The War Is Over

"The War Is Over" is an anti-war song by Phil Ochs, an American protest singer in the 1960s and early 1970s. Ochs was famous for harshly criticizing the Vietnam War and the American military-industrial establishment. The song, which was originally released on Tape from California (1968), has been described as "one of the most potent antiwar songs of the 1960s". One of Ochs' biographers wrote that "The War Is Over" is his "greatest act of bravery as a topical songwriter". Background American involvement in the Vietnam War escalated significantly during 1966. The number of American troops fighting in Vietnam increased that year from 184,000 to 450,000. In 1966, poet Allen Ginsberg decided to declare that the Vietnam War was over. The idea of ending the war simply by declaring it over appealed to Ochs, who organized a rally in Los Angeles to announce that the war was over. To publicize the rally, he wrote an article in the Los Angeles Free Press titled "Have Faith, The War Is Over":