If a sergeant or lieutenant became overzealous in ways that put GIs at risk or just exercised bad judgment, he was even liable to get “fragged” by his own soldiers, meaning having a fragmentary grenade rolled into the superior’s tent or to kill him by other means. There were 230 documented fraggings of officers during the Vietnam War, and 1,400 deaths of officers that could not be accounted for.  Because soldiers stopped believing in the value of the mission of “saving” Vietnam, there was resistance to the war, and the U.S. Army broke down as an effective fighting machine.

Just as today in Iraq, Ft. Lewis was a major platform for the Vietnam War. Many of the casualties first landed back in the U.S. at the base. During the course of the war, Pierce County had four underground GI papers, and two GI coffeehouses that opened forums for soldiers to express their opposition to the war. It was not that soldiers were betraying their country; it was that the country’s political leaders were betraying the American people and their soldiers by sucking us into a war that was only really good for war-profiteers. Today, one of the McChord airmen, who was dishonorably discharged for anti-war activity, is today an upper-level administrator in county government. The war ended and life went on without the sky falling.

A segment of the American people questioned the Iraq War from the beginning. Why are we going into Iraq, when the country clearly had nothing to do with 9-11? There is no good answer to that question, and eventually that logic results in a mission without value on the ground for soldiers. How do you win a war when most of the population is against you being there? Who do you fight, when everyone could be your enemy? What are measurable
objectives when after taking an area from insurgents, they simply return again when the U.S. military focuses its attention elsewhere. Some Iraqis fight the occupation of their country, others resist and the rest are simply waiting for U.S. forces to subside.

After five years of war in Iraq, reports are starting to drift back that soldiers are resisting a war that seems useless.  Like Vietnam, there are soldiers who refuse to go, and others who, having gone, refuse to go back. In 2004, 19 members of a platoon from the 343rd Quartermaster Company declined orders to make a supply run on a notoriously dangerous route, because their vehicles were deficient of armor, and in poor working condition. Infantry units, when ordered on patrol, have instituted their own policy of “search and avoid.” This writer has directly heard from an Iraq War veteran, that absent an objective that had any hope of progress, instead of presenting a target on patrol, his unit would find a bridge to hide under and play cards.  The U.S. military machine is at the breaking point again.

Vietnam GI resistance played a major part in ending that war. In the end, soldiers simply didn’t see what a war in Vietnam had to do with the well-being of the American people. Similarly, how do you defend American freedom, by occupying Iraq? Although that was the claim made, it is an utterly hollow one, which is becoming most apparent to the Americans paying the greatest cost over the war, those on the ground actually fighting the war. We are seeing veterans taking an increasingly active role in the anti-war movement, fighting to bring their brothers and sisters home.

Resistance of soldiers themselves will continue to grow. This war is destroying the lives of our service men and women, their families, and the American economy. The political class that got us into this war will not withdraw all U.S. (regardless who is elected in 2008) unless we make them do so by anti-war popular pressure. We can best support the American people and our troops by working to end the occupation, aiding GI resistance and supporting the troops by bringing them home now!