Born in the U.S.A.

It's typical of Bruce Springsteen's songs that the chorus has a happy message and a catchy tune, while the verses lament worldly troubles. It's the main reason why many of his songs are misunderstood, such as Glory Days, Born to Run, The Rising and Hungry Heart. But Born in the USA is by far the best-known example.

The chorus taken alone sounds appropriate for a great patriotic song, but the song actually very anti-patriotic. It's about the Vietnam War, an embarassing episode in American history. Some of the most bitter lines in the song come just before the song launches into the chorus - I refer to the lines "...to go kill the yellow man" and "nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go". It almost sounds like he's mocking patriotism and making it seem shallow. My interpretation of it is that the narrator is actually in a state of confusion. He's torn because on the one hand, he wants to be patriotic and still looks up to the American dream. But on the other hand, he can't ignore the fact that he's living in a much bitter reality.

As most people who posted here have already said, it's about Americans who fought in the Vietnam War. For starters, 60,000 of them never came back, and the narrator of this song lost his own brother. But those who came back were often met with dismal prospects and found no respect. Normal war veterans are treated as heroes, but because of American embarassment over the war, they were mostly ignored.

They also came back to a time of growing unemployment and industrial decline. The third verse is about how the narrator can't get a job once he comes back. The "VA" refers to the Veteran's Administration, an agency of the federal government which at the time was responsible for giving benefits and assistance to army veterans. It's now been replaced by the Department of Veteran Affairs, which is led by a cabinet secretary. One of the things they would do is assist them with finding work, which is presumably what the narrator went there to ask for. As with the man at the refinery, they only shrug and blame the poor economic climate.

A slight factual error is that the Battle of Khe Sahn involved the North Vietnamese Army, not the Viet Cong. The battle in question took place in 1968 at a time when public opinion was turning against the war. The Americans successfully defended the Khe Sahn army base against a prolonged attack, but eventually abandoned it because it was costing them too much.

Springsteen himself never fought in the Vietnam War; he was drafted but failed his physical, partly due to the fact he had been injured in a motorbike accident the year before.