'I don't consciously or not consciously write certain kinds of songs,' Cockburn says. 'Aside from airing my own experience, which is where the songs always start, if we're ever going to find a solution for this ongoing passion for wasting each other, we have to start with the rage that knows no impediments, an uncivilized rage that says it's okay to go out and shoot some one.' 'I can't imagine writing it under any other conditions.' According to Cockburn, 'the idea was to reach a different audience than the politicians by having us go and observe, using the relative visibility that we have to educate the Canadian public to what we had seen and to raise money for projects that OXFAM has in the region.' 'One is directly responsible for the other,' he says, though he insists neither commitment defines his work. Thanks to David Newton for sending this in. Along with 'I Fought The Law' and 'Nowhere To Run' among others, it was not successful because of complaints from the Ambassador. Sold & shipped byOMNI GLORY INC.Waiting For A Miracle, Singles 1970-1987 (1987) Anything Anytime Anywhere, Singles 1979-2002 (2002) Rumours of Glory - box set Disc 3 (2014) Here comes the helicopter - second time todayEverybody scatters and hopes it goes awayHow many kids they've murdered only God can sayIf I had a rocket launcher.I'd make somebody payI don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hateI don't believe in generals or their stinking torture statesAnd when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relateIf I had a rocket launcher.I would retaliateOn the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand waitTo fall down from starvation - or some less humane fateCry for guatemala, with a corpse in every gateIf I had a rocket launcher.I would not hesitateI want to raise every voice - at least I've got to tryEvery time I think about it water rises to my eyes.Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cryIf I had a rocket launcher.Some son of a bitch would dieKnown comments by Bruce Cockburn about this song, by date:Editorial note: According to an article called 'Hell Fire!' by Bridget Freer, FHM magazine, December 1999 issue, 'If I Had A Rocket Launcher' was one of the songs played at high volume outside the Vatican Embassy in Panama City in 1989, in order to drive out Manuel Noriega. Chiapas, Mexico, and Toronto, Canada.Buy Vifucz Toy Rocket Launchers for Kids Outdoor Toys for Kids Outdoor Air Rocket Toys Stuffed Doll at Walmart.com.

Which means that people have to go work for them if they want to survive.This doesn't necessarily guarantee survival either, of course , because if people object in anyway to that kind of situation.or maybe if they just sort of go about peacefully trying to rectify things on their own.Getting together with their neighbours to pool resources. Aside from keeping them from any access to medical care or education, they make sure that they don't have enough land to grow enough food for a family. The way they do that is they make sure that the people don't have enough land to support themselves on. They ran the country on behalf of themselves and a small land owning elite, using everybody else in the country as their personal servants and with a cheap labor force. Submitted by Nigel Parry.'If one needed a reason to needed an example of why there wasn't a Nicaraguan revolution, you can look at the situation in Guatemala, because the situation is, if anything, worse than what was happening in Nicaragua under Somosa, has been for the last 30 years.Since the military government presently in power was installed with a little help from your neighborhood agents.

That situation -thats the first time I'd even seen anything like that. You never knew when one was gonna swing in from the north and start shooting. Those attempts are met with acts of incredible ferocity in order to prevent it from spreading.

And the ease at which that sympathy slid over to a willingness to kill those who were inflicting that agony on them was a little bit shocking. Because of that spirit and the sense of that spirit and the stories that they told of what they had survived and what they witnessed, it was impossible not to feel great sympathy for and with them. Partly because of the incredible spirit of the people.

This is, this is a cry.'- from an intro to the song at a gig at the Cotati Cabaret, Cotati, Sonoma County, California. The one thing I must stress in case anybody's under any delusion that this is so, is that this is not a call to arms. Anyway, this song is all about that. I guess that's what makes it so easy to want to shoot them down because they make-they make you feel like they forfeited their humanity somehow. Maybe for them.'BC: ' Yeah,well, there are people in them, you know? Which is something that - the thing is, the weird thing about it is they stop looking like people because of what they're doing.

It's just too bad the rest of it keeps getting in the way.'- from 'Bruce Cockburn Launches a Hit: Fired by Christian pacifism, the Canadian singer targets new, worldwide success', by Steve Pond, Rolling Stone magazine. It's like the ecstatic experiences - I think life is like that underneath it all. 'I also think that death isn't such a horrifying experience. And while he's not optimistic about the future of the area that inspired his songs, he's maintained his idealism.'The universe will continue to unfold regardless of what happens to the Sandinistas, or me and you, or Russia and the States,' he says. Observing the horrors of refugee camps along the Guatemalan-Mexican border, he went back to his hotel room and cried and wrote in his notebook, 'I understand now why people want to kill.' Then he wrote 'If I Had a Rocket Launcher.'Since he visited the area, Cockburn has been working nonstop, fueled by the urgency of his message and by his first worldwide hit.

At no point was I threatened with excommunication, but there was definitely a kind of standing back and going, 'What is this?' on the part of a lot of people.'- from 'The Social Commentaries of Bruce Cockburn' by J.D. Nonetheless, 'A lot of people wrote letters urging me, exhorting me, not to lose the way. 'There were a lot of Christians who did understand it, the more liberal, for want of a better word, turn of mind,' he points out. Because they weren't used to thinking about those things. I got a lot of letters from people, especially after the album 'Stealing Fire,' and there were a lot of people in the Christian scene who found 'If I had a Rocket Launcher' very difficult.

It has been growing slowly but steadily ever since.'- from 'Cockburn sings with a conscience', by Mary Campbell, 10 April 1989, Marin Independent Journal (Associated Press credit). All of a sudden we could do a tour around the U.S. It was the last song I would have thought would get attention. 'If I Had a Rocket Launcher' got a lot of radio play. Submitted by Nigel Parry.'1984, when the 'Stealing Fire' album came out, was the beginning of anything happening in the United States for me.

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