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.
03 April 2006
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.
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