 So the topic today is military dissent GI resistance, you know veteran dissidents There's there's all kinds of words for it, and it's it's kind of the unspoken Inconvenient topic at hand. It's always inconvenient the powers that be what George Carlin called I think correctly the owners of this country They don't want to even recognize a hint of military dissent. You're not gonna hear it from the Pentagon The Oval Office no matter who's in charge, especially this guy is not gonna mention that there's a civil military crisis brewing One that we haven't seen in quite a long time. I think predictions are difficult and None of us really knows how this is gonna end Petraeus general Petraeus said that about the Iraq war and it was really the only smart thing he said about the Iraq war But he was right about that. I don't think any of us know how this is gonna end but I'm gonna argue that What's happening today is remarkable that there is a rising tide of military and veteran dissent and That it is more profound than anything we've seen in 50 years since the other gentlemen I'm sharing time with we're serving and that it is in line with and of a piece with a broader history of American military dissent and and that's important and Finally, I'll describe some of the strands as as I see them Without making too many predictions, but I will say that there is if not reason for optimism There's definitely reason for hope and a lot of us were sort of waiting for this moment And what it was gonna be or if it was even possible. So You know, I am a very small part of this movement. I'm not a leader The extent that this is even a movement, right in any sort of tangible sense is questionable The the weakness and the strength at the same time of what's happening today in the anti-war community But also in the broader systemic, you know, social justice fatigue The the weaknesses that it's somewhat disorganized and the strength of it is that it's kind of organic and somewhat disorganized and touch Just a lot of different topics. So it's good and bad like so many things But I try really hard especially when it's you know in the street stuff for black lives matter or any of these You know broader social and criminal justice and racial justice issues to say listen I'm not a leader because look at me, right? And and and also I'm not really qualified But I'm glad to be here in solidarity with those movements. However, I will say You know, I literally just came off the barricade here in what we're calling, you know, occupied free Lawrence Lawrence, Kansas, which is a city a small college town in Kansas with a great history of Descent right starting with the abolitionists who found the joint up to, you know Post-Kent state three-day lockdown National Guard in the streets and all that and for a long time there was kind of a diaper, you know a kind of a Fallout or a fall off especially with the college students, but I think we're starting to see some of it again So, you know, I've been in the streets just about every day writing sleeping and eating not so much But one of the things that's interesting is I think I used to be naive enough to believe that my status as Of course a white male full of privilege, but as a veteran would protect me From from any side, right? Everyone's gonna thank me. The police are gonna love me and all this, right? And that has not panned out and I shouldn't seen it coming as a historian I should have definitely seen it coming, but you know, it's hard to get past some of those delusions I did not think that I would be in Kansas City three and a half weeks ago and that my own government would tear gas me again Again, because I thought the last time I would suck down tear gas would be in the gas chamber in cadet basic training in July of 2001 up at the Academy, but it wasn't right and and since then it's kind of deteriorated across the board and What I'm sort of seeing is that active troops Guardsmen, you know on duty an enormous number of veterans and even I'll give them a little bit Even some of the retired generals are sort of speaking out against at least this usage of the military in the streets With sort of one voice in a way that I've never seen Whether that last is questionable but for the longest time the Say the the far right or the militarist hawkish, right or or neoliberal Hawks, they could always count on having the veteran and the military community in their pocket Right and this critique is thrown to Democratic Party a lot with regards to say the African American community The idea being they don't have to fight for the vote so they can be neoliberals and all this and there's some truth in it But that kind of was true for veterans too, right and some of it was a mythology that we were all conservative But disturbingly there was truth in it That's kind of coming apart which is pretty remarkable and I will argue that something is afoot Again, I'm a small part of a small part of a big movement I've written about it recently, but I was in Tulsa for the Trump rally for three days planning and executing a I wouldn't say failed but halting direct action and I was there and I think this is like an instructive vignette in a sense You know, I'm there with 12 members of about face and veterans for peace. I belong to bowl We even had the executive director of veterans for peace there who was it was a pretty good showing Invited down there by the local Unified Tulsa community working in conjunction with I mean green peace and I can't even name all the different organizations to kind of throw this together and sort of the solidarity and the intersectionality of this was was incredible and We were sort of a vanguard if you'll forgive the Leninist term of a broader movement that was kind of supporting us and a lot of this Soldiers refusing duty people's signing letters against Trump's actions I mean there was just oh and then the 89 defense officials and many of whom were four-star generals who were coming out So this is the backdrop. This is the context we seized the flag poles at the box center and Kind of tried to defend them and sent climbers to whom we're women one indigenous from Oklahoma and The police obviously came down pretty hard and violently and aggressively and and Chopped us and I think as soon as we took off our Trump disguises, which we painfully wore And they saw the climbers then we were we were in trouble But it was you know, it was a it was a great action to be a part of because of the level of support that was behind it Because it was something it was a small part of a bigger thing on The way out as we were escorted for folks were arrested including a Vietnam combat medic From the American Division up north In Vietnam. He was arrested for taking photos Of course, he was standing in the wrong place because they criminalized space very quickly and very Arbitrarily and then three of our climbers the rest of us thought we were going into the paddy wagon You know, but they just tossed us and on the way out. We had to pass them the mugger crowd And everyone was wearing this shirt and Almost all of us except for the ones who had it thrown off in the scuffle when they were thrown on the ground by the police who's wearing these veteran sats and Being escorted out by the police You would think naively that perhaps will be treated okay by the crowd and the opposite was the fact We were screamed antifa at us and of course There were you know one person came up into a marine like two or three time combat vet friend of mine's face and you know speaking in tongues like yelling I assume accusatorily. I don't speak tongues fluently any longer or never did but it was it's always pretty wild I Think that why this is happening Why events like that are going off? Why a significant segment of veterans is actually Breaking the mythology proving we're not a monolith is There was a whole lot of kindling okay for a fire in the United States and some of us were wondering when it was ever going to kick off But then when you added the COVID crisis the depression that economic one that came from that The tribalism of the Trump era. I mean the tribalism has been there since Nixon and it's gotten normally worse But oh my god like the it's good and it's bad, right? There's this just division So when George Floyd, you know is is urban lynched right for eight minutes and 46 seconds I believe to his death this this was just too much There were rumblings before that of military dissent The polls, you know if to the extent that you believe them But when they come from the Cokes and when they come from even a lot of other like right-wing sort of organizations Then you want to believe them in a sense when they say that two-thirds this is 2019 two-thirds of veterans of the Iraq and Afghan war said those wars weren't worth fighting in the first place. That's remarkable I can't actually find precedent for it I've been working on data from the Vietnam era But you know even at the end of the war that's probably pretty close to where they were at among the troops among the veterans if that and then this year early this year we had 2020 poll that said 73% of veterans of the Afghan war Believe we should immediately withdraw from the war in Afghanistan now by the way both of those poll numbers, right? And there were several polls to this effect are higher than the civilians. Okay at a higher rate That's unheard of really with a few exceptions in American history Captain Crozier with co vid. That's the aircraft carrier that had a little bit of an outbreak of the Coronavirus and then he's fired and it's this whole mass and Trump basically questions his manhood and patriotism as he's want to do and The way that the troops sort of rallied behind that of course not everyone did and what we saw was a civil war breakout within the veteran community Part of which I tend to be a polarizing figure and sort of collect some hate mail as well as you know, nice stuff So this was the early rumblings What we know now is that the powers that be as I mentioned are terrified of this I mean, they're terrified of this, you know, we always say out in the streets, don't we? You know, we're many their few who streets are streets all this and in like strictly it's true But then the problem is they've always been able to count on those foot soldiers and they run from the security guard outside the nice boutique up to the Delta Force, right? But what happens and it does occasionally happen in empires What happens when the foot soldiers Renee? This is this is scary so, you know, there is a history to this though and and There's this praise that gets thrown around a lot now And I'm sure we would throw it out for any or you know for any group I say okay boomer and all this and there's like a dismissal of our parents generation or my you know My people my age there's a dismissal of our grandparents. It's like hopeless racism There's some truth in all of that. But there's a lot to learn from the past. Maybe they're not direct lessons But military descent has always been part of the American experience Much of it written out of the history books like that Vietnam part that I'm gonna get to be and I'm gonna leave most of it for the actual Vietnam veterans But you know, that's been whitewashed, you know, why did the war end? Oh you the war ended because of all the college kids in the streets or oh the war ended because Nixon decided to end it Okay, all of that is somewhat true, but what's forgotten is that the military nearly collapsed Nearly collapsed in upon itself, especially in some of the draft de-forces and especially in the early 70s We don't talk a lot about that history So where do we fit in? Well in the Mexican war that was the highest rate of Dissertion in America any American war the second being Vietnam Norma's number more than 10% I think it's 13% Just walk off during the Mexican war Famous generals and presidents like Ulysses S. Grant Said that I had a horror of the Mexican American war was the most wicked war ever and I'm ashamed of myself Essentially because I didn't have the courage to resign and he remembered that and talked about it throughout his life, especially later in his life and But that but you know, he didn't do much at the time You know, he was a West Point grad and he was a good, you know, good soldier like all of us often are but he definitely had regrets Beyond the desertion we had Irish Catholics run away to the Mexican army and and fight for them And they form the same Patrick's or the same patricio battalion and they fight, you know To the death because they know they're going to be executed if they're captured and many are You move forward to like the banana wars and the early sort of overseas imperialism And I heard I heard the Smedley Butler chapter right mentioned in the bio Smedley Butler is like my hero, right? He leaves a 30 something for a year career in the Marine Corps kind of builds the Marine Corps as we know it today Fights all these imperial wars and then he retires and he's starting out rumblings at the end of his career against that He retires and he says I was a gangster for capitalism that what I did around the world was racketeering And you wanted to dismiss him except he's a two-star general and back then that was basically the highest rank in the Marine Corps And he won the Medal of Honor twice He would have wanted more Except that the write-ups that he would that he got that would have gotten him the Medal of Honor We're at a time when officers couldn't win it. So the guy may have earned three or four medals of honor wounded all this Speaks out, you know, maybe puts down like a a fascist plot that he's offered to lead to overthrow Roosevelt and and he's kind of forgotten. I never learned about him in high school. Never I did I certainly didn't learn about West Point. So I mean, I self-taught right my students at West Point learned. That's about the Butler But I don't know about everybody else World War one was an enormous backlash of draft ease especially Wilson had called for like a million volunteers He got 75,000 and then he was like, oh man, I guess I'm gonna have to go to a draft Which just deflates the narrative of course that everyone was so patriotic about these, you know, submarine attacks and this German aggression Actually hundreds of thousands of folks end up in what they called conscientious objector prisons. Basically They were like labor camps for folks who wouldn't fight Again unbelievable amounts and then there's Vietnam, which I'm only gonna briefly touch on but it's the last draft the army and by the late war We're starting to see sort of like platoon level mutinies or at least passive resistance In the more overt ways most people didn't do this We have the fragging incidents hundreds several hundred incidents of fragging with I believe 89 deaths of like aggressive officers and NCOs Who they felt would have put them in danger to die needlessly in a hopeless war that it was clear like our wars today was never even meant to be one that this was Going to be a declare victory and then leave This all terrified, you know, and then there were salons and underground GI newspapers racial strife drug use now Some of that's been overplayed, but it would you know, there was real resistance So there's a reaction to that. There's a reaction and the reaction is a Nixonian classic as always great a cynical reaction and we get the all volunteer force that I spent my life in carrying water for the Empire and There are enormous challenges to the GI descent. We're seeing today as a result of that all volunteer force Right, if you're a volunteer and I can speak to this personally if you're a volunteer and you decide to speak out against the wars You're in or you're you just left you will be told by folks. Well, you volunteered So why are you complaining? But it's far more than that. It's the sorts of folks that are going to go into it The demographics have changed the military became more southern more rural it became sort of an economic draft the combat units became more white And male then they were in Vietnam when it was, you know at certain points There was disproportionate black casualties because you know the sorts of folks that wanted to choose combat duties were We're you know tended to be white Southerners and guys from the Mountain West and then a lot of minorities who are still in Norma's portion of the military were in the support branches because it's like they wanted to sort of You know, you know get something out of military service It's hard to have a broad anti-war movement when People graduating high school people graduating college and I think more importantly the mothers of America Right to use a platitude don't have to worry that their son who graduates from high school in three months Is going to be eligible for the draft? There is not a lot of motivation for her to read the foreign policy section of the New York Times Or whatever online source so there was this real just pushback at any sort of anti-war movement in the civilian world But then also to a certain extent in the veteran community So it is even more remarkable that we're seeing what we're seeing today and I'll Briefly kind of close with these strands of dissent that I'm seeing and then I think it would be more interesting if Folks want to ask later. I can go into depth the first strand is the one that gets all the attention and It's also the least important and the one that I'm most cautious about In fact, it's the one that gets up the only one that gets attention and that's the Mattis is st. Mattis remember him the Mattis is and and the Mullins and then the always late-coming Colin Powell's of the world and you know about a hundred other senior defense officials generals and admirals mostly but some civilians who Well, they said Trump's reaction to the protest with regard to using the troops in the streets was inappropriate Now if anyone else had written those letters Pretty much. I agree with them word for word But we must consider the source none of these folks Mind you it is remarkable that they did this. I mean it is still important It's rare that there's that kind of consensus among pretty conservative folks. I mean at least systemically Never had a single one of these generals Questioned the systemic imperialism and militarism of the military and the country that they fought for for 30 years Never one of them not once publicly ever They've never really shown any ability even look at the structures of the military industrial complex in a real way In fact, many of them belong to them. They work some of these guys who wrote the letter work for the Raytheons of the world basically so we have to just be cautious about canonizing Identifying or sanitizing the records of these folks I think nevertheless the fact that so many of these guys have come out to stay something about Trump's ridiculously escalatory response Stealing lines from segregationist mayors in the 60s means it is awful and he's a monster But my fear is that what the blue that holds the generals together is anti-trumpism, right? Not anti-militarism the second is sort of the veteran community and that's that's the groups about face veterans for peace Even on the libertarian side bring our troops home dot US There are organizations that have been organizing for some time now veterans against the war, but The membership is swelling right now Swelling and part of the reason I think is that they've chosen to be intersectional They've chosen to be in solidarity. They started that at Standing Rock when about face and veterans peace camped out and In the process, they've actually like widen their aperture a little bit And they've especially gotten a lot of membership from women and people of color in the military veterans I Think this is important, but you know, we've stood with black lives We put out this open letter for people to resist and several hundred Veterans sign their names in publicly. I mean you had to put in like data to show that you really in the military And you put your name to it and Trump era that's dangerous When Trump gave his speech at West Point over a thousand now graduates of that Academy This is not a snowflake II lot folks. I'm the radical in that group. Okay over a thousand signed a letter Just eviscerating Trump's response and basically saying that all his calls were unconstitutional We have people in the streets I mean enormous amount of resistance among the veterans at the protests and the final group and the most important one and The hardest to measure because this is whitewashed. This is hidden from view is the rank-and-file resistance of serving members We know that reports came into veterans of peace and about face right away There are reports in certain units of disciplinary action being taken or considered people are actually refusing their orders Beyond that though, there's Crises of conscience and ethics and competence that are going on I'm not the only one but I can use myself as sort of an anecdotal thing that I can speak to which is that over the years I've received these sorts of emails from strangers and former students who are the tenants now But mostly strangers saying what do I do? I'm thinking of being a conscious object or I'm thinking of you know, resigning whatever Over the years. I would get them occasionally since George Floyd's death I'm now over a hundred strangers who've reached out to me in serious ways. I mean not just like hey, let's talk I don't love this More like hey, can you give me the GI rights hotline number? So serious More in other words in four weeks or five weeks than in three years So we're seeing this we don't know exactly how far it's gonna go But I think it's important and so as I kind of close my remarks I want to mention the Romero fact and I think I mentioned on the last webinar and I talk about it all the time but you know, I'm basically agnostic, but I was raised in a you know, a Guilt-based Catholic Irish tradition and we're in class New York and and I still have some of the that value in me and Liberation theology that core of Catholicism that's again also been whitewashed until Pope Francis Oscar Romero and El Salvador when a right-wing government full of death squads in its military backed by our CIA and Reagan When they're killing peasants for political activity the Archbishop who had been a conservative decides to speak up for three years He gives these very what would be considered political homilies, but actually they're just in line with you know the New Testament really or at least the words of the red letters of Jesus and It is no accident that the last major Homily he gives was calling for the troops ordering them in the name of God is what he said to refuse to kill Their fellow peasants and to remind them of their solidarity and their oneness with the class that they were killing It is not an accident that it's basically a week later when he's assassinated on the altar In an incredibly sort of Christ-like pose my point there is that this demonstrates the fear when the foot soldiers revolt and I wish I had the courage that that rank and file is showing today when I was on The duty and I'm a little over time, but I hope that helps and I'm so glad to go into any detail later. Thanks