Paul Rockwell: How GI Resistance Altered The Course Of History ... Sir, No Sir, A Timely Film

[Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine. His latest essay on military resistance appears in 10 Excellent Reasons Not To Join The Military, edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, just published by New Press.] When award-winning 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 exciting new film, Sir, No Sir, which opens in select theatres 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. ...

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 U.S. Empire can be brought down.” ...