[Peace-discuss] Resistance in the occupying armies

[C. G. Estabrook]

[There were three reasons that the Vietnam War came to an end: (1) the heroic 
resistance of the Vietnamese people to occupation; (2) the revolt of the US 
conscript army in Vietnam; and (3) the conclusion of more than 70% of Americans 
that the war in Vietnam was a crime, rather than a mistake.  --CGE]


	June 30, 2009 6:45 pm
	Tomgram: Dahr Jamail
	A Secret History of Dissent in the All-Volunteer Military

The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) exists for a reason captured in a study by Colonel 
Robert D. Heinl, Jr., author of the "definitive history of the Marine Corps," 
published in Armed Forces Journal in 1971. The U.S. military in Vietnam was at 
that moment at the edge of chaos. As Colonel Heinl put it, it was experiencing 
"widespread conditions... that have only been exceeded in this century by the 
French Army's Nivelle mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Tsarist armies 
[of Russia] in 1916 and 1917."

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine in 
Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare. Drug use was rampant; 
desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern high; small-scale mutinies or 
"combat refusals" were at critical, if untabulated, levels; incidents of racial 
conflict had soared; and strife between "lifers" and draftees was at 
unprecedented levels. Reported "fraggings" -- assassination attempts -- against 
unpopular officers or NCOs had risen from 126 in 1969 to 333 in 1971, despite 
declining troop strength in Vietnam. According to Colonel Heinl's figures, as 
many as 144 antiwar underground newspapers were being published by, or for, 
soldiers. And most threatening of all, active duty soldiers in relatively small 
numbers (as well as a swelling number of Vietnam veterans) were beginning to 
actively organize against the war.

When, in January 1973, before the war was even over, President Richard Nixon 
announced that an American draft army was at an end and an all-volunteer force 
would be created, this was why. The U.S. military was in the wilderness without 
a compass, having discovered one crucial thing: you couldn't fight an endless, 
unpopular counterinsurgency war with the kind of conscript army a democracy had 
to offer. What resulted, of course, was the AVF, a moniker that, as Andrew 
Bacevich has written in his book The New American Militarism, was but "a 
euphemism for what is, in fact, a professional army... [that] does not even 
remotely 'look like' democratic America." Citizenship and the obligation to 
serve were now officially severed and, from the 1980s on, most Americans would 
ever more vigorously cheer on the AVF from the sidelines, while it would be a 
force theoretically purged of possible Vietnam-style dissent and refusal.

In that sense, it could be considered a success. We've now been at war seven and 
a half years in Afghanistan and more than five in Iraq, two catastrophic 
counterinsurgency struggles, and yet a Vietnam-style movement has neither arisen 
in the military, nor for that matter in the streets of what's now called "the 
homeland." But as TomDispatch regular Dahr Jamail indicates below and in his new 
book, The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, 
dissent has proved irrepressible. With the generous support of the Nation 
Institute's Investigative Fund, Jamail has produced a report on the seeds of 
refusal and dissent in the military that may -- in a quagmire future in 
Afghanistan and possibly Iraq -- grow into something far larger. Tom

     Refusing to Comply
     The Tactics of Resistance in an All-Volunteer Military
     By Dahr Jamail

     [Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund 
at the Nation Institute.]

     On May 1st at Fort Hood in central Texas, Specialist Victor Agosto wrote on 
a counseling statement, which is actually a punitive U.S. Army memo:

         "There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is 
immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the 
opposite effect."

     Ten days later, he refused to obey a direct order from his company 
commander to prepare to deploy and was issued a second counseling statement. On 
that one he wrote, "I will not obey any orders I deem to be immoral or illegal." 
Shortly thereafter, he told a reporter, "I'm not willing to participate in this 
occupation, knowing it is completely wrong. It's a matter of what I'm willing to 
live with."

     Agosto had already served in Iraq for 13 months with the 57th Expeditionary 
Signal Battalion. Currently on active duty at Fort Hood, he admits, "It was in 
Iraq that I turned against the occupations. I started to feel very guilty. I 
watched contractors making obscene amounts of money. I found no evidence that 
the occupation was in any way helping the people of Iraq. I know I contributed 
to death and human suffering. It's hard to quantify how much I caused, but I 
know I contributed to it."

     Even though he was approaching the end of his military service, Agosto was 
ordered to deploy to Afghanistan under the stop-loss program that the Department 
of Defense uses to retain soldiers beyond the term of their contracts. At least 
185,000 troops have been stop-lossed since September 11, 2001.

     Agosto betrays no ambivalence about his willingness to face the 
consequences of his actions:

         "Yes, I'm fully prepared for this. I have concluded that the wars [in 
Iraq and Afghanistan] are not going to be ended by politicians or people at the 
top. They're not responsive to people, they're responsive to corporate America. 
The only way to make them responsive to the needs of the people is for soldiers 
to not fight their wars. If soldiers won't fight their wars, the wars won't 
happen. I hope I'm setting an example for other soldiers."

     Today, Agosto's remains a relatively isolated act in an all-volunteer 
military built to avoid the dissent that, in the Vietnam era, came to be 
associated with an army of draftees. However, it's an example that may, soon 
enough, have far greater meaning for an increasingly overstretched military 
plunging into an expanding Afghan War seemingly without end, even as its war in 
Iraq continues.

	[...]

     Right now, acts of dissent, refusal, and resistance in the all-volunteer 
military remain small-scale and scattered. Ranging from the extreme private act 
of suicide to avoidance of duty to actual refusal of duty, they continue to 
consist largely of individual acts. Present-day G.I. resistance to the 
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan cannot begin to be compared with the 
extensive resistance movement that helped end the Vietnam War and brought an 
army of draftees to the point of near mutiny in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, 
the ongoing dissent that does exist in the U.S. military, however fragmented and 
overlooked at the moment, should not be discounted.

     The Iraq War boils on at still dangerous levels of violence, while the war 
in Afghanistan (and across the border in Pakistan) only grows, as does the U.S. 
commitment to both. It's already clear that even an all-volunteer military isn't 
immune to dissent. If violence in either or both occupations escalates, if the 
Pentagon struggles to add more boots on the ground, if the stresses and strains 
on the military, involving endless redeployments to combat zones, increase 
rather than lessen, then the acts of Agosto, Bishop, and Shepherd may turn out 
to be pathbreaking ones in a world of dissent yet to be experienced and 
explored. Add in dissatisfaction and discontent at home if, in the coming years, 
American treasure continues to be poured into an Afghan quagmire, and real 
support for a G.I. resistance movement may surface. If so, then the early 
pioneers in methods of dissent within the military will have laid the groundwork 
for a movement.

     "If we want soldiers to choose the right but difficult path, they must know 
beyond any shadow of a doubt that they will be supported by Americans." So said 
First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of the U.S. Army, the first commissioned officer 
to publicly refuse a combat deployment to Iraq. (He finally had the military 
charges against him dropped by the Justice Department.) The future of any such 
movement in the military is now unknowable, but keep your eyes open. History, 
even military history, holds its own surprises.

     Dahr Jamail, a TomDispatch regular, has reported from Iraq and writes for 
Inter Press Service, Le Monde Diplomatique, and other outlets. He is the author 
of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied 
Iraq and the forthcoming book The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight 
in Iraq and Afghanistan. His website is Dahrjamailiraq.com. Research support for 
this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

Copyright 2009 Dahr Jamail

[The full (much longer) article is at <http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175090/
dahr_jamail_a_secret_history_of_dissent_in_the_all_volunteer_military>.]