M.I.A.

I know that this song is probably about the Iraq war since that's the current one (and it will definitely be taken that way since everyone thinks just about every song has something to do with the Iraq war). Personally I don't think it really matters which war is about, it's just the story of someone who goes to a war. Songs are better when they are more general, and there's no reason it has to be about Iraq instead of any other war.

That being said, I wouldnt really have got Iraq from the lyrics - Vietnam is the war that came into my head. It's the war I've most commonly heard associated with the phrase "M.I.A.", as there were a lot of soldiers who were never confirmed dead there, making there a lot of MIAs. It's a recent war so fresh in people's memory, but not so recent as to make a song about it "political". It was renowned for having a lot of very young soldiers fight in it, and for it to be difficult for some returning veterans to re-enter society (which is clearly the story of the soldier in the song). And it was a lot more bloody a war than the Iraq one.

Somehow the "shot a mother right in front of her son" makes me doubt it's specifically about Iraq too. I'm sure stuff like that has happened in the Iraq war, but in Iraq the Americans were first trying to overthrow Sadaam, then to merely deal with the terrorists and ensure the safety of the civillians from what are basically terrorists. That line just gives connotations of a different kind of war to me, more like Vietnam.

But again, I think it's just about war in general, and doesn't have to be about a specific conflict. Vietnam is just the one I thought / think of when listening.