(NOTE: I put this up last night, and them imediat;ey took it down. And now, I'm like, "Fuck it, I'm putting it back up." I really need to just stick to my guns and post whatever I type. This is just brain-droppings anyway, not some profound political and social endevour.)
So, here I am blogging, listening to music, trying for the 1000th time to sing all of "The War Was in Color" without my voice faltering (becasue I'm on the verge of tears) and I came across THIS rather interesting AMV for "One Tin Soldier."
It's certainly not perfect. Not at all. It makes the tragic mistake of depicting Saddam Hussien as a sympathetic character. Well, no. That much is bullshit. [***actually, see note below!] BUT, aside from that, it really uses some cool images, and draws some very apt symbolic parallels between this song and how it applies to the Iraq War. It's not my favorite cover of the song, not by a long shot, so I don't know yet if I'll put this one up on my music page, but I think it's worth a listen. (And if you really want to gag, go read some of the comments on the original YouTube page. It's amazing how the Right just so consistently manages to get it wrong.)
I find this to be a much better interpretation, by several orders of magnitude, than any of the other goofy, jingoistic, war-mongering, anti-Islam videos that I found that placed pictures of 9/11 in the background of the song, along with the faces of the terrorists, as if the whole point is that somehow the wars that resulted were justified. Don't get me wrong, you can certainly argue it... (well, Afghanistan anyway, not Iraq...) but you can't use THIS SONG to do it!
This song is not about rationalizing war, but rather a criticism of those who would rationalize it. (Like the very morons making anti-Islamic, 9/11 videos from it!)
[NOTE: I just noticed something. That picture of Saddam that comes up? On the line "pay the price and we wiil share?" That's a much EARLIER picture of him, and that guy he's shaiking hands with is DONALD RUMSFLED! So that was beck when Saddam was our BUDDY. So much for the AMV creator depicting him as a good guy! Shit, that was REAGAN and CHENEY and RUNSFELD'S doing! I take back what I said: This AMV IS perfect!]
As I'm sure you remember, Eddie, one of the supposed reasons we had to take Saddam out was that he'd used WMD against his own people. Well, that picture of Rumsfeld with him is contemporaneous with that use. We also, at that time, helped him target Iranian forces to be gassed.
ReplyDeleteThat song is, indeed, displayed perfectly, and it's amazing how many of the images evoke memories going back 5 decades. The tear-stained soldier brought me back to the Capital Rotunda, 11/24/63. At @ 3 AM, after being in line for hours, I passed the President's casket, and saw, for the first time, a Green Beret. He was like a larger-than-life, ebony statue, absolutely motionless, except for the tears coming down his face.