This Is Why We Fight

I have an interpretation that is very similar to the one by pt8218, and it hit me like a bolt out of the blue when they were playing the song at the gym the other day.

pt8218 mentioned the "Why We Fight" films from the WWII era. Well, there was a mini-series on HBO about ten years ago called "Band of Brothers", about the 101st Airborne E Company that parachuted into France as part of the Allied invasion at Normandy. It's a good show and I have to admit that if I flip past the reruns on cable I am stuck on the couch all afternoon. Anyway, there was one episode actually titled "Why We Fight". By this time in the series, the Germans were pretty much whipped and the war was starting to wind down. As the pace of the action slowed the soldiers had time to start thinking about what is the point of war and was it all worth it. They were tired and burned out.

Then one of the soldiers, out on patrol, stumbles across a concentration camp set up outside of the village. When they go to investigate they are met face to face with the horror, "the reek of bones". As they try to process what they are seeing, the incomprehensible evil that they have exposed, they realize why they are there and why their sacrifice was not in vain.

There is one scene where the commanding officer walks into the camp and this ragged skeleton of a man walks up to him and hugs him. That was the first thing I thought of when I heard the lyric "Come to me now, come lay your arms around me". What a heartwrenching thing to see.

In summary, the lyrics in the song start by describing war with terms of "avarice" or greed and "attrition" or loss. As it progresses, lyrics like "die with our arms unbound" demonstrate that sometimes there are reasons "why we fight", above and beyond the political machinations of this world.