they might fucking die Then kids like us raised our right hands And said, “Send me. I’ll fight.” We thought we’d make a better world Maybe we were young and naïve But when this country needed somebody— We fucking believed [Outro – acoustic, steel, distant military snare] Someday there’ll be nobody left who remembers that morning. So tell them about the ones who ran upstairs. Tell them about the ones who never came home. And tell them why we went. Don’t tell them we won. Just tell them… We answered. And we fucking meant it.