Iraq: Realities of U.S. Occupation

Don't miss this opportunity to hear from a wonderful women who has recently returned from the Middle East.

Thurs., Aug. 3 at 7 p.m. in the Sanctuary at St. Mary's Episcopal Church
corner of Tudor and Lake Otis
Anchorage, Alaska

Karen Button has recently returned from Jordan and Egypt, where she was
reporting on the situation in Iraq and interviewing those who've escaped
the country's violence. She will be speaking about the realities of U.S.
occupation in Iraq and the effects of its foreign policy in the region.

Stryker Family Planning

Planning

 

After much thought and a restless night of sleep, I would like to start organizing a local group. At the Family Readiness Meeting (FRG) I was able to get the names and phone numbers of other wives who are up set about the extension / war.  I have also been asked by MFSO (www.mfso.org) to do a national press release.

 

Before I get started with MFSO I would like to do something to support the families in Alaska.  I would like to have a meeting at my house over the weekend. The sooner the better.  We need to form a group of “community” supporters to help these wives in their day to day lives. We have talked a lot about “actions” in the past. Now is the time to put our money where our mouth is. These women need help with basic things- baby sitters, coaches for the kids, help with Yard work, someone to listen. As a community we have a lot of resources and time. These women have been told that the peace movement is anit-military, that we are against them… It’s time to prove that we are for their best interest, for life, for community.

 

I would like to set up a website with local resources. I am also going to set up a Yahoo group…. I am going to need a lot of help.

 

TIME.com: Exclusive: Scott Ritter in His Own Words -- Page 1

Powered by    * Please note, the sender's email address has not been verified.       You have received the following link from 4peas@alaskans4peace.org:             Click the following to access the sent link:       TIME.com: Exclusive: Scott Ritter in His Own Words -- Page 1*               *This article can also be accessed if you copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html

Why Iraq Was a Mistake--Marine General

A military insider sounds off against the war and the "zealots" who pushed it. By Lt. General Greg Newbold (Ret.)

Time Magazine, April 17, 2006

Two senior military officers are known to have challenged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the planning of the Iraq war. Army General Eric Shinseki publicly dissented and found himself marginalized. Marine Lieut. General Greg Newbold, the Pentagon's top operations officer, voiced his objections internally and then retired, in part out of opposition to the war. Here, for the first time, Newbold goes public with a full-throated critique:

In 1971, the rock group The Who released the antiwar anthem Won't Get Fooled Again. To most in my generation, the song conveyed a sense of betrayal by the nation's leaders, who had led our country into a costly and unnecessary war in Vietnam. To those of us who were truly counterculture--who became career members of the military during those rough times--the song conveyed a very different message. To us, its lyrics evoked a feeling that we must never again stand by quietly while those ignorant of and casual about war lead us into another one and then mismanage the conduct of it. Never again, we thought, would our military's senior leaders remain silent as American troops were marched off to an ill-considered engagement. It's 35 years later, and the judgment is in: the Who had it wrong. We have been fooled again.

From 2000 until October 2002, I was a Marine Corps lieutenant general and director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After 9/11, I was a witness and therefore a party to the actions that led us to the invasion of Iraq--an unnecessary war. Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda. I retired from the military four months before the invasion, in part because of my opposition to those who had used 9/11's tragedy to hijack our security policy. Until now, I have resisted speaking out in public. I've been silent long enough.

I am driven to action now by the missteps and misjudgments of the White House and the Pentagon, and by my many painful visits to our military hospitals. In those places, I have been both inspired and shaken by the broken bodies but unbroken spirits of soldiers, Marines and corpsmen returning from this war. The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

With the encouragement of some still in positions of military leadership, I offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader's responsibility is to give voice to those who can't--or don't have the opportunity to--speak. Enlisted members of the armed forces swear their oath to those appointed over them; an officer swears an oath not to a person but to the Constitution.
The distinction is important.

Before the antiwar banners start to unfurl, however, let me make clear--I am not opposed to war. I would gladly have traded my general's stars for a captain's bars to lead our troops into Afghanistan to destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. And while I don't accept the stated rationale for invading Iraq, my view--at the moment--is that a precipitous withdrawal would be a mistake. It would send a signal, heard around the world, that would reinforce the jihadists' message that America can be defeated, and thus increase the chances of future conflicts. If, however, the Iraqis prove unable to govern, and there is open civil war, then I am prepared to change my position.

I will admit my own prejudice: my deep affection and respect are for those who volunteer to serve our nation and therefore shoulder, in those thin ranks, the nation's most sacred obligation of citizenship. To those of you who don't know, our country has never been served by a more competent and professional military. For that reason, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "we" made the "right strategic decisions" but made thousands of "tactical errors" is an outrage. It reflects an effort to obscure gross errors in strategy by shifting the blame for failure to those who have been resolute in fighting. The truth is, our forces are successful in spite of the strategic guidance they receive, not because of it.

What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department. My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions--or bury the results.

Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon's military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military's effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military's quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.

There have been exceptions, albeit uncommon, to the rule of silence among military leaders. Former Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki, when challenged to offer his professional opinion during prewar congressional testimony, suggested that more troops might be needed for the invasion's aftermath. The Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense castigated him in public and marginalized him in his remaining months in his post. Army General John Abizaid, head of Central Command, has been forceful in his views with appointed officials on strategy and micromanagement of the fight in Iraq--often with success. Marine Commandant General Mike Hagee steadfastly challenged plans to underfund, understaff and underequip his service as the Corps has struggled to sustain its fighting capability.

To be sure, the Bush Administration and senior military officials are not alone in their culpability. Members of Congress--from both parties--defaulted in fulfilling their constitutional responsibility for oversight. Many in the media saw the warning signs and heard cautionary tales before the invasion from wise observers like former Central Command chiefs Joe Hoar and Tony Zinni but gave insufficient weight to their views. These are the same news organizations that now downplay both the heroic and the constructive in Iraq.

So what is to be done? We need fresh ideas and fresh faces. That means, as a first step, replacing Rumsfeld and many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach. The troops in the Middle East have performed their duty. Now we need people in Washington who can construct a unified strategy worthy of them. It is time to send a signal to our nation, our forces and the world that we are uncompromising on our security but are prepared to rethink how we achieve it. It is time for senior military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure that the President hears them clearly. And that we won't be fooled again.

SIR! NO SIR! at Bear Tooth 7/12-14 5:30 pm

DISPLACED FILMS AND BALCONY RELEASING PRESENT

A DAVID ZEIGER FILM

SIR! NO SIR!

Audience Award, Best Documentary
2005 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival

Jury Award, Best Documentary
2005 Hamptons Film Festival

Nominee, Best Documentary
2005 Independent Spirit Awards


84 minutes 35mm Dolby SR www.sirnosir.com

Synopsis

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 200 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 today, with hundreds of thousands of American GIs once again occupying countries on the other side of the world, these history-changing events have been erased from America’s public memory.

Sir! No Sir! aims to 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) Tells the story of how and why the GI Movement has been replaced with the myth of the spat-upon veteran.

Sir! No Sir! is a film that challenges deeply-held beliefs not just about the Vietnam War and those who fought it, but about the world we live in today. It is a vivid portrayal of William Faulkner’s famous observation that “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.”


Short Synopsis

Sir! No Sir! energetically reveals the untold story of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam. This is the story of one of the most vibrant and widespread upheavals of the 1960s – one that had a profound impact on American society, yet has been virtually obliterated from the collective memory of that time. This hidden history combines fast-paced archival footage with thoughtful interviews, “perfectly timed with new doubts about the Iraq War” (Variety).


Director’s Statement

In 1969 I was 19 years old and just starting college. I’d spent the previous two years bumming around Europe, working odd jobs, street singing and writing bad songs, and generally trying to avoid the political turmoil that was exploding around me. By the time I started college, that was no longer possible. For me, nothing was more important than joining the fight to end the Vietnam War. But what to do? I looked around, and met some people who were working 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. My choice was obvious. Less than a year after starting school I dropped out and was heading to Texas.

For the next two years I found myself in the heart of one of the most intense, exciting, and inspiring movements of the 1960s. 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 or to escape poverty and now risked their lives and futures to end the war; and I helped defend them when they were jailed for their antiwar activities. Ultimately, these brave people, as Donald Duncan describes them in the film, played a pivotal role in ending that war.

In the decades following those vivid years, I and the thousands of veterans who had joined that movement watched as their reality was rewritten, distorted, and ultimately buried under the myth of loyal veterans returning home to an antiwar movement that spat on them and called them baby killers. The irony of that charge never fails to strike me, since whenever atrocities are exposed that are a direct outgrowth of U.S. government policy–from My Lai to Abu Graib–it is the government, not those opposed to these wars, that lays the blame on the soldiers who carried out their orders.

When I started making films in the early 90s, 25 years after the Vietnam War, I knew this was a film that needed to be made. There had been excellent books written about the GI Movement, but their reach was small and, most significantly, none of the feature films made since the war, including documentaries, had even mentioned the movement’s existence (Born on the Fourth of July gave a powerful depiction of the veterans’ movement, but nothing about what went on inside the military). But by then the country was “Vietnamed out,” and I didn’t see the possibility of finding either financial support or an audience for this story.

That of course changed on September 11, 2001. In short order, our government had invaded and occupied two countries. And suddenly, the story of American soldiers defying and ultimately ending a questionable (at best) war, opposed by millions of their countrymen and women, became very relevant.


It has been a difficult road to complete this film and bring it to the world. But one thing was not difficult. Many people have asked me if the veterans I interviewed were reluctant to speak. Quite the contrary. If anyone’s voice has been suppressed these three decades since the war ended it is theirs, and they welcomed the chance to tell the real story.

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.

The Cast


Sir! No Sir! tells the story of people who, faced with the realization that they "had no choice," changed history. They include:

Donald Duncan
A decorated member of the elite Green Berets, he resigned from the military in protest in 1966 after 15 months in Vietnam. He wrote an article in Ramparts Magazine that became a clarion call for the just emerging GI Movement.

I was really proud of what I thought I was doing. The problem I had was realizing that what I was doing was not good. I was doing it right, but I wasn't doing right.

Howard Levy
A dermatologist who was drafted in the early 60s and assigned to train Green Beret medics, he refused to continue training them in protest of the war and was court-martialed and sentenced to 3 years in prison, which he served.

I think the most startling thing to me occurred as the court martial began…It was the most remarkable thing when hundreds, hundreds of GIs would hang out of windows, out of the barracks and give me the V-sign or give me the clenched fist. This was mind boggling to me. This was a revelation, and at that point it really became crystal clear to me that something had changed here and that something very, very important was happening.

Dave Cline
Wounded three times in Vietnam, he became an organizer for the GI Movement after returning to Ft. Hood in 1968.

When you just went through an experience of that nature, and you find out that it's all lies and that they're just lying to the American people and your silence means you're a part of keeping that lie going-I couldn't stop. I mean I couldn't be silent.

Keith Mather
In the summer of 1968, he joined the "Nine for Peace," soldiers who refused orders to Vietnam and took sanctuary in a church in San Francisco. After his arrest and confinement in the Presidio stockade, he helped organize a sit-down protest when a mentally ill prisoner was shot and killed by a guard. Facing the death penalty when the Presidio 27, as they became known, were charged with mutiny, he escaped and lived for 18 years in Canada.

I had nothing to lose, and I had no idea what was going to come. That's a free place. It's a really free place, you know? You don't know what's going to happen, you don't know where you're going, but you know what you're doing.

Randy Rowland
He was an army medic who also helped organize the Presidio stockade protest.

The Commanding General Of the 6th army, which was the jurisdiction, said that they thought that the revolution was about to start and they really had to set an example, Come down hard, and we were the guys that they decided to do that with, and they did. I mean we were on trial for our life. You know, I kind of came in as an AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and within 2 days of hitting the stockade I was facing a death sentence-for singing "We Shall Overcome."

Susan Schnall
A Navy nurse, she was arrested for flying a small plane over several military bases in the San Francisco Bay Area, dropping leaflets for the first demonstration of GIs and veterans against the war.

I remembered hearing about the B-52 bombers that were dropping leaflets on Vietnam, urging the Vietnamese to defect. And I thought well, if they can do it overseas…

Louis Font
Sent to Harvard by the military after graduating from West Point with honors, he became the first West Point graduate to refuse to fight in a war.

I remember calling my parents and they were in tears, thinking that I would end up in prison, instead of getting a Masters Degree from Harvard. But, I told them, "You always taught me to do what is just, to do what is right." And I really felt that I was doing the right thing. And I believe that to this day, 34 years later. I know I did the right thing.

Jane Fonda
One of the best known actresses of the 1960s, she became a political activist after meeting a group of GI resisters in Paris. In 1970, she and Donald Sutherland organized the FTA Show, an antiwar cabaret that performed for tens of thousands of GIs near bases around the world. With the claims that persist to this day that she "betrayed the troops," this chapter of her life has been ignored.

Here was a way that I could combine my profession, my acting, with my desire to end the war. It just seemed like a perfect fit.

Bill Short
Like hundreds of soldiers, he refused to return to combat after several months in Vietnam.

I didn't know that there was a GI movement. I just had this strong moral sense of something not being right.


Terry Whitmore
An African-American Marine, he was in the hospital with serious wounds when Lyndon Johnson pinned a medal on him during a visit. Weeks later, he was ordered back to Vietnam just as Black people were rioting across the U.S. in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King. Seeing federal troops in his hometown of Memphis, he decided to desert and made his way to Sweden.

Then you actually see what I saw, what was going on in the States. Dudes were running down the streets wearing the same kind of uniform that I got. They're in Memphis. They're beating up on people. Wait a minute, we're over here beating up on people over here and you're beating up on Black people. Dogs are running everywhere. Tanks are on the streets.

Joe Bangert
Having served in Vietnam in the Marines, he testified at the Winter Soldier Investigation, a hearing organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The veterans testified to war crimes committed as a matter of policy by the United States in Vietnam.

America went through a choke, because they didn't want to believe that these things occurred in the name of the American people, supposedly supporting freedom and liberation and democracy throughout the world. And there was this terrible slaughter, this terrible inane slaughter.

Billy Dean Smith
By 1970, hundreds of officers in Vietnam had been killed by their own men in a practice called "fragging"-throwing a fragmentation grenade into an officer's tent. After one such incident, Billy Dean Smith, an African-American GI, was arrested and charged with murder. His case became a cause of the GI Movement, and in 1971 he was acquitted after spending 22 months in solitary confinement.

I was chosen for the trial because I was an outspoken critic of the war.

The WORMS
They were Air Force interpreters, trained in Vietnamese, who flew over North Vietnam intercepting radio communications. Seeing the difference between what they knew was going on and what the American people were being told, they formed the WORMS, "We Openly Resist Military Stupidity." During the infamous 1972 Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, many of them went on strike.

…The bombing of populated areas, civilian areas; the bombing of hospitals-things that the US denied over and over again that we were engaged in. Those are things that we were engaged in and we had access to that information. And the lies were so stark, it challenged your own dignity, it challenged your own loyalty, it challenged your own humanity.


Jerry Lembcke
Having returned from Vietnam to become a professor of sociology, he wrote the book, The Spitting Image, in which he investigated and found no actual cases of GIs being spat on by antiwar protestors-a claim that was widely spread during the buildup to the Gulf War.

If you looked back at the front pages of newspapers in 1969 and 1970, what are you going to see about Vietnam Vets? They're in the streets. They're political activists. They're on the Capital Lawn. They're giving the Nixon Administration fits.



Filmmaker Bios



David Zeiger – Director, Writer, Producer

David Zeiger’s most recent previous film, A Night of Ferocious Joy, premiered at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam. The festival, which featured it as part of its “USA Today” Section, described the film as “not an ordinary concert film…because it will go down in history as the first anti-war concert of the new millennium.” Its U.S. festival premiere was at South by Southwest in 2004, which described it as “A rousing and eventful performance film.”

Zeiger created, produced and directed the 13 part documentary series, Senior Year, for broadcast on PBS in January 2002. The series follows a group of 15 students at Fairfax High, the most diverse school in Los Angeles, through their last year in high school. About the series, Entertainment Weekly wrote, “Others have tried to document high school life (remember American High?), but this series succeeds where those drier efforts failed…High school is a time for experimentation, and finally, a truly experimental filmmaker is there.” Senior Year was broadcast in Europe on Planete Cable, and was a premiere series on the new U.S. English/Spanish cable network SíTV in 2004.

His short film Funny Old Guys premiered August, 2002, at the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles. Its television premiere was August 19, 2003, on the HBO Documentary series “Still Kicking, Still Laughing.” Funny Old Guys captures the final months of the life of Frank Tarloff, formerly blacklisted Academy Award winning writer, as he and a group of friends, all former TV and film writers, confront his imminent death.

The Band, Mr. Zeiger’s tribute to his son, aired to critical acclaim on the PBS series P.O.V. in 1998. It has screened at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam and AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles, and was awarded "Best Documentary" and "Best of Show" at the Central Florida Film Festival. The Band was broadcast in 2000 on the French/German network ARTE.

Displaced in the New South aired in the United States on PBS in 1996 and on The Discovery Channel International in 1997. That film looks at life in and around Atlanta from the point of view of Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants. Its festival screenings include the Chicago Latino, Cine Acción Latino, South by Southwest, Doubletake and San Francisco Asian American Film Festivals. Displaced in the New South was the inspiration for the Indigo Girls' single "Shame on You", featured on their 1997 release Shaming of the Sun.



Evangeline Griego - Producer

Evangeline Griego is an independent award winning documentary producer whose credits include The New Americans (PBS) (Winner of the 2004 IDA Limited Series Award) My Journey Home (PBS) (Winner of the 2004 Cine Golden Eagle Award) Calavera Highway and her documentary Border Visions. In 1996, Griego directed the award-wining documentary Paño Arte: Images from Inside. Her extensive production managing and line producing experience includes short and feature films, music videos, and PSA's. She has worked with Esparza-Katz Productions, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the Walt Disney Company, Morgan Creek Productions and MGM Studios, and is currently producing and directing the independent documentary, God Willing (PBS), about a bible-based nomadic cult.

She has worked with OUTFEST as the Festival Manager and is a Founder of the Silver Lake Film Festival in Los Angeles. She serves on the board of directors of The National Association of Latino Independent Producers and OUTFEST the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian film festival. Ms. Griego holds three degrees from the University of Southern California.


Aaron Zarrow - Producer

Aaron Zarrow produced, with David Zeiger, the landmark PBS series Senior Year. Prior to that, he was Associate Producer of the Academy Award-winning film The Last Days.


Peter Broderick - Executive Producer

Peter Broderick is President of Paradigm Consulting, which specializes in cutting-edge distribution techniques and provides strategic consulting services to filmmakers and media companies.

Broderick was President of Next Wave Films, which helped launch the careers of filmmakers (such as Christopher Nolan) from the U.S. and abroad. It financed digital features through its production arm--Agenda 2000.

Broderick played a key role in the growth of the ultra-low budget feature movement. A leading advocate of digital moviemaking, Broderick gave presentations on digital production at Cannes, Sundance, and Berlin. He has written articles for Scientific American, The New York Times, and The Economist. He is a graduate of Brown, Cambridge University, and Yale Law School.

Now focused on the revolution in independent distribution, Broderick has given keynotes on the subject internationally and published a seminal article, "Maximizing Distribution." As Program Co-Director, he helped organize DigiMart, the first Global Digital Distribution Summit, which brought together leaders of the digital revolution from around the world.

In 2004, he launched http://www.filmstoseebeforeyouvote.org to harness the power of film to impact elections.



Awards



Los Angeles Film Festival–Audience Award
Best Documentary

Hamptons Film Festival–Jury Award
Best Documentary

Vermont International Film Festival–Jury Award
Best Film in Category, War and Peace

Independent Spirit Awards
Best Documentary Nominee
Award to be announced March 4, 2006

Gotham Award Nominee

International Documentary Association
Award Nominee



Press


Sir! No Sir! rings with an exultant, even elated tone…Perfectly timed with new doubts about the Iraq war…
- Robert Koehler, Variety

Some very timely light is shed upon the historically overlooked GI anti-Vietnam War movement courtesy of Sir! No Sir!, A penetrating eye-opener of a documentary.
- Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter

Anyone waging war with American troops might want to listen carefully to the largely untold story of David Zeiger's new documentary, Sir! No Sir!, of how some of the most dedicated troops became some of the most damaging supporters of the movement to end the war in Vietnam.
- Anne-Marie O’Connor, Los Angeles Times

Debunking several myths about America's invasion of Vietnam, David Zeiger's documentary might be the most important documentary to screen in Los Angeles this year. Knowledge is ammunition.
- Pasadena Weekly

Through demos, underground papers, combat refusals and so on, these GIs rocked America to its core…Yet today, the memory of the GI movement has been buried. David Zeiger’s funky shot of counter-culture spirit manages, for (84) engrossing minutes, to restore some balance.
- The Times of London

One of the forgotten fragments of the Vietnam war is the part played by active GIs in the peace movement. At the Oleo Strut in Texas, a military coffee shop set up to soften the blow of the return to civilian life, a GI-led anti-war effort was set up with its own newspaper and network. Former Oleo Strut regular David Zeiger’s remarkable film about soldiers wearing peace signs instead of dog tags and organizing mass disobedience has footage that reveals how big the GI peace movement was.
- The Guardian




SIR! NO SIR!

Interview with David Zeiger

Interviewed By Jonathan Stein
Originally Published in Mother Jones Magazine


The Oleo Strut was a coffeehouse in Killeen, Texas, from 1968 to 1972. Like its namesake, a shock absorber in helicopter landing gear, the Oleo Strut’s purpose was to help GIs land softly. Upon returning from Vietnam to Fort Hood, shell-shocked soldiers found solace amongst the Strut’s regulars, mostly fellow soldiers and a few civilian sympathizers. But it didn’t take long before shell shock turned into anger, and that anger into action. The GIs turned the Oleo Strut into one of Texas’s anti-war headquarters, publishing an underground anti-war newspaper, organizing boycotts, setting up a legal office, and leading peace marches.

David Zeiger was one of the civilians who helped run the Oleo Strut. He went on to a career in political activism and today, at 55, he is a filmmaker and the director of Sir! No Sir!, a new documentary on the all-but-forgotten antiwar activities of GIs from Fort Hood to Saigon. The GI Movement, as it was then known, was composed of both vets recently returned from Vietnam and active-duty soldiers. They fought for peace in ways big and small, from organizing leading anti-war organizations to wearing peace signs instead of dog tags. By the early ‘70s, opposition to the Vietnam War within the military and amongst veterans had grown so widespread that no one could credibly claim that opposing the war meant opposing the troops. Veterans wanted an end to the war; their brothers in Vietnam agreed.

Zeiger put off making this movie for years, convinced the public didn’t want to hear another story about the ‘60s. What finally spurred the project was the Iraq War and the role some Vietnam vets are playing in keeping America’s young men and women from seeing the same horrors they saw. When GIs from the current war started coming home and wondering what they’d been fighting for, Zeiger’s days at the Oleo Strut took on a new relevance. His film is a remarkable interweaving of vets’ stories about their intensifying resistance to the war, starting with the lone objectors of the late ‘60s and culminating with open disobedience throughout the ranks in the ‘70s. One vet even recalls an episode from 1972 in which Military Police joined enlisted men in burning an effigy of their commanding officer. The images that accompany such stories are just as powerful. As a young doctor is escorted into a military court for refusing to train GIs, hundreds of enlisted men lean out of nearby windows extending peace signs in support. It’s an image that the Army didn’t want the American people to see then, and probably wouldn’t want the American people to see today.





Sir! No Sir! won the Documentary Audience Award at the L.A. Film Festival and is slated for broad release before the end of the year. David Zeiger spoke with MotherJones.com from the Los Angeles office of his production company, Displaced Films.

MotherJones: Talk a little about your history with the GI Movement.

David Zeiger: In the late ‘60s I reached a point where I believed that there was really no alternative for me than to become part of the movement against the war. My opposition to the war had grown very deeply but I hadn’t been really involved in anything. I starting looking around for what was going to be the most effective place and situation to help. I ran into this small group from the GI Movement, some vets and some civilians from Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. It became obvious to me very quickly that this was the most solid, most direct way to go after the war. It was a situation where people were opposing the war that no one thought would oppose the war. Not just because they were GIs. These were mostly working class guys, guys who had gone into the military out of patriotic motives or because that was just what you did. And they were becoming one of the strongest forces against the war.

MJ: What brought you back to the project, some 35 years later?

DZ: I started making films in the early ‘90s. I always knew that this story was one that needed to be told and had never been told. But the way I always characterized it was, “This is a film that needs to be made but I’m never going to make it.” At the time, it just wasn’t a film that would have much resonance for people. It would be another story from the ‘60s. What prompted me to make the film was September 11, and the War on Terror’s segue into the Iraq War. I saw that this had suddenly become a story that would have current resonance, something that would immediately connect with what’s going on today.

MJ: How did you find the veterans that appear in the film?

DZ: Several of these guys were people I knew because I had been at Fort Hood. Then there were veterans’ organizations like Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans For Peace—I put a call out for stories through their various means of communication. I also ended up [getting] in touch with people nobody had ever heard of before. Their missions were so top secret they were under threat of federal prosecution if they went public with any of their stories. They came to me and basically said, “We want to finally tell our story. We haven’t been able to tell it for 35 years.” We still don’t know what will happen to them. We’ll know when the film is in theaters.
Also, Several books played a big role in keeping memory of the movement alive and giving me the foundation for the film -- especially Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright, and A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance Furing the Vietnam War by William Short and Willa Seidenberg.
MJ: Did it take any effort to get the veterans to open up—the public conception of the Vietnam vet is of a man too pained to talk openly about his experiences.

DZ: Yeah, that’s a very big myth. In this situation that was not at all a problem. These are people whose stories had been suppressed and ignored since the war. They knew that their story was a story of the Vietnam War that needed to be told. For most of these veterans, it was more a matter of finally being able to tell their story, stories the overall zeitgeist was against being told. It was not a matter of reluctance.

MJ: The film has already gotten a good deal of interest in Europe. Do you anticipate that domestic interest will be as strong?

DZ: Well, yeah, how to put this? I anticipate that kind of interest, but until the film was made I think U.S. television didn’t quite get how relevant the film is in the current world. It was hard to explain that to people. Now that the film is made we’re getting much stronger interest. A big strength of the film, and what I think is going to bring it into the mainstream, is that this is historical metaphor. We don’t have to say a word about Iraq in the film for it to be clearly identified with Iraq for people. But [because it doesn't mention Iraq], the film can’t be shoved into the category of a propaganda film.

MJ: You mentioned that you were a civilian organizer at Fort Hood during the Vietnam War. At that time, was the civilian public widely aware of the GI Movement?

DZ: The evidence suggests that they were. As you see in the film, there were CBS Nightly News stories about the GI Movement. There is a segment in the film of Walter Cronkite talking about the GI underground press. In the state of Texas, where there was a very large anti-war movement in Austin and Houston, and the center of the Texas movement for a time was at Fort Hood. The armed forces demonstrations were major events for the whole state. I think people knew generally that there was opposition in the military, but they didn’t know the details or how widespread it was. But it was certainly more prominent than people remember it. It has been thoroughly wiped out of any histories of the war.

MJ: How visible was the GI Movement amongst American soldiers in Southeast Asia? Were they aware that their fellow soldiers were protesting the war on bases abroad and in the States?

DZ: Yes. The GI anti-war press was everywhere. Just about every base in the world had an underground paper. Vietnam GI was the first GI paper. It was sent directly to Vietnam from the U.S. in press runs of 5,000 and they were getting spread all over the place because they’d be handed from person to person. Awareness of the GI Movement was at different levels but it was still very widespread.




MJ: How did the GIs manage to write and print these papers, especially when their actions were, presumably, being watched?

DZ: That was where the coffeehouse came in. [The GIs] did the work, for the most part, off base. At the Oleo Strut we had an office that they worked in and we had a printer that would print it for us. Some of these papers would get mimeographed secretly on the military bases because the guys working on them would be clerks and they had access to the proper resources. So there was a range, from something someone had typed up and mimeographed and got out about 500 copies of, to these pretty sophisticated papers like the Fatigue Press at Fort Hood, where we’d have a press run of 10,000 copies. We’d hand them out off base but they’d also be distributed on base. Guys snuck on base and would go through barracks and put them on beds and foot lockers.
One story we didn’t put in the film was about some guys at Fort Lewis near Seattle. They wanted to bring GIs to an anti-war demonstration, but they didn’t have an underground paper yet. They took a bunch of leaflets on base late at night and drove around throwing the leaflets out the window. In the military, if there’s litter on the base the brass doesn’t pick it up; they send out the GIs out to police the base and pick it up. So the next morning they sent several companies out to pick up all this litter and before they realized what this litter was, it was too late. It’s funny: repression breeds innovation.

MJ: The movie talks a lot about the GI coffeehouses and how some of them were attacked and shut down. Did GIs ever claim their First Amendment rights were being thwarted?

DZ: Yes, and there were cases that went all the way to the Supreme Court about that. The Supreme Court fairly consistently ruled that so-called “military necessity” trumped free speech. But there was a tremendous support network of lawyers during the period of the GI Movement who would help challenge these things. There were many cases of GIs challenging the military’s right to not allow them to distribute the underground papers on base. No one won [laughs], but there were a lot of attempts to create change.

MJ: Another thing you discuss in the film is the FTA [“Free the Army” or “Fuck the Army”] tour, a variety show packed with celebrities that wanted to counterbalance the pro-war Bob Hope. Where did the tour perform?

DZ: Well, it was banned from bases. What they typically did was come into military towns that had a support organization like the coffeehouses, and they would either perform at the coffeehouses, or if it was possible, in a larger venue. I know when the FTA show came to Killeen we spent months trying to get an auditorium or even an outdoor site rented to us and no one would do it. So the FTA Tour came to town and performed at the Oleo Strut, which had a capacity of maybe 200 people. Rather than doing two shows that day, they did four. When they did their tour of Asia, which is where we got the footage for the film, they got a lot of outdoor venues and larger venues, but they were never allowed on bases. Keep in mind, these were the top Hollywood stars of the day, Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. They had just come off of Klute, won a ton of awards. But of course they weren’t allowed on any bases.
MJ: And the GIs who saw the shows were free enough that 800 of them could go see the show in one day?

DZ: Yeah. By 1970 and 1971, the combination of the actual organized GI Movement and the general culture of resistance that had emerged inside the military was so strong that you could openly walk around bases wearing whatever anti-war stuff you wanted to wear. Actually, the guys in the U.S. couldn’t do that as much; guys in Vietnam were doing it a lot more. But regardless, that sense of opposition, that sense of FTA, was so strong the army couldn’t completely stomp down on it.

MJ: Your film never mentions John Kerry. Why?

DZ: Because so many people wanted us to put him in [laughs]. That was part of it. Frankly, we didn’t have him in mainly because we didn’t want that to become what the film was about. The film made about his military service during the campaign, Going Upriver, has a lot of footage about his involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which is also in our film. Ironically, that film was made to help Kerry’s campaign, but if anything, it hurt it. It didn’t win over anyone that was against him to begin with, but people who supported Kerry because of his anti-war stance during Vietnam saw how startlingly far he’s gone in his ultimate betrayal of the stand he took in the 1960s. We thought anything like that would be distraction for this film.

MJ: Why do you think the GI Movement has faded from the public’s memory of Vietnam?

DZ: There’s been a number of factors. There was this whole element in the mid to late ‘70s of people kind of wanting to forget. Hollywood, in depicting the war in the 1970s, never mentioned the GI Movement. Coming Home, which was a very good film in very many ways, started with a much more radical approach to what GIs had gotten into. But by the time the film was finished, it was a much more conciliatory film, and that became the theme that a lot of people latched onto about Vietnam in the ‘70s: Let’s forget it all. Then in the ’80s, the political climate with the Reagan administration became one of rewriting the history of the war. Of course, if you’re going to rewrite the history of the Vietnam War from a right-wing perspective, the GI Movement would be written out completely. Both politically and in every film made at the time, the Movement was literally written out of history.

MJ: The rewriting of history you mention seems to posit the troops as honorable American boys that supported the war, distinct from hippie protestors. Your film makes it clear that that’s a false distinction, and those are false labels. What impact do you think your film will have on people from younger generations whose only experience with Vietnam is a history that has been revised?

DZ: I hope it will really shock people. I want you walk out of the theater thinking, “Holy shit! I’ve been lied to so thoroughly I better take a really close look at this stuff.” And it’s especially important when comparing it to now. I want people to seriously question this idea that opposing the war means opposing the troops. Hopefully they will come to the conclusion that it’s not a given. That’s a political perspective, and it’s a right-wing political perspective, a very pro-war political perspective. And it’s a political perspective that undercuts any serious movement against the war, both among civilians and among GIs. The way the Vietnam War gets summed up is that the Vietnam War was “unpopular,” and that’s what screwed up the GIs. So people today say, “If that’s true, then if the Iraq war is unpopular it’s going to screw up the Iraq GIs.” Well, the Vietnam War wasn’t unpopular. The Vietnam War was criminal.

MJ: One of the most compelling images from the film is the entrance to the Fort Dix stockade in New Jersey, where a sign reads, “Obedience to the Law is Freedom.” Vietnam began a period in American life where that axiom could no longer be taken as faith. What do you think the long-term ramifications of Vietnam are?

DZ: That sign really summarized the Army’s view of military life. The ramifications are, if nothing else, that it’s possible to go up against and defeat a very powerful empire. One of the guys in the film made a point we didn’t end up using: The United States had the biggest army in the world, the best equipped, the best trained, the best fed—and we lost. We got beat by an indigenous force that totally undercut the ability of the United State to get a foothold in their country. And that’s a universal lesson, and that’s a lesson that is extremely dangerous for any country that, despite its protestations, is in fact bent on being a world empire. It’s inspiring for anyone who doesn’t want to live in that sort of situation anymore.

The Cartoonist With No Name Stands Up For the Homeless Heroes With No Name, Either

By Brent Budowsky

July 6, 2006

The Fourth of July has ended, the fireworks are over, the bands have gone home, the politicians have finished their campaign rounds, the tragedy of homeless American veterans remains unconscionably with us today.

The early Clint Eastwood westerns were about the "man with no name". I was moved to write this note after seeing the brilliant and important cartoon reprinted here. The cartoonist with no name, like many progressives who do brilliant work, receives virtually no support from high level progressives of means. The homeless vets with no name deserve infinitely greater love and support than they get from our society that waves flags while we listen to our iPods, drive our SUVs, count our money market funds, and send our young men and women to desert sands to fight our wars.

Whether we support or oppose the policy in Iraq, can we agree on this? It is morally and patriotically wrong to have homeless and hungry American veterans in the hundreds of thousands, whom we walk past so casually on the street.

It is morally and patriotically wrong to have so many American vets severely and even 100% disabled who receive paltry support from our government without a rousing call to action from our people. It is wrong that so many troops are sent to battle without armor protection and even sometimes enough bandages, wrong that previous generations of veterans are having relapses of post traumatic stress syndrome contracted in previous wars. Yet we are still not roused to action and conscience worthy of the crisis so many of our heroes face.

I propose we coin a term, and repeat it often: homeless heroes.

The cartoon here sums it up perfectly, a truly wonderful blend of journalism and art; the brief and simple message of his picture tells the story better than all my words. Had the cartoonist been a conservative he would have received calls from the Richard Mellon Scaifes, syndication deals with conservative publications, and the support and promotion that conservatives give conservatives, but progressives of means, shamefully and inexplicably, rarely give to progressives who do the work that often matters the most.

So while the politicians wave the flag on the 4th, the partisans and ideologues dish out the trash talk of treason, a nation waiting to be roused by the call of conscience and community suffers fools who speak falseness to power, while we walk by the nameless and voiceless heroes on our streets, passing along cartoons penned by hands with no name, with the message of goodness, truth and patriotism of the real America.

So let us look at his picture and be moved, and at this moment of crisis for our country, and crisis for these heroes, let us act.

Instead of answering the charge of treason in kind, we should put our idealism and patriotism forward to give voice to these heroes, to those who serve and suffer, to those who deserve our support on the 5th of July, and the 6th of July, when the fireworks are stilled, the bands go home, and the empty speeches of partisans are filed in the forgettable bins of gestures without substance, and politics that does not matter.

Like Washington crossing the Delaware, we should reach out to Americans across the great divide of our national divisions, to the tens of millions of Americans in military families and military communities, to the hundreds of millions of Americans in the houses of worship of the land who will stand with us, and with our heroes, and with those who are hungry and homeless whoever they may be, wherever they may be found.

To the progressive politicians, especially the Democratic heroes with military service records of bravery and honor, John Kerry, Wes Clark, Max Cleland, Bob Kerry, Daniel Inouye, Jack Murtha, John Glenn: tour the halls of Congress and the community centers of America for policies dramatically more visionary and more powerful than anything on the agenda today. Let us win our war to end homelessness among veterans, and escalate in their name our war against homelessness and hunger, wherever those ills curse our land.

To the entertainers: build on the great works by so many and champion the cause throughout the nation and the world through the USO, with the churches, among our military families and patriots everywhere. Let us light up the sky with our stars, to light up the lives of our homeless heroes.

To the blogs and the internet news sites: bring out the facts, publicize the wrongs, champion the solutions that will set things right and let us move the heart of the American spirit and the American soul with the message of the Star Spangled Banner, the Sermon On the Mount and the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

To the financiers, capitalists, progressive men and women of means: understand you have failed us, as powerfully as your conservative counterparts have fought their fight far more effectively than you, with results so obvious. It is time to join the fight, to share the cause, to put your money where your talk is, as the conservatives do. To stand with those who have the idealism, the patriotism, the people, and the message who carry the true torch of freedom and progressivism in the tradition of Jack, Bobby, Martin and FDR.

As one of our greatest would say, if he were with us today, sometimes we do things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. So I propose we say this: We pledge ourselves that by hundredth day after the inaugural of our next President there will not be one homeless or hungry or hurting veteran of any war, from any time, any place in America, and that our real battle only begins on that hundredth day.

That we rally the idealism of our young people to reach for the skies of what is possible in America.

That we stand together to bring our patriotism of idealism and aspiration to the houses of worship, veterans halls, and town meetings of the nation.

That no matter how great the crisis, we stand for an American family that is a house with many rooms, a home without homelessness, and a land where everyone has a name, a voice, and a future worthy of this blessed place, America.

Brent Budowsky served as Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Lloyd Bentsen, responsible for commerce and intelligence matters, including one of the core drafters of the CIA Identities Law. Served as Legislative Director to Congressman Bill Alexander, then Chief Deputy Whip, House of Representatives. Currently a member of the International Advisory Council of the Intelligence Summit. Left goverment in 1990 for marketing and public affairs business including major corporate entertainment and talent management.

To take Brent up on his challenge to eradicate homelessness among veterans, send him a message at brentbbi@webtv.net.

The Huffington Post version of this essay is available here.