actually this song is cool and the village voice is a bourgeois collaborator publication.

So, I'm sure troops in the SS didn't have much choice either. It was hard being in Nazi Germany, ya know, with all those great uniformed SS and NOT join them. Shucks.

pffft. way to prop up hetereonormative views and belief systems

Yeah, I always hated this song.

Yeah because our troops are all infant killing nazis. You are an idiot. Please arrange a Swiss suicide vacation at your earliest possible convienence.

I think taking this song at face value and out of context of the rest of the album (especially the track that follows it) is a mistake. Jamie's doing something more nuanced here than you're giving him credit for.

"an asshole version of David Cross"

Redundancy.

"Certainly not because our country leaves few other options for people on the lower tiers of the economic ladder,

If you want to kill for money you can make better money here than abroad.

and not because swarms of recruiters offer "enlistment bonuses" to high school students who don't see a lot of options for themselves,

Peer pressure is just so persuasive! That's a great justification.

and not because it offers a full-time job in a country that's always struggled with high unemployment rates,

There are plenty of shitty jobs that don't require killing people, but we leave those to the immigrants.

and not because military service in simply a proud tradition in some people's families,

When it's a completely unjustified war, that tradition has to end.

and not because we live in a society that promotes the military's ideals,

To change that you have to start by influencing the culture, and that means taking some extreme stances, rather than taking moderate stances and apologizing for doing so.

and not because some people have criminal troubles and join the army to turn their life around,

There need to be better opportunities for these people, because war does no good for your mental health.

and not because other people just want to find that asshole Bin Laden and wring his neck,

That's petty revenge.

and not because sometimes you just join the army and it's no fucking business of some dude in Oakland tapping on a gamelan.

You're representing his country.

This doesn't make the music any better than it is (which it distinctly is not). A point badly made is not a bad point, it's just not as persuasive. This song just flubbed its rhetorical maneuver in a really bad way.

Of all the misogynist, homophobic, racist songs written and released in the last ten years, this is what you get this offended by, five years after the record came out? Wow. And barely even a word about the music, just a bad high school English essay about the lyrics.
The fact is that, as a music writer, you are paid to write about music, and that instead of doing your job you chose to vilify a piece of music because the lyrics do not agree with your own politics. This puts you in the same camp as Rush Limbaugh,
Goebbels, and Stalin.
This a not a piece about music, but about political assumptions and biases that reveal the writer's lack of serious thought on these matters. To equate a person condemning the murder of children in their own territory by U.S. troops with Klebold and
Harris just because they use the word "jocks" is thoughtless at best.
The truth is, regardless of who started or prolonged what war, who signed on for the G.I. bill and who just wanted to go kill some Taliban, every little boy and girl that gets killed by a U.S. soldier gets killed by an individual that made a choice to be there and made a choice to pull that trigger or drop that bomb. That is what this song is clearly about, and whether you agree with the sentiment or not, Mr. Stewart has just as much right to make it, perhaps more as he actually making a record and not just writing about other people's records, than some guy sitting in upstate New York (or wherever) tapping a computer keyboard.

Wait Devin, you get bent out of shape when a rapper, metal, or country artist makes what you perceive as a homophobic, racist, or misogynistic song but you don't see why the author gets miffed when someone paints people as baby killing mass murderers because of a job title? Here's a tip, most soldiers do not go around blowing up windows with grenade launchers willy nilly or killing civilians. Stereotyping a huge swath of people because of the disgusting actions of a minority of their number is stupid and dangerous and puts Mr. Stewart alongside all those cretins you named.

I predicted yesterday that this entry would generate hilarious comments. I think this surpasses my wildest expectations; kudos to you all!

some people in this comment thread are being ironic, but i can't figure out which ones they are.

i totally forgot about this song. yup! it sucks.

Xiu Xiu is one of my favourite bands of all time, but I do have to admit that this song is pretty bad. Certainly not 'worst of the decade' bad (there are MUCH larger fish to fry than Xiu Xiu), but definitely bad. Any time I hear this song I have to cringe at the complete lack of nuance in its depiction of war, and I'm as anti-war as they come.

Plus, did anyone else notice that the incidents that Jamie recounts are basically directly from Generation Kill? Which is a bit odd, since that book (and subsequent series) presented a very complex and ambivalent picture of soldiers.

Xu Xiu is one of the most annoying bands of the last 50 years. Fuck them and anyone stupid enough to like them.

When I first looked at the list, I noted that Xiu Xiu were pretty much the only band on the list I cared about, so I was surprised to see them listed. Upon listening to the song again, I pretty much have to disagree with you. Yeah, the lyrics are a bit extreme, but then extreme times need extreme ideas. I see nothing at all wrong with Jamie's lyrics. Sorry - you failed on this one.

this article is the perfect response to every liberal douche who got all pissy during the bush administration, like my friends ndavies and devin above me.

There is no excuse for taking a life. No matter how much money, or get out of jail free cards, or unemployment, or tradition is waved in your face. No excuse.

First off, Z, go fuck yourself. You brush off the perfect opportunity to make an intelligent conservative (oxymoron?) argument and you blow it. Nice job.

On to the notion of this being one of the worst songs of the decade, it really isn't that bad. Not one of Jamie Stewart's best, but certainly not worst of the decade material. Both sides have points here. While I am very much pro-troops and anti-war, I am also very pro-free speech and I see no way that an expression of that would warrant listing an undeserving song as one of the worst of the decade. The bros that Stewart may have been speaking of are certainly not lower-class. The lower-class bros I met in high school were always more friendly than the stuck-up bros who picked on the nerds, who were all rich, conservative and more than likely well on their way to joining the army to support a war that means absolutely nothing. Plus, this is the sentiment that is reflected by some soldiers; they've told me this themselves. So, while this may not be felt by a majority of soldiers, some of them just like killin', and most of the ones who do are violent conservative rich people who like to trample on the little guy, such as some Arabic child who the bro-soldier thinks will grow up to be a terrorist or some nerd in high school like Jamie Stewart. So, with free speech and the sometimes truthfulness of the lyrics going against this post-9/11 paranoid patriotic argument, that makes the score about even, and because this is a song, with music, and not simply a poem, that makes the score Xiu Xiu 1, Christopher Weingarten 0. Sorry. Try ranking it based on the music next time.

Xiu Xiu's catalog is "unfuckwithable."

I lol'd.

This song is shite. Bu$hleaguer from Pearl Jam should have been on the list too.