Was there an organized resistance among soldiers during Vietnam?

[Dover]

I'd be interested to hear from those that were there.

This is the premise of the new documentary, Sir! No Sir!.
It suggests that it was this strong resistance from within the ranks that
caused the end of the Vietnam War. Supposedly this secret was kept from
the American public as well as our potential 'enemies'.

http://www.sirnosir.com/index.html



In the 1960’s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn’t take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI movement against the war in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War has been the subject of hundreds of films, both fiction and non-fiction, but this story–the story of the rebellion of thousands of American soldiers against the war–has never been told in film.This is certainly not for lack of evidence. By the Pentagon’s own figures, 503,926 “incidents of desertion” occurred between 1966 and 1971; officers were being “fragged”(killed with fragmentation grenades by their own troops) at an alarming rate; and by 1971 entire units were refusing to go into battle in unprecedented numbers. In the course of a few short years, over 100 underground newspapers were published by soldiers around the world; local and national antiwar GI organizations were joined by thousands; thousands more demonstrated against the war at every major base in the world in 1970 and 1971, including in Vietnam itself; stockades and federal prisons were filling up with soldiers jailed for their opposition to the war and the military.

Yet few today know of these history-changing events.

Sir! No Sir! will change all that. The film does four things: 1) Brings to life the history of the GI movement through the stories of those who were part of it; 2) Reveals the explosion of defiance that the movement gave birth to with never-before-seen archival material; 3) Explores the profound impact that movement had on the military and the war itself; and 4) The feature, 90 minute version, also tells the story of how and why the GI Movement has been erased from the public memory.

I was part of that movement during the 60’s, and have an intimate connection with it. For two years I worked as a civilian at the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas–one of dozens of coffeehouses that were opened near military bases to support the efforts of antiwar soldiers. I helped organize demonstrations of over 1,000 soldiers against the war and the military; I worked with guys from small towns and urban ghettos who had joined the military and gone to Vietnam out of a deep sense of duty and now risked their lives and futures to end the war; and I helped defend them when they were jailed for their antiwar activities. My deep connection with the GI movement has given me unprecedented access to those involved, along with a tremendous amount of archival material including photographs, underground papers, local news coverage and personal 8mm footage.

Sir! No Sir! reveals how, thirty years later, the poem by Bertolt Brecht that became an anthem of the GI Movement still resonates:

General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect: He can think.

Cont'd > http://www.sirnosir.com/the_film/synopsis.html

[TomInTib]

1. Did you ever hear of the VVAW?

Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

There were thousands of us active troops who were members.

We kind of soft-pedaled it in Country, but put the pedal to the metal at Home.

[Dover]

2. No, wasn't aware of that group. Would love to hear more about

what you mean by putting "the pedal to the metal".

[Dover]

3. Is there a similar group that is actively working for those assigned to

the Middle East and Afghanistan?

[TomInTib]

4. Try this.....

http://www.vvaw.org/

Here is the current entity.

http://www.ivaw.net/

[Dover]

5. Thanks! I'm pleased to hear it. Do you have any knowledge about

what the status of the current 'resistance' is? Anywhere as strong as during Nam?

[noamnety]

7. 40,000 deserters since 2000, according to the pentagon

That doesn't get much play in the media though, eh?

http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1930387.php

[Dover]

8. Yikes! That's amazing. I don't know how that might compare to Nam

but if I remember correctly there are somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 troops in the ME and I don't know what the numbers are for Afghanistan. So 40,000 resisters is a HUGE percentage!

[Monkeyman]

12. yep there is still some of us around

[noamnety]

6. You mean the IVAW?

There's the VVAW, VFP (Veterans for Peace) which includes a lot of VVAW members, and the IVAW (some crossover there as well, and I think they might still be technically part of VFP, at least fundingwise, on paper.)



All three groups work together on things like http://www.peacehasnoborders.org/home.html.

VFP just had their convention this week.

SEATTLE -- Ricky Clousing, a Sergeant in the U.S. Army, and a veteran of the Iraq War who has been AWOL for a year announced today at the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle that he will turn himself in later today at the gates of Fort Lewis and face whatever punishment the military chooses to impose.

... Speaking immediately before Clousing was a conscientious objector to the Iraq War named Joshua Casteel who had met Clousing in interrogator school, where, he said, "they don't tell you that you'll have to strip men naked, wet them, and stand them in front of an air conditioner because you're trying to induce hypothermia. They don't tell you you'll be instructed to use the blunt edge of an axe to soften someone up for questioning. They don't tell you that Rumsfeld will deny using dogs just four days after you've been instructed to use them."

Other speakers supporting Clousing included:

--Kelly Dougherty, Co-Founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, who said that Mark Wilkerson, 22, from Colorado was denied conscientious objector status, went AWOL, and is now about to turn himself in as well.

--Camilio Mejia of IVAW and VFP, who served nine months in military jail for resisting this war. "Ricky will be a free man even if he goes to jail," Mejia said.

--Hart Viges, an Iraq War vet who said that he joined up after 9-11 thinking there was an enemy to go after, but that he had a change of heart and became a conscientious objector.

--Michael Wong, who went AWOL during the Vietnam War and is featured in the film "Sir, No Sir." Wong said that he and the many other war resisters featured in that film are all now doing well with excellent careers. It is a lie, he said, when the military tells you that refusing to fight will ruin your life. "Ricky," he said, "is beginning a lifetime of service to community, nation, and world."

--Judy Linehan of Military Families Speak Out, whose son was deployed to Iraq. She said, "These resisters that are coming forward with enormous courage are our leaders."
..."

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/13702

[Dhalgren]

9. Yes, there was a real insurgency within the ranks during the

later part of the Vietnamese War. This is one of the reasons the Pentagon does not want the draft back. Refuseniks...

[Dover]

10. I was hoping to hear some personal stories in order to understand

how it manifested within the ranks. But I understand if that is not something vets want to share publicly. I was still pretty young during Nam, but my parents helped the sons of some of their friends get to Canada.

[4bucksagallon]

11. Is this what you are looking for..........

I can only relate what my own experiences were. We used to "bag" patrols, ambushes, killer teams etc.. To "bag" meant that we had prior arrangements with everyone within our platoon (squad), except for the lieutenant who was clueless, that we would NOT go where we were supposed to go. For instance, a squad or team was supposed to go 2 clicks(2000 meters) outside our night position and set up an ambush near a trail, ville, etc. Our arrangement was that we would go to the nearest tree line and set up our watches for the night but usually within sight, maybe a few hundred meters, of our platoons nightly pos. This was in 1969-1970 and everyone knew that the war was winding down. Why go looking for trouble. I don't know if this was common with other units, maybe someone else can relate other experiences. Also during this time the Black Panthers were very active and all but "one" of the "brothers" in my unit were in the rear facing charges for insubordination, failure to obey direct order, or awaiting medical evaluation for mental problems, etc.. They actually had their own hooch in the rear, (ha ha, I am laughing here) that no "officer" dared enter. I am not turning this into a racial thing, but as I think about it now, they were smarter than most of us.

[Dover]

13. Yes, thanks! I can certainly understand why those orders seemed

senseless. It also sounds like nobody understood the big picture of what they were supposed to be a part of accomplishing.

What was your platoon's feelings about the war and the 'enemy'? I guess I'm just curious at what point, and for what reasons morale and a sense of purpose broke down and how the platoon went about deciding upon "bag patrols" as a unit? Did someone introduce the idea of 'bagging'?

Did you go into that war predisposed to resist it or was there a moment of disillusionment after getting there?

And I wonder what similarities/differences there are among those serving in the M.E. and Afghanistan? I'd like to hear their stories too about day to day survival and small acts of resistance.

[4bucksagallon]

14. I have no idea when this started the idea of bagging it was in place when

I got to the bush. Nobody, I knew, understood the war, we would go into a ville and search for weapons, tunnels, rice and young males, what we usually found were old women and young kids and booby traps. I went to Nam with a sense I was helping our country, but soon realized that all most wanted to do was stay alive and go home. If you have seen the movie Platoon, I think it was, we were split along the same lines we had the "juicers" (the drunks) and the "stoners" (the laid back ones who would rather smoke pot) when not out in the bush. Morale was low due to the heavy losses we were taking from the booby traps. As far as the big picture, it kept changing, one day it would be one thing and the next another from pacification, resettlement, and vietnamization. All very confusing. There seemed to be no real mission other than to find an elusive enemy and defeat them, easier said than done in a country that has triple canopy jungle. I had a great deal of respect for the enemy, they were very determined as anyone would be fighting for their home. I hope this helps you but maybe someone in another outfit has a different take on it.

[Dover]

15. Thanks so much for your candidness. So glad you survived that hell hole.

Quite an accomplishment!