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“To Kill the Child“/”Leaving Beirut” is a 2004 digital download and a Japan-only CD single written and performed by Roger Waters.

The first song of the single runs at 3 minutes and 31 seconds. The lyrics open with the image of a child sleeping “in the glow of [a] Donald Duck light”, a reference to Waters’ prior song “The Tide Is Turning.”

Waters goes on to ask why a culture whose primary concerns are luxury, consumption and petty values would “kill the child”.

The song ends with a plea to protect children from the crusade-waging “bigots and bully boys / Slugging it out in the yard.”

The second track of the single runs at 12 minutes and 29 seconds.

Most of the song’s lyrics are derived from a short story about Waters’ hitchhiking excursion in Lebanon when he was a teenager.

These passages, intoned in monologue over a descending synthesizer, are interspersed with more recently penned refrains outlining Waters’ reaction to United States and United Kingdom involvement in the Iraq War.

Waters performed the song at every show on his The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour, replacing the spoken-word recitation with a visual backdrop of the story as a graphic novel.