The Faces of War: Steve Earle’s new album "The Revolution Starts...Now!" is unabashedly antiwar

“RIGHT NOW, THE WAY to stop this war,” says a tired but determined- sounding Steve Earle, “is to make it clear to people that it is their kids who are fucked. That it will be their sons and daughters who are gonna have to go over there for years and years. And despite what this administration is telling you, the way this thing is heading we will be there for a long, long time.”

Stopping the war in Iraq is Earle’s focus right now, both personally and (in the form of his fine new record, The Revolution Starts...Now! ) professionally. And like most concurring folk of the antiwar persuasion, Earle sees the upcoming presidential election as the first and best place to bring the fighting to an end.

“Have no doubts about it, this is absolutely an antiwar record,” a feisty-sounding Earle says. “That’s why we worked our asses off to get it out when we did. We felt it was imperative that people hear this music before this election. Because, as I see it, changing administrations is our only chance at fixing this mess.”

The word “our” speaks volumes when Earle uses it, and he often does. He constantly speaks in the collective: “we,” “our” and “us” are at the very core of Earle’s political vocabulary. “We the people” still means something to Steve Earle. Hell, it means everything .

“I was out there in the streets of New York City with all of those people protesting during the Republican convention, man, and it was something,” Earle says. “You get a real sense that the power really does come from the people when you’re part of something like that.”

But Earle is not just another pseudo-celebrity out on the stump blindly repeating talking points or mindlessly searching for the rush of a headline new tidbit. He may be aligned politically with Senator Kerry for this election, but he’s no fool, and he damn sure knows that promises come very cheap in politics, and that nothing or nobody is a sure bet to do the right thing.

“I just know that we need to change things,” Earle says. “That we need to understand that we’ve been lied to by the present administration - not about weapons of mass destruction, although that clearly is another example of how this administration operates, but about the real reasons that Muslim cultures have hatred for America. These guys want us to believe that the Muslim world hates America because we are free. They don’t hate us because of freedom, they hate us because of our policies, in particular our policies on Israel and the House of Saud that do not recognize the Muslim concerns.”

But these kinds of subjects - international diplomacy and world politics - deal in tedium and minutiae, and they are not the winning politics of an electorate that tends to be limited in knowledge, bored by substance, short in attention span and, quite frankly, mesmerized by the celebrity of politicians and elections.

“Look, that stuff is tough,” Earle says. “It’s very difficult to get through to people who are busy living their lives, trying to find a job and trying to feed their kids when you talk about that stuff - as important as it is. But when you help those same people understand that those kids of theirs that they are trying to feed have a pretty damn good chance of ending up over in Iraq in harm’s way if things keep going the way they are, well then, you might have their attention.”

Therein lies the success of The Revolution Starts...Now! The record is effective because it isn’t a mouthpiece for Democratic policies, nor is it a soapbox used to lash out and lambaste all Republicans - it’s a record about a war.

“My previous record [ Jerusalem ] was a political record about the Middle East. Actually it was mostly about my personal ignorance - in the aftermath of 9/11 - of the political climate in that part of the world,” Earle explains. “But this is purely an antiwar record.”

And regardless of how anachronistic an antiwar record may seem in today’s shallow culture of the mundane, Revolution is very effective. During its finest moments, Earle tends to focus not on politics (his one overtly political attack, a reggae-imbued toss-off titled “Condi, Condi,” is more sarcasm than assault) but rather, on people. There’s the kid from Houston driving a truck full of fuel in a convoy, swearing “If I ever get back to Houston alive, then I won’t drive a truck anymore.” There’s the intense and focused fighter of “Warrior” vowing to do the work he’s commanded to do without question or regard for the consequence. And there’s Jimmy and Bobby from “Rich Man’s War” (the best and most effective argument against the war in Iraq by anyone in any forum to date) who joined the Army because of pride, patriotism and their own poor economic conditions.

These are the faces of this war, and Steve Earle understands that the more we are reminded of these human beings - the faces of sons, daughters, neighbors, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends - the more likely it is that we will all understand the true costs of this war.

“We have to end this thing now,” Earle emphasizes. “If we don’t, it will be far too long before we can. That’s why I want all those protesters I walked with in the streets in New York to show up on Inauguration Day, regardless of who the next president is, to be heard. Democracy is hard work, but we must be willing to do the work in order to hold those in office accountable for everything that happens with this mess.”