 Brothers In Arms (1985) [ larger cover art ] |
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These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Some day you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn
To be brothers in arms
Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms
There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones
Now the sun's gone to hell
And the moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line in your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms
| Sawyer (Calgary, Canada) | Posted: May 03, 2013 - 10:33 10 'nuf said. |
| Quattro | Posted: May 03, 2013 - 10:33 wow, what the hell is going on in this thread? Thought I stumbled into a politics forum - lol GREAT song - one of my all time favorites. 10. |
| stevendejong | Posted: May 03, 2013 - 10:28 This is, without a shadow of a doubt, a 10. |
| On_The_Beach (The Blue Planet) | Posted: Apr 28, 2013 - 13:34 Never gets old. 10. |
| rmcc (Golden, Colorado) | Posted: Apr 28, 2013 - 13:34 This song took on a much more poignant meaning for me after reading James Webb's "Born Fighting". |
| westslope (BC coast) | Posted: Apr 28, 2013 - 13:30 Polish listeners have good taste. Plus the lyrics must reach more than a few given the history with violent conflict. |
| Gajdzin (Warsaw, Poland) | Posted: Apr 23, 2013 - 03:40 In my country one of the most popular radio stations (Trójka) did a big listener's poll for the best song of all times played on that radio's Top10 over the past 30 years. This song won. |
| kingart (Brooklyn NY) | Posted: Apr 08, 2013 - 15:56 The first few seconds always turns me to Elton's Funeral for a Friend. Are they virtually identical or just cousins? |
| casey1024 (Here and Now) | Posted: Mar 28, 2013 - 12:02 PDXDude wrote: 10 isn't enough!! I agree. Wonderful. |
| PDXDude | Posted: Mar 22, 2013 - 16:14 10 isn't enough!! |
| baythtayth (On the road) | Posted: Mar 22, 2013 - 03:08 rdo, my post was, quite clearly, in response to your bizarre and inaccurate claim that "US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany." I detailed several objections to this claim. You do not answer my objections. You then attempt to engage me in a discussion about the war as a whole. You seem to insinuate that I have claimed that various US actions were US policy. I never mentioned it being policy. I never even used the word 'policy'. I don't claim massacre and rape were policy, but they certainly happened. Your statement referred to 'conduct', not 'policy'. Please don't try to draw me into a wider discussion when you aren't prepared to properly answer the points I raised. Your original statement is bizarre and inaccurate - do you still stand by it? |
| rdo (DC) | Posted: Mar 01, 2013 - 21:07 Let’s start with moral equivalency. They call our troops “baby killers”. Well. The North Vietnamese were the aggressors in the Vietnam war, for the most part. They were invading what was essentially a separatist country in the south. The North Vietnamese would not hesitate to murder the entire family, women and children, the elderly, of any peasant family that dared oppose the communist regime, or stay neutral. They did this en masse. It is not disputed. Ho Chi Mihn was NOT really a true Marxist who cared about social justice (none of them ever were, not that being a Marxist is anything to be overly proud of anyway). He was your typical thug opportunist. Read about him. He was seeking US backing in the 50s before he sought communist backing (we opted for the lesser of evils, we have no choice in these matters). baythtayth – US policy was not to “massacre and rape” civilians. My Lai and other incidents are awful, but they were not policy. Do you know of any American who would support a policy like this? These things happen in the fog of war. Some are crimes. Most are when the enemy blurs the line intentionally between civilians and combatants. They use human shields, for example. It’s absurd to suggest our soldier were there on the one hand fighting to liberate a country while at the same time to murder them. In Laos and Cambodia they were supplying the VC, it was the main supply route. Are you kidding? Your scruples are such that we’d respect that and not try to stop it? You focus on the questionable means of war. Again, the VC were the agressors. Why don’t you blame them? They could have stopped the whole thing. And if they did? What? What is the worst case? Vietnam would be like Japan today. Or South Korea. Or Singapore. Or Thailand. Or Indonesia. Or Philipines. Wow, how horrible to be them. Kingart – Vietnam is a shithole. I am not going to defend US policy when it comes to how we asked our own troops to go and fight a war the public did not support. It is unforgivable. I agree. As for how we fought it....well, we should have fought it to win. In winning, we were fighting to free the people of that country. I don’t think there is any credible argument on that point. We were not fighting for oil or colonies. Oldsaxon – USA fights for democracy, not “capitalism”. No one ever died for “capitalism”. Reductive in the extreme. Hasan – the VC did not believe in freedom of any kind. Are you serious? Can you provide an example to such an outrageous claim? Do we need to define freedom in a way that explains the killing fields? No serious historian would agree with that claim. Kcar- you make the best points. That is why we lost and why we should not have fought it. But that does not make our conduct immoral in the least, except towards our own troops. |
| baythtayth (On the road) | Posted: Feb 25, 2013 - 02:21 rdo wrote: US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany. Heaven knows why I'm writing this on the comments page to a D.S. song, but that's one of the more laughably disingenuous comments I've ever read. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe: - Britain (actually, the UK) was threatened with invasion by Germany. The USA wasn't by North Vietnam. - The UK didn't use chemical weapons against Germany in WWII (although it was proposed). The USA did against North Vietnam. - Alarmingly high numbers of Germans were not born with birth defects in the decades after WWII. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were born with severe defects, as a result of chemical warfare (Agent Orange), in subsequent decades. - The UK didn't drop millions of tonnes of bombs on ostensibly neutral neighbouring countries. The USA did (Laos, Cambodia). - British bombs are not still maiming and killing several decades after the end of WWII. Unexploded bombs dropped by the USA in Laos and Cambodia still maim and kill hundreds of peasants every year. - Germany was committing genocide during WWII. North Vietnam was not. - British armed forces did not massacre and rape unarmed civilians. The USA did, at My Lai, on 16 Mar 1968, for example. I could go on... I do not claim that everything the UK did in WWII was honourable, and would not claim the opposite of the USA in the Vietnam war. I just wanted to bring some perspective to your comment, rdo. |
| kingart (Brooklyn NY) | Posted: Jan 29, 2013 - 13:06 rdo wrote: US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany. Such conduct is rightly hailed by most as justified. The US conducted bombing on a much larger scale in attempting to achieve victory in Vietnam, but this was thanks to advances in technology and productivity. The British would surely have done the same, had they the means, during Hitler's war. What gets lost in these debates is just what the US was fighting in Vietnam, namely totalitarian dictatorship. That's a just cause for war, in the context of the Cold War. Now, that does not mean I would support it. If the public does not overwhelmingly support a war, then it should never wage it. <What gets lost in these debates is just what the US was fighting in Vietnam, namely totalitarian dictatorship.> Not that this statement is the total story — not even close, given the total geopolitical and strategic 1950s - 60s cold war situation, and it's always a good excuse to paint oneself as the hero fighting evil — but even if it were true, it's hard to make the case that this justifies the heaviest bombing in world history, Agent Orange poisoning, a million dead citizens and soldiers, unexploded bombs still being found and detonating under civilians, 55,000 thousands of our own dead, several times that wounded or disabled, and shoving Cambodia into the arms of a cadre of genocidal psychotics who annihilated a significant portion of their own population. Besides, Vietnam is hardly a 21st century Communist totalitarian shithole. They feed their people respectably, it is a tourist destination, and the nation has about as normal relations with the U.S. as it could have given the devastation of 40 years ago. The willful, brutish, self-interested, arrogant nation called the United States injected itself into a civil war. It would have been far, far wiser to leave them to their own fate. An Air Force colonel (who saw combat in Vietnam) once said to me that one of the primary reasons for the proxy war in Vietnam was to foster a real-world war zone test for new weapons systems. This hardly squares with the claim of fighting a totalitarian dictatorship. |
| oldsaxon (Wales via Vancouver, BC.) | Posted: Jan 29, 2013 - 12:55 I suppose it's inevitable that talk of war will ensue during this song. Truth is that America will fight war against any economy that is not pure and simple capitalism because they have invested so heavily in that plan. Being the huge money machine it is, it can hope that even if it doesn't win the war (see Viet Nam) it can destroy by financial means. They fight the war on other fronts as well. The IMF, the world bank, embargos. Cuba is a good example of how this might not work without clear forthought. If they wanted to really destroy Cuba, they would simply open a McDonald's in Havana. |
| Crash_Davis (high Sierras) | Posted: Jan 29, 2013 - 12:38 greatness! and too, too short |
| BazH (www) | Posted: Jan 28, 2013 - 10:44 rdo wrote: US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany. Such conduct is rightly hailed by most as justified. The US conducted bombing on a much larger scale in attempting to achieve victory in Vietnam, but this was thanks to advances in technology and productivity. The British would surely have done the same, had they the means, during Hitler's war. What gets lost in these debates is just what the US was fighting in Vietnam, namely totalitarian dictatorship. That's a just cause for war, in the context of the Cold War. Now, that does not mean I would support it. If the public does not overwhelmingly support a war, then it should never wage it. What north Vietnam was going to invade the USA? What about all the bombs you dropped on Laos which was a neutral country. |
| myersei (Denver, CO) | Posted: Jan 18, 2013 - 22:13 Just simply a perfect song. 11. |
| Hasan | Posted: Dec 29, 2012 - 04:59 rdo wrote: US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany. Such conduct is rightly hailed by most as justified. The US conducted bombing on a much larger scale in attempting to achieve victory in Vietnam, but this was thanks to advances in technology and productivity. The British would surely have done the same, had they the means, during Hitler's war. What gets lost in these debates is just what the US was fighting in Vietnam, namely totalitarian dictatorship. That's a just cause for war, in the context of the Cold War. Now, that does not mean I would support it. If the public does not overwhelmingly support a war, then it should never wage it. My point about McNamara's admission is that, in fact, the USA was not fighting totalitarian dictatorship, it was fighting freedom fighters — in which case you should reverse your comparison, and state, "US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the Germans in WW II against Britain. Such conduct is rightly hailed by most as imperialism." The "Domino Theory" was a dress rehearsal for "Weapons of Mass Destruction here_there_and_everywhere". |
| Hasan | Posted: Dec 29, 2012 - 04:34 LizK wrote: In what seems to have been atonement, he served as head of the World Bank. Ouch. If you'd like to read "The World Bank: A Critical Primer" you'll see that it is nothing less than a ministry of "war of conquest by other means" http://books.google.com.ec/books/about/The_World_Bank.html?id=0FcWAQAAMAAJ |
| QuestionMark (Toto's homeland) | Posted: Dec 24, 2012 - 09:47 Merry Christmas everyone !! Bill , glad you like Mark and His tunes...what's not to like? |
| Pitjes (North Germany) | Posted: Dec 24, 2012 - 09:44 One of the 12 candidates from this record of the century! In my opinion, I presume. |
| Pedro1874 (Newton-le-Willows, England) | Posted: Dec 18, 2012 - 13:43 A definite candidate and argument for the 11 button. How about it Bill? |
| MrRedwood (San Francisco) | Posted: Dec 18, 2012 - 13:38 Just checking... Yup. Rated ten, only because there still isn't an eleven on the dial. |
| imklammer | Posted: Nov 27, 2012 - 19:28 Time for the 11 button |
| joelbb | Posted: Nov 23, 2012 - 01:22 LizK wrote: Hasan, What national interest did the US have in Vietnam? No oil, no uranium, plutonium, platinum or gold. Some silly idea labeled the "domino theory". So Vietnam fell, but our primary ally in Southeast Asian - Thailand - did not go communist, so fini for the domino theory. In a dimension in which we could know all the possible outcomes, would Vietnam be communist, or what it is, a the latest incarnation of a future Taiwan. Actually, Liz, at the time it was thought that the Gulf of Tonkin held significant amounts of offshore oil. In the event, only natural gas was found. It was developed somewhat, but there wasn't enough to export via LNG. Viet Nam was a flaming tarbaby. What's worse, it was already on fire when John F. Kennedy kicked it by effecting a "regime change" for the Diem government. Folks try to blame the war on Lyndon Johnson, his successor, but it was Kennedy who started it and Kennedy's "brightest and best" - I laugh despondently whenever I hear that term repeated - who advised LBJ to double down. McNamara was salient among them. He was, is and shall always be a sack o' shite forever. |
| timelessart (London,ON) | Posted: Nov 23, 2012 - 01:12 i love this song. i always will. |
| Kanuffen (Trelleborg, Sverige) | Posted: Nov 23, 2012 - 01:11  |
| Papasmeg (Lille France) | Posted: Nov 17, 2012 - 04:53 Classic I will never tire of hearing this......... |
| zurcronium (Not in Texas) | Posted: Oct 16, 2012 - 20:23 Miami Vice scene with this music playing etched in my mind forever. Forgotten the rest of the show. |
| stevendejong | Posted: Oct 13, 2012 - 12:28 kenhull wrote: Ugh, enough Mark whatever his name is aka Dire Straits. There's so much more and better music out there. Love this station though! Disagree. Wonderful, poignant song, highly talented performer. |
| joelbb | Posted: Oct 02, 2012 - 23:30 LizK wrote: Lo! I did look and....I did reply to MiracleDrug, not you. Sorry, did not intend to offend. Good story about McNamara, right in character. He was a most interesting man. Halbersham (sp?) devotes many pages to him in "The Best and the Brightest"; Mac was both. In what seems to have been atonement, he served as head of the World Bank. A contrast to Rumsfeld, who was also intelligent and analytical - a numbers-driven man. But he didn't learn much from MacNamara's mistakes. Colin Powell did. Dear LK, it's interesting that you should mention the two worst SecDefs the country ever had. McNamara was one of those phenoms who moved from disaster to disaster, only to be promoted after every one. First, he sucked his way to the top by naming history's ugliest car, the Edsel, after the oldest son of the Big Guy at Ford, displacing far more competent men (deLorean was one) via his brown-nosing. Then, as SecDef he gave us the Strategic Hamlet and body count concepts in Viet Nam, not to mention the B-111, a bomber on which we spent megabucks, only to never build one. After leaving DC for the World Bank he gave us the S. American debt crisis. After every one, folks said what a great manager he was. Only someone with significant experience at a major corporation can appreciate what a perfect example he presents of everything that's wrong with the corporate mentality. As someone whose 18th birthday was in July 1966, 9 months after the institution of the Viet Nam War draft, I NEVER thought we'd get someone worse in the job. But Rummy was just that. Burn in Hell, both of you destroyers of thousands of lives. BTW, "Brothers in Arm" is one of Dire Straits' absolute finest. |
| kcar | Posted: Sep 25, 2012 - 23:38 rdo wrote: US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany. Such conduct is rightly hailed by most as justified. The US conducted bombing on a much larger scale in attempting to achieve victory in Vietnam, but this was thanks to advances in technology and productivity. The British would surely have done the same, had they the means, during Hitler's war. What gets lost in these debates is just what the US was fighting in Vietnam, namely totalitarian dictatorship. That's a just cause for war, in the context of the Cold War. Now, that does not mean I would support it. If the public does not overwhelmingly support a war, then it should never wage it. I disagree with your assertion that the US was fighting totalitarian dictatorship in Vietnam. American Presidents would likely have been quite happy if a friendly totalitarian dictator—even a brutally repressive one—had assumed power in all of Vietnam following the French pullout. The US was concerned with the potential spread of Communism throughout SE Asia, with Vietnam being but one domino in the line. President Eisenhower stressed the dangers of growing Communist influence in that region during briefing talks with President-elect Kennedy, but he put most of his emphasis on Laos. The US unfortunately did not realize or accept that the north Vietnamese were largely fighting to liberate their country from outside occupiers. Before Americans were there, the French occupied Vietnam. Before them, the Chinese. I really doubt that most Vietnamese were eager to have Communist rule, but they did view Ho Chi Minh as their national leader. Native support for "democracy" and its various leaders in south Vietnam was never particularly strong. However, Ho was admired in south Vietnamese amongst the peasants and non-elites. General Omar Bradley said that he realized that the war was unwinnable during a tour of south Vietnam in the early 60s. In one peasant's hut, he saw a picture of JFK. Next to it was a picture of Ho Chi Minh. @LizK: in fairness to US leaders in the 60s and 70s, Communism was a real threat in SE outside of Vietnam. Laos became a constitutional monarchy in '53, which the Communist Pathet Lao overthrew in '75. There's also the hellish rule of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge from '75-79 to consider. |
| rdo (DC) | Posted: Sep 15, 2012 - 07:28 LizK wrote: Lo! I did look and....I did reply to MiracleDrug, not you. Sorry, did not intend to offend. Good story about McNamara, right in character. He was a most interesting man. Halbersham (sp?) devotes many pages to him in "The Best and the Brightest"; Mac was both. In what seems to have been atonement, he served as head of the World Bank. A contrast to Rumsfeld, who was also intelligent and analytical - a numbers-driven man. But he didn't learn much from MacNamara's mistakes. Colin Powell did. US conduct in the Vietnam War was no different from the conduct of the British in WW II against Germany. Such conduct is rightly hailed by most as justified. The US conducted bombing on a much larger scale in attempting to achieve victory in Vietnam, but this was thanks to advances in technology and productivity. The British would surely have done the same, had they the means, during Hitler's war. What gets lost in these debates is just what the US was fighting in Vietnam, namely totalitarian dictatorship. That's a just cause for war, in the context of the Cold War. Now, that does not mean I would support it. If the public does not overwhelmingly support a war, then it should never wage it. |
| LizK (Houston, Texas) | Posted: Aug 25, 2012 - 11:19 Hasan wrote: LizK If you look, you'll see you are replying to "MiracleDrug", not to me. Meanwhile, I agree with you. In fact there is more ... Robert McNamara, one of *the* main brains behind the Vietnam War, went back there as an 80 yr old. He met with some of his old enemies, and learned something he never before understood. They said, "We were fighting for freedom and self-determination. We were not interested in Russian communism! Not at all, we wanted Russian resources in order to get *you* out of our country." Watch the movie ""The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/ Lo! I did look and....I did reply to MiracleDrug, not you. Sorry, did not intend to offend. Good story about McNamara, right in character. He was a most interesting man. Halbersham (sp?) devotes many pages to him in "The Best and the Brightest"; Mac was both. In what seems to have been atonement, he served as head of the World Bank. A contrast to Rumsfeld, who was also intelligent and analytical - a numbers-driven man. But he didn't learn much from MacNamara's mistakes. Colin Powell did. |
| bluejay08003 | Posted: Aug 23, 2012 - 16:48 I'm a fan of the band, but not such a fan of the song (6=Pretty Good), and I remember it used effectively in notable episodes of Miami Vice and The West Wing. |
| kenhull | Posted: Aug 20, 2012 - 17:01 Ugh, enough Mark whatever his name is aka Dire Straits. There's so much more and better music out there. Love this station though! |
| MrRedwood (San Francisco) | Posted: Aug 01, 2012 - 00:26 I'd state this is the best song on the best album by one of the best bands that ever performed... but I might want to reserve that accolade for Why Worry off this same album, or perhaps either Telegraph Road or Private Investigations from their Love Over Gold. Tough call. But much to my astonishment, of those four, this is the only one that RP apparently plays. WTF? |
| bokey | Posted: Jul 20, 2012 - 07:29 dwlangham wrote: I'm going the other way on this.   One of the most talented guitarists I've ever heard, and trust me,I pay attention to stuff like that. |
| dwlangham (Nowhere to be found) | Posted: Jul 20, 2012 - 06:33 dachter1love wrote: Stop playing so much Dire Straits and Mark Knofler! For christ's sake. I'm going the other way on this. |
| dachter1love | Posted: Jul 14, 2012 - 09:26 Stop playing so much Dire Straits and Mark Knofler! For christ's sake. |
| Euskadita (MX) | Posted: Jul 14, 2012 - 09:25 Level 11 should be called "Brothers in Arms" |
| Hasan | Posted: Jun 30, 2012 - 14:07 LizK wrote: Hasan, What national interest did the US have in Vietnam? No oil, no uranium, plutonium, platinum or gold. Some silly idea labeled the "domino theory". So Vietnam fell, but our primary ally in Southeast Asian - Thailand - did not go communist, so fini for the domino theory. In a dimension in which we could know all the possible outcomes, would Vietnam be communist, or what it is, a the latest incarnation of a future Taiwan. LizK If you look, you'll see you are replying to "MiracleDrug", not to me. Meanwhile, I agree with you. In fact there is more ... Robert McNamara, one of *the* main brains behind the Vietnam War, went back there as an 80 yr old. He met with some of his old enemies, and learned something he never before understood. They said, "We were fighting for freedom and self-determination. We were not interested in Russian communism! Not at all, we wanted Russian resources in order to get *you* out of our country." Watch the movie ""The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara" www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/ |
| johnjconn (chicago land) | Posted: Jun 30, 2012 - 13:56 Quovademus wrote: Can I rate this song with 11? To low |
| Quovademus (Töging, Germany) | Posted: Jun 23, 2012 - 14:28 Can I rate this song with 11? |
| LizK (Houston, Texas) | Posted: Jun 18, 2012 - 17:47 MiracleDrug wrote: sure, national self-interest and altrusm... thanks for asking Hasan Hasan, What national interest did the US have in Vietnam? No oil, no uranium, plutonium, platinum or gold. Some silly idea labeled the "domino theory". So Vietnam fell, but our primary ally in Southeast Asian - Thailand - did not go communist, so fini for the domino theory. In a dimension in which we could know all the possible outcomes, would Vietnam be communist, or what it is, a the latest incarnation of a future Taiwan. |
| stunix (Narrowboat nr Caen Locks) | Posted: Jun 18, 2012 - 17:41 its calm here 01:35am GMT, Wales, Great Britain "great" because its the largest of this little archepeligo... the wife is in bed, with the 2 border collie dogs........ im downstairs with the music on..... talking to you. wishing I had plugged in the speakers at the rear of the room just to make this just slightly better. the air is soo soo still...... ahhhhh almost perfection. .. just waiting for a day that doesnt rain! |
| jpfueler (Burleson Texas, (South o' Ft Worth)) | Posted: Jun 18, 2012 - 17:37 myersei wrote: no one's saying MK is better than BD, but apparently more listeners here like this song (which i think is one of the best rock/ blues/ guitar virtuoso songs ever written) more than Dylan's "Things have Changed". everyone's entitled to their opinion, but get over it, man. it's not the end of music. MK plays far better than BD. Sings better too, but that is a slight degree of difference. Dylan writes a better story, but maybe not better songs. I'll take MK. |
| (former member) (hotel in Las Vegas) | Posted: Jun 02, 2012 - 22:36 Cynaera wrote: I agree with a lot of the folks here - this song never fails to move me in some profound way. Sometimes I cry, sometimes it makes me righteously-indignant, and sometimes, all I can do is sit and shiver with pure emotion. I will never NOT love this song.  Miss you, Ann... rest in peace... |
| neuticle (fog fog fog) | Posted: May 29, 2012 - 16:17 ziakut wrote: Anyone who votes this song a "1"...probably also wears the same pair of underwear all week. Ignorant, stinky souls. I rated it a "2" and I go commando |