6/20: This past weekend we helped to bring Sir! No Sir! to a
Hawai’i
audience. None of the theatres have picked it up so we made arrangements with
the director to show it. He’s about 700,000 dollars in debt for having done
this film. We had three showings Fri., Sat., and Sunday. We also timed it for
mid-June in anticipation of the first commissioned officer publicly refusing to
deploy to an illegal war (Iraq).
Despite a mass leafleting and postering campaign and good
print-press coverage: we had crowds of about 50+ each night and overall 200
people saw the film–a third of them students. It was a success with people in
that it brought to light the pressing need and the possibility of a GI
resistance movement that will help to end the war in Iraq.
The mood of the people was high, laughter at moments,
clapping at the end of the showings, and in talking to people
afterwards–students who saw the film were excited and came to the World Can’t
Wait table to volunteer to organize. The few people who thought the film was
depressing were the people who thought that the disintegration of the military
in the Vietnam War was a really bad thing. Most thought it was an upper. An Iraq
vet said that a GI movement is what he is working towards.
The following was written for our newsletter:
‘Sir, No Sir!’ a must-see for the youth and students
I remember in high school all of the people who were in the
ROTC program and I was one of those lip-pierced youth who just didn’t like
uniforms. At the time, I never really thought about anything more far-reaching
than some awkward looking green uniforms and the awkward adolescents that
occupied them.
So here a few years later, I am organizing for a showing of
the film ‘If you ever wanted to end a war… Sir! No Sir! The suppressed story
of the GI movement to end the war in Vietnam,’ and I think about those ROTC
youth and those who’ve joined the military in the past few years and how
they’ve come to fill the uniforms of a military that is waging an utterly
illegitimate war in Iraq.
I look back to the 3-year Iraq-invasion anniversary anti-war
protest in Waikiki, Honolulu
from a few months ago. A GI had begun to cry after initially being very
aggressive towards the march. I imagined him not a very long time ago maybe
having been one of the youth that I looked at during high school. I think they
may have grown out of awkwardness but they’ve grown into something more
dangerous – a guilt? – as being the people who have now been part of and a
driving force for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
‘Sir! No Sir!’ has an importance to the youth and student
movement. Almost anyone has a friend or a family member in the military who
signed a contract. Yet, it is within that person’s right to refuse an illegal
order. I had viewed ‘Sir! No Sir!’ as a historical piece, and I think that
isn’t how it should be seen. It should be seen as a film that breaks down this
barrier of thinking that there is no other option, that nothing can be done in
opposition to unlawful orders and unlawful regimes.
Might we see GIs dropping leaflets instead of bombs from
airplanes? Might we see GIs with peace signs and fists in the air on bases?
Some of you may have heard the case of Ehren Watada who’s the first
commissioned officer to publicly refuse deployment to Iraq or Chris
Magaoay who has now become one of the 8000+ GIs gone AWOL.
Might we see a GI resistance movement that ends the war in Iraq and drives
out the Bush regime? If you see this film, you can see the possibility.