Sir! No Sir! - The GI Movement to End the Vietnam War

[ВАЛТЕР]

http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/sir_no_sir_the_suppressed_story_of_the_gi_movement _to_end_the_war_in_vietnam/



This feature-length documentary focuses on the efforts by troops in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to oppose the war effort by peaceful demonstration and subversion. It speaks mainly to veterans, but serves as a ready reminder to civilians that soldiers may oppose war as stridently as any civilian, and at greater personal peril.


I can't embed this film on the forum, but you can watch it on the link. It's pretty good.

[human strike]

Thanks, I've been looking for this film for a while.

[Red Clydesider]

Thanks for info about this film. As my online player isn't up to playing it, I have ordered a DVD copy for myself.

There's a good, well-researched book, The American War by Jonathan Neale (Bookmarks 2001), which goes into a lot of detail on the GIs' revolt, among other aspects of the war.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/American-War-Vietnam-1960-1975/dp/1898876673/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380710482&sr=1-1&keywords=the+american+war+vietnam

[Jimmie Higgins]

There's a book called the "GI revolt" too which covers a lot of the information in the movie and goes more in depth. The book also makes an argument that it was enlistees more often than draftees who initiated a lot of the anti-military publications and actions within the military.

There's also a documentary of "FTA" which was the anti-war USO-type show that Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland were in. It's not as informative as Sir, No Sir... but it's an interesting as a historical marker of anti-military sentiment among GIs.

[xxxxxx666666]

I think found it, the full title is called "Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War by David Cortright". The brave men and women who stood by what they believe was right have my respect.

Very interesting on a little know event of the Vietnam War, according to the reviews I've read, I'm putting this on my reading list of things to read.

[tachosomoza]

Here's an interesting article about resistance of GIs of color to the war and the efforts of the Vietnamese to reach them.

http://www.vvawai.org/archive/sw/sw31/pgs_25-34/black_gis_revolt.html


From the beginning of the war, Black soldiers-and soldiers of other oppressed nationalities-were routinely given the most dangerous combat assignments, the harshest punishments, and subjected to constant racist abuse by officers, NCOs, and backward whites in the enlisted ranks. Before 1966 Blacks accounted for over 20 percent of U.S. combat casualties in Vietnam. Officially the figure dropped to between 11 and 13 percent after this.
One Air Force report admitted:
"Unequal treatment is manifested in unequal punishment, offensive and inflammatory language, prejudice in assignments of details, lack of products for blacks at the PX, harassment by security police under orders to break up five or more blacks in a group and double standards in enforcement of regulation."
Before the late 1960s, open protests against this kind of discrimination were rare, and many Black soldiers still believed that if they only went off to fight for the U.S. things would look much better when (and if) they returned.
But even in the early days of the Vietnam War-when going along with the program was still the dominant current among the Black soldiers and a revolutionary mood had not yet taken root broadly-there was a new current.
A section of Black troops strongly identified with Malcolm X. These troops were influenced by Malcolm's internationalism-his support for the Vietnamese revolution-and the way he called out the hypocrites in Washington who sent Black GIs to "get violent" in places like Korea but demanded that Black people stay nonviolent in the U.S. South. And these sentiments would have a powerful impact on other Black GIs and, through them, on the entire military as well.
Black power fists and peace signs painted on helmets, constant flaunting of hair regulations and dapping (the power handshake) among the Black soldiers became common. Black GIs often showed solidarity with the Vietnamese. Even having an apartment off base and living among the Vietnamese was often an expression of hatred for life on the base and of sympathy with the Vietnamese people.
A Black vet recalled:
"The Vietnamese constantly appealed to Blacks to get out of the war. They would leave leaflets laying all over the jungle. In perfectly good English, the leaflet would say, 'Blacks get out, it's not your fight,' or, 'They call us gooks here and they call you niggers over there. You're the same as us. Get out, it's not your fight.' In some ways those leaflets affected morale. It would make us wonder why we were there. Most of the people were like me; they were naive. We didn't know what the hell was really going on.
"Ho Chi Minh made a point that stuck in many of our minds. He said, 'It's a civil war. The war is between the Vietnamese, between the North and the South.' Old Ho Chi made sense to most of us. This kinda idea especially made sense to me, because we had too many Americans dying. And it was obvious that we were the aggressors because we were fourteen thousand miles from home rather than vice versa. We were fighting Charlie in his own backyard. We didn't really feel that we were fighting for our country; half the brothers felt it wasn't even our war and were sympathetic with Ho Chi Minh."
For many Black soldiers light dawned under fire. In his book Giant Steps, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar describes what happened to his friend Munti:
"My man Munti, who had lived in my building, went to Vietnam all gung-ho. He was a point-man on patrol in the jungle and loving it. Then one day his squad walked right into a horseshoe, a classic Viet Cong ambush where they let you move forward until you're almost encircled and then open fire from 270 degrees. Most of the guys in his unit were hit, and Munti got a flesh wound, some shrapnel in the mouth. They were pinned down, some guys dying, when the VC stopped shooting and yelled to them, in English, "Why are you fighting us, soul brothers?" As quickly as the ambush had begun it dispersed. Munti went wild after that. His political awareness had been magnified a thousand times; his life had been spared. From then on Munti decided he just wasn't going to fight anymore."
A favorite saying among Black troops in Vietnam became: "No VC ever called me nigger."

[thriller]

We watched this for my labor history class, was pretty awesome. There were some articles along with it, but I can't post those. The art that was drawn by GI's was amazing.