I'll do a talking blues.
This is Talking Vietnam.
I wrote this for the aid of a young liberal songwriter
named Bob McNamara.
Vietnam is an island only 90 miles off our shores.
This song is dedicated to Johnson and all the liberals.
Sailing over to Vietnam, Southeast Asian Birmingham.
Well, training is the word we use.
Nice word to have in case we lose.
Training a million Vietnamese
to fight for the wrong government and the American way.
Well, they put me in a barracks house
just across the way from Laos.
Said you're pretty safe when the troops deploy
but don't turn your back in your house, boy.
When they ring the gong,
watch out for the Viet Cong.
Oh, the sergeant said it's time to train
so I climbed aboard in a helicopter plane.
We flew above the battleground.
The sniper tried to shoot us down.
He must have forgot we're only trainees.
Them commies never fight fair.
Dirty yellow bastards.
Friends, the very next day we trained some more.
We burned some villages down to the floor.
Yes, we burned down the jungles far and wide.
Made sure those red apes had no place left to hide.
Threw all the people in relocation camps
under lock and key.
Made damn sure they're free like me.
Well, I walked through the jungle around the band
using the meat for the ghost of President Diem.
He said you're fighting to keep Vietnam free
for good old Diemocracy.
That means ruled by one family
and 15,000 American troops,
give or take a few thousand American troops.
He said I was the final Christian man
ruling this backward Buddhist land.
Well, it ain't much, but what the heck,
it sure beats hell at a Chiang Kai-shek.
I'm the power elite.
I'm the seventh queen.
He said meet my sister, Madame Nhu,
the sweetheart of Dien Bien Phu.
He said meet my brothers, meet my aunts
with a government that doesn't take a chance.
Families that slay together, stay together.
He said if you want to stay,
you have to pay over a million dollars a day.
But it's worth it all, now don't you see?
If you lose the country, you still have me,
Dien Sigmund Rhee,
Chiang Kai-shek, Madame Nhu,
Red Gold, Littman Johnson.
Like I said, I meet the press.
I regret that I am the one country
to give for my life.
Well, the world's the end is gone and dead.
All the new leaders are anti-rad.
Yes, they're pro-American freedom sensations
against rich China, the United Nations.
Now all the news commentators
and the CIA are saying
thank God for coincidence.