Two Wars, Two Protests

Barrett Ford
Paper 4: Everything Is a Text

A protest song is by definition a way of musically showing your disagreement or unhappiness with a certain issue, usually political. These songs are often very emotional or at times violent and they always are directed at a certain audience to try to convince them of the validity of a certain viewpoint. The way that the artist tries to achieve that convincing is the most interesting thing about listening to a protest. It is also interesting to see how effective you as the listener feel the argument embedded in the lyrics was. There are three main tools that the songwriters use to make their argument convincing. These three tools also make up the elements of the rhetorical triangle. They are logos or argument, ethos or the speaker, and pathos or the intended audience. Most protest songs rely most heavily on one of the three elements. The two protest songs I will be analyzing, “Live from Iraq” by 4th25 and “Boonie Rat” by Chuck Rosenberg, are protest songs with many similarities as well as differences in the purposes and methods of their arguments, but both songs rely heavily on the ethos element of the rhetorical triangle to achieve an effective argument.

These songs are war protest songs from different decades and different American wars; however they also share many important characteristics. Both of them are told or sung from the perspective of someone who is fighting in the war they are protesting. This is the most important characteristic they share. They are also similar in that when either one is read they could be read at the same basic, simple rhythm or beat. The style of their writing is also unmistakably similar in the informal, matter-of-fact style they both share. It as if these soldiers simply sat in their tents one night writing these songs as if they were writing a letter to be sent back home. However, when actually listened to, these songs could not be more different in the way they sound and the tone in which the song is sung in. “Live from Iraq” is a rap song with an angry tone while “Boonie Rat” is a folk song with a fairly somber tone.

The most important difference between these two songs is the fact that they are written during two wars about 40 years apart, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. These two wars are very different and, in turn, are different in the ways that people supported or protested them. This is apparent in the two songs, “Boonie Rat” which is from the Vietnam War and “Live from Iraq” which is from the Iraq War. “Boonie Rat” focuses more on the trials and suffering that the soldier has gone through. This can be seen in lines 41-42, “My eyes are often weary, my feet are racked with pain” (Rosenberg). The fact that the soldier wants to come home is also stressed as seen in lines 23-24, “300 days more or less then I’m going home” (Rosenberg). Rosenberg focuses in on his individual experiences as a soldier rather than the broad of the war as a whole. However, he does make a few broad comments regarding the war and his disapproval of it such as in lines 15-16, “I sometimes got the feeling they’re trying to tie the score” or in lines 77-78, “They say there’ll always be a war, I hope they’re very wrong” (Rosenberg).

In “Live from Iraq” the argument focuses more on giving a more graphic description of the awful experience of war. This can be seen in lines 25-26, “This is bombs in the street blowin up when I drive buyem” (4th25) and lines 117-118, “This is 60 miles an hour thru ambush zones” (4th25). This use of the phrase “this is” helps stress the fact all the things that are described are actually happening and not imagined or thought up by the artists. The song also focuses on the corruption of the war as well as the unnecessary deaths occurring as a result of it. This can be seen in lines 72-73, “Plenty of lives lost over a scandal” (4th25) and lines 100-101, “Sure its politics back home here its bullets thru our tissue” (4th25). The fact is that the ways that the two artists approach their arguments is very different, though they are both protesting the war, and this is obviously in large part because of the political atmospheres surrounding the two wars that are being protested.

It is obvious from these lyrics that the persona in the song is an actual soldier fighting in war whether it is the Vietnam War or the Iraq War. The titles themselves make this very apparent. “Live from Iraq” is straightforward in the way it informs the listener that it is being written from Iraq. One might argue that a reporter could have written this from Iraq. However if the reader was to read lines 35-36, “Where for our country we gamble with our lives everyday” (4th25) it becomes clear that the speaker is an actual soldier.

“Boonie Rat” by definition is “an experienced explorer or armsman-someone who has been around” (Terry). Once the reader finds out this is what the title means and notices the way it is used in the song, it becomes obvious that the speaker in this song is also a soldier on the frontline. In the chorus of the song Rosenberg writes “Boonie Rat, Boonie Rat, Scared but not alone,” before telling how many days until he will be going home. Rosenberg also says in lines 79-80, “To the Boonie Rats of Vietnam I dedicate this song.” This shows the respect for other soldiers that he has gained as a result of his own experiences in Vietnam. The speaker in this song even gives a sense of hope to the listener at the end of the song as seen in lines 83-84, “Today I see my Freedom Bird. Today, I’m going home” (Rosenberg). This is a stark contrast to “Live from Iraq” which maintains its hopeless tone throughout the song.

Both of these songs rely very heavily on ethos or the credibility of the speaker. The fact that they are written by soldiers who are fighting in wars makes this apparent. There is also no confusion between whom the writer is and whom the persona or speaker is because they are one in the same. Chuck Rosenberg was part of the “second battalion of the 502nd brigade of the 101st Airborne Division” of the U.S. Army when he and his battalion wrote “Boonie Rat” in the Spring of 1970 (Fish), and 4th25 is a rap group made up of two men who are fighting in Iraq. This makes the listener feel like the arguments in the song are more credible because they are coming straight from the source. This, in turn, makes the reader much more likely to listen to or be affected by the protest that the artist make. Their arguments and the styles of songs they wrote may be very different, but the credibility and effectiveness of their arguments are equally unquestioned.

Works Cited
4th25. “Live from Iraq.” 1 November 2007. http://www.lyricstime.com/4th25-live-from-iraq-lyrics.html
Fish, Lydia. “Songs of Americans in the Vietnam War.” 25 December 1993. 1 November 2007. http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/americansongs.htm
Rosenberg, Chuck. “Boonie Rat.” 1 November 2007. http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/b/boonierat.shtml
Terry, Glen E. “Miltary Terms and Slang.” Edited by Lowell R. Matthews. 1999. 1 November 2007. http://www.guildcompanion.com/scrolls/1999/dec/spaceterms.html