The Legends Of Music on Instagram: "Iggy Pop & The Stooges performing “Search & Destroy” Live at the Casino de Paris in 2012 “Search And Destroy” was penned by Iggy Pop and lead guitarist James Williamson about a Time magazine article Iggy Pop saw about the Vietnam War. Lyrically, the song makes numerous references about the war such as napalm, nuclear bombs, fire fights, and radiation, while the title is a reference to a military tactic used by the US military in the Vietnam War: to seek out th