[Mb-civic] How GI Resistance Altered the Course of History

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040606U.shtml

How GI Resistance Altered the Course of History
    By Paul Rockwell
    In Motion Magazine

    Monday 03 April 2006

    "Sir, No Sir," A timely film, premiers week
of 4/3/2006.

    "General, your tank is a mighty vehicle.
    It shatters the forest and crushes a hundred
men.
    But it has one defect:
    It needs drivers.

    General, a man is quite expendable.
    He can fly and he can kill.
    But he has one defect:
    He can think."
    -- Bertolt Brecht

    When award-winning actors Jane Fonda and
Donald Sutherland organized an anti-war review,
touring US military bases and towns around the
world, the GI rebellion against the war in
Vietnam was already in full force.

    In one theatrical episode, evoking laughter
and applause from thousands of soldiers and
Marines, Fonda played the part of an aide to
President Richard Nixon.

    "Richard," she exclaims. "There's a terrible
demonstration going on outside."
    Nixon replies: "Oh, there's always a
demonstration going on outside."
    Fonda: "But Richard. This one is completely
out of control. They're storming the White
House."
    "Oh, I think I better call out the 3rd
Marines." Nixon exclaims.
    "You, can't, Richard," says Fonda.
    "Why not?" says Nixon.
    She answers: "Because they ARE the 3rd
Marines!"

    Archival footage of the Fonda tour appears in
David Zeiger's exciting new film, "Sir, No Sir,"
which opens in select theatres throughout the US
this month. (See www.sirnosir.com for schedule.)

    "Sir, No Sir," the untold story of the GI
movement to end the war in Vietnam, is a
documentary. It's not a work of nostalgia. It's
an activist film, and it comes at a time when GI
resistance to the current war is spreading
throughout the United States.

    There are more than 100 films - fiction and
nonfiction - about the war in Vietnam. Not one
deals seriously with the most pivotal events of
the time - the anti-war actions of GIs within the
military.

    The three-decade blackout of GI resistance is
not due to any lack of evidence. Information
about the resistance has always been available.
According to the Pentagon, over 500,000 incidents
of desertion took place between 1966 and 1977.
Officers were fragged. Entire units refused to
enter battle.

    Large social movements create their own
"committees of correspondence" - communication
systems beyond the control of power-holders and
police authority. Despite prison sentences,
police spies, agent provocateurs, vigilante
bombing of their offices, coffeehouses and
underground papers sprung up in the dusty, often
remote towns that surrounded US military bases
throughout the world. "Just about every base in
the world had an underground paper," Director
Zeiger tells us in Mother Jones.

    When the first coffeehouse opened in
Columbia, South Carolina, near Fort Jackson, an
average of six hundred GIs visited each week.
Moved by the courage and audacity of soldiers for
peace, civilians raised funds to help operate the
coffeehouses and to provide legal defense.

    When local proprietors, like Tyrell Jewelers
near Fort Hood, fleeced GIs, GI boycotts were
common. At one point, the Department of Defense
tripled its purchase of non-union produce in
order to break the United Farm Workers boycott.
American GIs, many from the fields and barrios of
California, immediately joined the Farm Worker
pickets. Mocking signs appeared on military bases
saying "Officers Buy Lettuce." The GI movement
was a profoundly class-conscious movement.

    A counter-culture blossomed inside the
military. Affinity groups, like "The Buddies" and
"The Freaks" were formed. Afros, rock and soul
music, bracelets and beads, the use of peace
signs and clenched fists - a culture antithetical
to the totalitarian culture of military life -
proliferated. Prison riots in the stockades, from
Fort Dix to the Marine brig in Da Nang, were
common by 1970.

    In response to a detested recruitment slogan
- "Fun, Travel, Adventure" - GIs named one
periodical "FTA," which meant "Fuck The Army."
When GIs ceased to cooperate with superiors, the
military lost control of culture and
communication.

    Military attacks on GI rights - the right to
hold meetings, to read papers, to think for
themselves, to resist illegal orders - did not
subdue the growing anti-military movement.
Repression actually widened the resistance.

    Like Pablo Paredes, Kevin Benderman, Kelly
Dougherty, Camilo Mejia - to name a few war
resisters of our time - the GI resisters of the
60s and 70s showed incredible courage. Pvt. David
Samas, one of the Fort Hood Three, who refused to
serve in Vietnam, said in one impassioned speech:
"We have not been scared. We have not been in the
least shaken from our paths. Even if physical
violence is used against us, we will fight back
... the GI should be reached somehow. He doesn't
want to fight. He has no reason to risk his life.
And the peace movement is dedicated to his
safety."

    In July 1970 forty combat officers sent a
letter to the commander-in-chief. If the war
continues, they wrote, "young Americans in the
military will simply refuse en masse to
cooperate." That's exactly what happened. Nothing
is so fearful to power-holders as
non-cooperation. In 1971, even the Armed Forces
Journal published an article by a former Marine
Colonel, entitled, "The collapse of the Armed
Forces."

    A point was reached where the resistance
became infectious, almost unstoppable. It spread
from barracks to aircraft carriers, from army
stockades and navy brigs into the conservative
military towns where GIs were stationed. Even
elite colleges like West Point were affected by
revolt. Thousands of defiant soldiers went to
prison. Thousands went into exile in Canada and
Sweden.

    In the end the GI anti-war movement -
enlisted youth, draftees, poor kids from ghettos,
farms and barrios - paralyzed the biggest death
machine of modern times. In short, people power
altered the course of history. (The book
"Soldiers In Revolt," by David Cortright, makes
an excellent companion to "Sir, No Sir.")

    Meeting the War Resisters

    "Sir, No Sir" is organized around the
testimony of prominent war resisters. Yes, there
are a lot of talking heads in "Sir, No Sir." But
their revelations, backed with images and footage
of rebellion, are unforgettable. We meet Donald
Duncan, the decorated member of the Green Berets,
who resigned in defiance in 1963 after 15 months
of service in Vietnam. His article in Ramparts,
"I Quit," generated great excitement in the
student movement.

    We also meet Howard Levy, the Green Beret
medic who refused to use medical practices as a
political tactic in war. His court martial caused
a huge impact on GI and civilian consciousness.
The troops supported him.

    "When the court martial began on base," he
tells us on film, "it was the most remarkable
thing when hundreds and hundreds would hang out
of the windows of the barracks and give me the
V-sign, or give me the clenched fist. Something
had changed here, something very important was
happening."

    That something was GI revolt.

    Thousands of separate, individual acts of
moral defiance eventually merged into a
collective movement with a specific goal: end the
war.

    "Sir, No Sir" is not a preachy film. Geiger
does not lecture us; he tells a story. Yet we
cannot afford to miss the built-in lesson from
the eventual triumph of the GI resistance, a
lesson that goes against media ideology and
conventional wisdom. In the words of George
Lakey, "People power is simply more powerful than
military power. Nothing is more important for
today's activists to know than this: the
foundation of political rule is the compliance of
the people, not violence. People power is more
powerful than violence. The sooner we act on that
knowledge, the sooner the US Empire can be
brought down."

    Of course times have changed. The '60s are
over. And while every generation determines its
own destiny in its own way, while history itself
is but "a light on the stern" - it is still true
that "The spirit of the people is greater than
man's technology."

    "Sir, No Sir" is a work of hope.

    Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion
Magazine. His latest essay on military resistance
appears in Ten Excellent Reasons Not To Join The
Military, edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg,
just published by New Press.