Protest Song Of The Week: ‘The War Machine’ By David Rovics

David Rovics (Source: Instagram)

On June 16, Lockheed Martin chief operating officer Frank St. John appeared on CNBC and asserted that the Western world was in the middle of a three- to five-year surge in defense spending. He cheered the fact that conflicts have made it harder for governments to justify scrapping the use of the corporation’s F-35 fighter jets.

Palantir CEO Alex Karp was just as cynical in August 2024 when he predicted the United States government would soon have to fight “a three-front war with China, Russia, and Iran.”

As the world witnessed over the weekend, President Donald Trump and his administration nurtured the war industry’s insatiable lust for military action by bombing three Iranian nuclear energy sites. Officials, including Trump, dismissed intelligence assessments from U.S. spy agencies and ginned up fear about a non-existent nuclear weapons program to justify attacks.

The Trump administration may pursue regime change in Iran, which would be a further boon for corporations like Lockheed Martin.

Of course, the biggest military contractors have benefited greatly from the U.S. government’s boundless support for the Israeli military—the country’s unprovoked strikes on Iran and continued assault and extermination of starving Palestinians in Gaza.

“The War Machine” by David Rovics addresses the bloodsucking executives and government officials responsible for seemingly endless cycles of violence. It was released on June 22 as part of a 14-song album called “In Our Dreams.”

Rovics begins the song by listing off the big five corporations that consistently replenish the supplies of warmongering elites: Boeing, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics.

“I'm talking about the war machine. That sends off the jets and missiles, laying waste to Falasteen,” Rovics sings in the chorus.

The second verse mentions the “bunker buster” bombs dropped on children and asks whether we could have saved them if we had “blocked the ports and never let [the bombs] go.”

Altogether, the song is a plea for people to recognize the power that they have to resist the enterprises behind what Rovics refers to as “precision guided genocide.”

Rovics again collaborated with Chet Gardiner, a longtime guitarist based in Hawai’i. The opening guitar is played by Gardiner. He also is responsible for the guitar breaks that give the song extra heft.

Laura Love, another collaborator from the state of Washington, recorded background vocals that can be heard around a minute and fifteen seconds into the song.

Both musicians, according to Rovics, agreed to contribute to various songs on the album because they felt the need to “do something about Gaza.”

With the horrific possibility that a war on Iran could unfold over many months, “War Machine” contains one message that we must share in order to recognize how we got here. And if you like it, I encourage you to also listen to “You Can’t Bomb Your Way To Peace”—a simple but clearheaded response to all of this death and destruction.

Listen to “The War Machine” by David Rovics (Support David Rovics’ new album at Bandcamp.)