The news out of Ukraine is following the depressingly familiar pattern that always accompanies war: death, destruction, and refugees fleeing their homes.
This version of the Vietnam protest song became a #1 hit in 1970 but its message is timeless.
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
There was a 90s scifi show -- something involving space marines -- where one of them found an old copy of this song and used to play it over the intercom as they flew their space fighters into battle.
Annoyingly I can’t find any reference to it any more.
Australia has its own song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Was_Only_19
^ Also in that direction is The Band Played Waltzing Matilda by Eric Bogle. Each very affecting.
What’s mildly interesting is that the USAnian song is rather aggressive, whilst the Ozzie songs (good one, Holms) are kinda melancholic.
Where have all the flowers gone? is a rather plaintive US antiwar song.
True, Mano.
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Now, I am the last person in the world to appreciate poetry, but…
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est
I prefer Eric Bogle’s No Man’s Land (aka The Green Fields of France or Willie McBride) to The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
The neat thing about “where have all the flowers gone” is that it takes about ten minutes to teach it to a bunch of kindergarteners. And if you sing it again throughout the day, they will never ever forget it.
I prefer Lucy Lawless’ cover, but yeah. Good song. Timeless message.
Damn you, Seinfeld!
Favourite antiwar song is a toss-up between “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” and “Christmas in the Trenches” by John McCutcheon.
Honourable mention to Bright Eyes’ “When the President Talks to God”
The song that comes to my mind is The Call Up by The Clash.
It’s up to you not to heed the call up / You must not act the way you were brought up
Maybe I wanna see the wheatfields / Over Kiev and down to the sea
Who gives you work and why should you do it / At 55 minutes past 11?
Bruce Cockburn’s “If I Had A Rocket Launcher” was about Guatemala in 1984 and Efrain Rios Montt’s US-backed campaign of terror, but it remains apt today.
Intransitive @12: A great song, but another of his songs has one of my favourite lines of all time; “Lovers in a Dangerous Time”;
Not technically an antiwar song, but…
@xohjoh2n #1
Space above and beyond? That song was hey ho lets go by the Ramones.
@14 I definitely remember something using War… first time I’d heard the song.