Trump & Bibi wave missiles and bombs around the world like like they’re comparing erections. The prescient folk-singer Phil Ochs warned us about this kind of rape & pillage of nations 60 years ago.
Mar 06, 2026
(Photo by S. Villano)
(60 years ago the War in Vietnam was raging. US troop levels had just leaped from 16,000 in 1963 to 180,000 in 1965—a ten-fold increase in less than two years. Americans and other citizens of the world were paying the price with our lives for over a decade of arrogant American destabilization of nations around the world, brought about by the American Colonialist foreign policies of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and his brother Allen, who headed the CIA.
Democratically elected governments in places like Iran, Guatamala, & Cuba—to name just a few—were overthrown through covert operations of the CIA throughout the early and mid-1950’s. Vietnam, long a target of plunder for Western colonizers, soundly threw out French invaders at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, ending the First Indochina War, after up to one million people were killed during eight long years. That bloody battle led the French to withdraw its badly battered troops from Vietnam, and to a Geneva Peace Treaty that divided Vietnam into two countries—North and South—at the 17th parallel.
Despite the devastating defeat of the French by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam forces under Ho Chi Minh in the mid-1950’s the Dulles brothers and US corporate and military interests were obsessed with regime-change throughout Vietnam, pouring enormous amounts of money and military support into South Vietnam, setting the stage for the American War in Vietnam through 1975. Estimates of deaths in Vietnam from 1955-1975, including some 300,000 bombing deaths of Vietnamese and Cambodians, range from a low of 2.4 million to a high of over 3 million people. United States Military fatalities during the American War in Vietnam totaled 58,220 soldiers.
Against that backdrop, American folk singers like Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs used their music and their voices as sharp instruments of protest against the War in Vietnam and against American military arrogance. Phil Ochs (1940-1976) wrote and performed some of the most biting songs against US Military intervention around the world. One of those songs, written in 1966, ten years before Ochs death, was entitled “Cops of the World.” The lessons of Ochs’ remarkable songwriting are once again timely and poignant, as the Trump Administration has picked up where the Dulles brothers left off, in their quest to dominate, bully and plunder the natural resources of the world.
Recognizing that, and in tribute to Och’s fearless intelligence and foresight, I have written a parody of “Cops of the World” for the our present time, and have renamed it, “We’re the Cocks of the World.”)
“WE’RE THE COCKS OF THE WORLD” (with acknowledgement and gratitude to Phil Ochs, writer and performer of “Cops of The World,” 1966; Appleseed Music Inc; Electra Records)
Bow, get out of our way, boys,
Scrape, get out of our way;
We’re hot and you are passe, boys,
We’re big and you’ll have to pay.
We’ve sunk all your boats and killed all at your ports;
Trigger fingers so itchy, and attention spans short;
So give us your oil and we’ll grab us a snort,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys,
We’re the Cocks of the World.
We pick and choose as we please, boys—
Pick and choose as we please;
You’d best get down on your knees, boys,
Best get down on your knees!
We’re tattooed and liquored and hot to attack.
Venezuela or Cuba, Iran or Iraq,
Just take off your clothes and lay down on your back,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys,
We’re the Cocks of the World.
Egos need Epstein massage, boys
Be sure to rub us with lube;
We’ll obliterate you with a barrage, boys
It makes for good vid on the Tube.
We’ve got to protect all our citizens fair
So we’ll send drones and missiles for everyone there,
And maybe we’ll leave when we strip your land bare—-
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, Boys;
We’re the Cocks of the World.
We’ll dump all your children in a pile, boys;
Dump your dead kids in a pile.
Targeting schools is our style, boys,
Hospitals, schools it’s our style.
We’ll piss on the streets of the cities we wreck,
And find you a leader that we will select;
Those treaties we signed were a pain in the neck,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys
We’re the Cocks of the World.
So, clean your johns with a rag, boys
Clean your johns with a rag.
If you like you can use your own flag, boys
If you like you can use your own flag.
We’ve got so much money but we want so much more,
We’ll pummel it from you, with your blood and gore
But we’ll stop the terror when you are our whore—
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys
We’re the Cocks of the World.
Please, throw up your hands, boys
Please, throw up your hands.
We’re raping your land, boys,
We’re raping your land.
We’ll smash down your doors, we don’t bother to knock;
We’ve done it before, so why all the shock?
We’re the biggest, and cruelest Mob on the block—
And we’re the Cocks of the World, boys,
We’re the Cocks of the World.
And when we butchered your girls, boys,
When we butchered your girls.
We gave them a taste of our world, boys,
Gave them a taste of our world.
We own half-the world, oh say can you see,
All Power and profits to Bibi and Me;
So like it or not, you’ll never be free,
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the world, boys
We’re the Cocks of the world.
We’ve been chosen by God, boys
We’ve been chosen by God.
Ours is bigger than yours, boys
Ours has more guns than yours.
HE blesses our skin, so white and so pliable,
Your birth, a mistake, for which you are liable,
No place for you in our hearts, or our Bible…
‘Cause we’re the Cocks of the World, boys,
We’re the Cocks of the World!