“Charlie Don’t Surf” – The Clash
Charlie Don’t Surf is off of the Clash’s Sandinista! album, released in 1980. The title comes from a well known scene in the 1979 film, Apocalypse Now. In this scene, a captain on an assassination mission is seeking a helicopter gunship escort into the Mekong Delta. He shows the colonel leading the helicopter battle group a couple of entry points into the delta. The colonel and several of his men are surfing aficionados, one of whom notes that one access point is a good surfing spot, but controlled by Vietnamese insurgents. The colonel nevertheless decides to capture that point, on the grounds that “Charlie don’t surf!” This bit of dialog neatly expresses imperialist attitudes towards resources owned by weaker countries or populations. This same attitude was also expressed by then-candidate for president, Ronald Reagan in 1976, when he said about the Panama Canal “We built it. We paid for it. It’s ours.”, completely ignoring the history behind the creation of the country of Panama and the construction of the canal. In 1980, Jimmy Carter enunciated the same thing with what became known as the Carter Doctrine, when he declared that free access to Middle Eastern oil was a vital national security interest for which we would be willing to go to war. The above article discussing the Carter Doctrine, is, itself, a lengthy expression of that attitude. The underlying argument is that if the United States needs a resource, it is entitled to them. It’s willing to pay for it at a price it sets, but if the supply becomes unreliable, if the price is more than it wants to pay, if the owner of the resource becomes hostile, or just doesn’t want to sell the resource at any price, the United States reserves the right to take it.
Marxist geographer David Harvey has described this as accumulation by dispossession, that is, the taking of public wealth by coercion, whether from one’s own nation, another nation, or another group of people, and giving it to, or using it to benefit, private interests. This can be done legally, as with imminent domain or the privatization of public resources, or it can be done extra-, pseudo-, or illegally, as with many treaties with native Americans. It can involve violence or the threat of it, or by theft or fraud. There may be ideological justifications, such as the demonization of the holders of the resource, disparagement of the holders of the resource as backwards, the assertion of national or global security interests, or as in the scene in Apocalypse Now, it may simply be a matter of “They don’t use it. We want it. We’re going to take it”.
Here’s a bonus track, from a lesser known bit of dialog from Apocalypse Now. In this level of hell, the protagonists come across a living nightmare in which American soldiers and Viet Cong guerillas in turn build and destroy a bridge, accomplishing nothing but the waste of life in a distant front in a manufactured war.
Lyrics
Charlie don’t surf and we think he should
Charlie don’t surf and you know that it ain’t no good
Charlie don’t surf for his hamburger Momma
Charlie’s going to be a napalm star
Everybody wants to rule the world
It must be something we get from birth
One truth is we never learn
Satellites will make space burn
We’ve been told to keep the strangers out
We don’t like them starting to hang around
We don’t like them all over town
Across the world we are going to blow them down
(Chorus)
Charlie don’t surf and we think he should
Charlie don’t surf and you know that it ain’t no good
Charlie don’t surf for his hamburger Momma
Charlie’s going to be a napalm star
The reign of the super powers must be over
So many armies can’t free the earth
Soon the rock will roll over
Africa is choking on their Coca Cola
It’s a one a way street in a one horse town
One way people starting to brag around
You can laugh, put them down
These one way people going to blow us down
(Chorus)
Charlie don’t surf and we think he should
Charlie don’t surf and you know that it ain’t no good
Charlie don’t surf for his hamburger Momma
Charlie’s going to be a napalm star
Charlie don’t surf he’ll never learn
Charlie don’t surf though he’s got a gun
Charlie don’t surf think that he should
Charlie don’t surf we really think that he should
Charlie don’t surf