war & myth

[pynchonoid]

October 13, 2006
An Interview with Jerry Lembcke
The Myth of the Spat Upon Vets

By STEPHEN PHILION

[...] Q: What's the significance of the documentary
"Sir! No Sir" , which tells the story of the GI
antiwar movement during Vietnam, in terms of what that
film can tell students trying to organize antiwar
movements on campuses across America today?

Lembcke: Oh, I think it's terribly powerful. Even
thought there's no mention of Iraq, Afghanistan, or
the War on Terror in the film, it seems that everyone
that sees the film can extrapolate from it to the ways
it applies to the wars that we're currently involved
in. Probably the greatest impact it has is on young
people in the military today. I've done quite a bit of
public speaking at showings of the film.

First of all, it reminds even those of us involved in
the antiwar movement as vets of stuff that they had
forgotten about or informed us about things that were
going on at that time that we didn't know about.
They're kind of surprised to find out quite a few
things about the GI antiwar movement that they didn't
know.

Q: One of the things I was surprised to learn of was
the extent of support shown to Jane Fonda by American
soldiers stationed in Asia during the war at the "Free
The Army" tour that she, other famous actors such as
Donald Southerland, and soldiers/vets organized at US
bases. Considering all the media discourse about vets'
anger at Fonda , I had no idea that some 60,000
soldiers had attended and enthusiastically received
her at those shows, which served as an alternative to
Bob Hope's pro-war tours at the time. Also the extent
of African American soldiers in the antiwar movement
was something I never fully heard about in histories
of the antiwar movement, which the movie makes clear
was very deep and militant.

Lembcke: I was in Vietnam in 1969 and got involved in
Vietnam Veterans Against the War once I returned and
yet there were things in that film that I had not
known about at the time. On the one hand there was a
lot in the news in the papers about the vets antiwar
movement at the time, which I know now just from
researching it. I don't think there was a blackout at
all, often it was front page news and people knew
about it.
One of the things I found interesting was looking at
Stars and Stripes, the civilian published but military
supported publication that soldiers got in Vietnam and
it was all antiwar stuff. It reported the story of
Billy Gene Smith, the GI accused of fragging an
officer, which is featured in Sir! No Sir!. It had
stories about soldiers in Vietnam wearing black
armbands in support of the 1969 anti-war Moratorium
back home. It turns out Stars and Stripes is a pretty
good source for information on the vets' and soldiers
antiwar sentiment and movement back then!

So people knew of these things then. The more
important story is what's happened to that in people's
consciousness and memory. It certainly is gone now,
even from people who were active in the vets antiwar
movement then. Sir! No Sir! has helped to bring it
back into the public memory and showing that a vets
antiwar movement can happen now is very helpful for
people teaching in college and high school. They can
take this knowledge into the classroom and that part
of the history can get back into the curriculum.
Younger people will now get a different view of what
happened then.

I've talked to a few soldiers back from Iraq, one a
Holy Cross University Law School graduate who was an
ROTC cadet who is back from Iraq and has spoken after
showings of Sir No Sir! and likewise didn't know about
the GI antiwar movement during Vietnam. She reports
that there is a lot of opposition to the US occupation
of Iraq among US soldiers in Iraq but it doesn't
express itself because there's no organization, no
organized communication between people. Maybe the film
will play a catalyst role, if people see this film
about organized GI opposition to the Vietnam War, it
might inspire and even spark their imagination about
the kinds of thing that can be done to oppose the war
from within the military. [...] 

Q: One of the things that struck me about the film is
that you saw that soldiers were not just protesting
the war because of their equipment issues or technical
matters about how the war was being conducted, but
actually because they were against what was happening
to the people of Vietnam because of the war and they
were learning, while deployed there, about the actual
history of the Vietnamese people's struggles against
foreign occupation as opposed to what they were
brainwashed to believe in boot camp or high school
teachers.

Lembcke: Here's a big difference, namely the nature of
the 'enemy' and how it's perceived. In the later years
of Vietnam we came back rather sympathetic to the
cause of the other side. One of the vets interviewed
in the film, David Klein, talks of how he was shot and
how he had shot a Viet Cong soldier. He then recalls
how he looked at the fellow he had shot dead and
realizes that this man was fighting for his country
too, for freedom. That was a real consciousness
raising moment for him and he dedicated moments like
that to doing something to honor the loss of that
man's life, namely to end the war and contributing to
the other side's fight for freedom. I certainly came
back in February 1970 with such sentiments, though I'm
not sure exactly how it happened. Surely conversations
with other GIs and my own reading at the time helped
with that.

But today it is harder to portray the 'enemy' in Iraq
or Afghanistan in that kind of sympathetic way,
there's a political challenge there for the American
antiwar movement to understand what the other side
represents.

It needs to get some grasp on what is supportable in
what the other side is doing in Iraq and Afghanistan,
like we did in the Vietnam War. Recall in the early
phases of the Vietnam war, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet
Cong were called terrorists and there tactics were
called tactics of terror. Today we talk about the
roadside bomb in Iraq, but during Vietnam there was
the satchel charges were one of the main Vietnamese
War. 

[...] We don't right now have an embraceable 'other'
as we did in Vietnam and what the complexity of the
other side means, how it's to be sorted out, what's
supportablebut we need to find if there is something
there to be supportable and that can have a big impact
on the military elements against the war, namely that
there is an honorableness to the 'enemy' on the other
side as was the case for GIs against the war in
Vietnam. [...]



read it all:
http://www.counterpunch.org/philion10132006.html

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