Support the Troops? Support Troop Resistance!

If there is one thing that antiwar folks have heard over and over in the past three years, it is this: feel free to bash Bush, criticize Cheney, and hate on Rumsfeld until your voice is hoarse and your protest signs turn to dust, but, for the love of god, you had better support the troops and you had better support them no matter what.

But what does supporting the troops actually mean? Funneling money into the magnetic ribbon industry? Sending telepathic messages to Iraq through prayer? Allowing military recruiters free access to our schools to bolster troop numbers? Blindly trusting that politicians and generals will conduct the war in the best interests of the soldiers?

While the definition of “support the troops” is vague at best, what it means to be unsupportive of them has been made crystal clear. In fact, it has been burned into our mainstream collective consciousness through historical example: the treatment of soldiers during and after the Vietnam War is generally upheld as the epitome of citizen-soldier relations turned sour. The image of the enraged and irrational antiwar activist cursing and spitting on the stalwart, apolitical soldier returning from Southeast Asia is hauled out and dusted off at almost any indication of contemporary protest activity that goes beyond a meek request to give peace a chance.

This version of Vietnam War history has translated over the years into the idea that antiwar folks should avoid messages and tactics that directly engage members of the armed forces. We are told that soldiers just follow orders and do not have the luxury of sharing our silly philosophical concerns with war because they are busy defending our freedom to have those concerns in the first place. The implication for today seems to be this: if you absolutely must voice your opposition to the war in Iraq please do it in a way that the troops won’t notice because it will only hurt morale and interfere with their ability to fight this war (which, by the way, is going on whether you like it or not).

But this analysis obscures an important historical truth that has drastic implications for understanding what the phrase “support the troops” has meant in the past and what it can mean today: soldiers themselves, including thousands of active duty GIs, were a vital part of the movement to end the war in Vietnam. Far from being political neutrals whose morale suffered as a result of antiwar activity at home, many members of the military actively protested the war from within the belly of the beast.

Sir! No Sir!, a new documentary by director David Zieger, chronicles these efforts for the first time on film and presents an impressive picture of the GI resistance movement that has been suppressed in mainstream accounts of history and in popular representations of the Vietnam War. It was a multifaceted movement that included both individual and collective acts of rebellion at military bases in the US as well as on the frontlines in Vietnam. Some of these acts of defiance happened spontaneously as individual soldiers reacted against unreasonable commands and degrading commanders. In the beginning of the war, these acts were relatively rare and easy to punish with prison sentences. As the war escalated, however, rebellious acts became more frequent and more collective in nature as groups of antiwar soldiers began cultivating a thriving counter-culture of defiance among the ranks.

Between 1966 and 1971 the Pentagon recorded 503,926 “incidents of desertion.” By 1971, entire units were refusing to go into battle. Underground newspapers, with names such as “Fed Up!” and “The Retaliation,” began circulating to spread information within the movement—over 100 separate publications in all. Dozens of coffeehouses, such as the Oleo Strut in Killeen, Texas, were established on or around bases to provide a place for antiwar soldiers to communicate and organize. One of the most popular entertainment shows for the troops was Jane Fonda’s Fuck The Army (FTA) Review. May 16, 1970 was declared Armed Farces Day as thousands of soldiers and veterans staged mass rallies and protests of the war. By 1970, riots at military prisons, acts of sabotage and mutinies at bases, and incidences of “fragging”—officers being killed by their own troops—began occurring at rates that caused one military officer to conclude that “By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse.”

Although this rebellion within the military was well documented during the Vietnam years—a staggering amount of evidence is freely available in the public record—it has been almost entirely eradicated from our collective memory. Sir! No Sir! describes an exerted effort by the government, the media, and Hollywood to suppress this history, including the development of the “myth of the spitting hippie,” a cultural fairy tale which was crafted to deemphasize the fact that some of the most effective and intense resistance to the war occurred from within the military itself.

Needless to say, the people in power who have crafted the US invasion and occupation of Iraq do not want this story to be told because it allows for a radical re-conceptualization of what it can mean to “support the troops.” Support the troops by supporting their resistance and rebellion. Support the troops by bringing them home now.

Supporting materials for this article can be found in the extensive archives of the Sir! No Sir! website. The site includes official military reports and transcripts, material from underground GI newspapers, and a huge audio and video database documenting the movement. Check it out at http://www.sirnosir.com!