How GI Resistance Changed History

How GI Resistance Changed History

By Paul Rockwell

In Motion Magazine, Posted on April 6, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/story/34532/

When actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland organized an anti-war review,
touring U.S. 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 new film, Sir,
No Sir, which opens in select theaters throughout the U.S. this month.

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 U.S. 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 counterculture 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, 40 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; 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 U.S. 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.

[Editor's Note: "Sir, No Sir" opens this week. The first screening is
Thursday, April 6 at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, Calif.)

Visit the Sir, No Sir website for screening details at:

http://www.sirnosir.com/

Paul Rockwell, formerly assistant professor of philosophy at Midwestern
University, is a writer who lives in Oakland, California.

Posted by Sylvie K.