In God's Country

I think this song is mostly about war, and more specifically European ambivalence toward American military power.

Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA", also written in the mid-1980's, shared some of its complex pro-American but anti-military themes. However, In God's Country (like many works of great art) is even more powerful in light of subsequent events, especially the two Iraq wars. Ironically, Emma Lazarus wrote the other great ode to the Statue of Liberty ("give us your poor, your tired, your huddled masses..."), in 1883, before the great period of European immigration.

The "desert sky" references may have been originally intended to refer to the North African campaign during World War II, where American soldiers were joined by the British and European resistance fighters to rescue Europe from Nazi occupation. Many members of the European resistance were former pacifists (like U2), who were inspired to fight by the American example of hope, faith, courage and devotion to liberty, all of which are mentioned in the lyrics and are underscored by the music's bass line, which sounds something like a "Bonanza" episode, representing American cowboy swagger. The line, "Set me alight, We'll punch a hole right through the night" may refer to the initial eagerness to join the fray by shelling continental Europe, but it is even more descriptive of America's early "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq.

In contrast to the bass line, Edge's harrowing guitar solos express the horific consequences of war as viscerally as Picasso's "Guernica." The song equates war with fratricide, hence the reference to Cain, and concludes that the same American ideals (represented by Liberty's torch) that fuel the passion to defend freedom also burns those who embrace it by making them killers. Given this no-win proposition, U2 ultimately declares itself to stand on the side of the Americans, the Sons of Cain. In the final irony, God's Country (America and her supporters) is a nation of the damned, "burned by the fire of love", that is, by its own noble intentions.