I doubt that Washington will embark on another ground invasion of the Iraq War scale, but it may very well be beginning a proxy war against Iran and Hizballah in the fashion that Sy Hersh says it is already doing (at <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-Mon-20070305/004447.html>).
That can lead to a much larger war in the Middle East, but without American casualties.
As for GI coffee houses*, I don't know if they would take off today even if the activist base got larger. Today's US soldiers -- especially those in the National Guard -- are much older than those that went to the Vietnam War, so there can't be the same "generational bonding" of the sort that might have existed between young GIs and civilian protesters. Many of today's US soldiers have economic stakes in the military as an institution, too. On the civilian side, space in which to "drop out" and develop "counter-culture" is smaller today than in the long sixties: US economy is not what it used to be, attending college is a bigger investment than before, there is no counter-culture to speak of today beyond small niches, etc. (nowadays, conservative Christians think that theirs, rather than ironic "sex-positive" post-mods', is the real counter-culture).
* <http://prole.info/articles/olivedrabrebels.html> The Olive-Drab Rebels: Military Organizing During The Vietnam Era by Matthew Rinaldi in Radical America Vol.8 No.3 1974
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The coffeehouses represented the first significant step by the civilian movement to reach GIs. The first coffeehouse was set up at Fort Jackson in 1967, and soon afterwards coffeehouses were established at Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Hood. These eventually developed into a network of coffeehouses, storefronts, and bookstores which covered most major bases in all four branches of the service.
The original conception behind the coffeehouses, while fundamentally valid, was faulty in two regards. First, the initial coffeehouses were located at major basic training bases, the idea being to struggle with the brass for the mind of the GI during his basic training. If the brass won, this thinking ran, they would have an effective killer in Vietnam; if the coffeehouse won, there would be refusals and disaffection. Basic trainees, however, are completely isolated. Not only are they restricted to base and supervised around the clock but their training areas are even off-limits to other GIs. Consequently, there was never a real opportunity for organizers to relate to basic trainees. In a sense, though, it didn't matter, for it wasn't the arguments of the brass versus the arguments of the coffeehouse which were going to alter the thinking of these GIs. It was their concrete experience in the military and in the war which was going to transform them into dissidents.
The second error concerned the nature and style of the coffeehouses. The original conception was that by creating a semi-bohemian counter-culture setting, it would be possible to reach the *most easily organized" GIs. This emphasis on culture did in fact attract in the early days those GIs who were just getting into the dope scene, but it didn't necessarily lead them toward political action. Consequently, the political work often floundered. The advantage, though, of the coffeehouses and storefronts was that while their original strategic conceptions were faulty, the form in which they existed was quite malleable, and thus most of the projects were able to transform themselves to meet the developing needs of the GI resistance.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The most consistent, and certainly the most heterogeneous, of the attempts of the left to relate to GIs in this period centered around the coffeehouse projects. By the height of the war there were over twenty such projects, located at most major Army bases, the two key Marine Corps bases, and scattered Navy and Air Force installations. Staffed at first primarily by civilians, with vets soon joining the staffs in increasing numbers, the coffeehouses and storefronts reflected all the various forces which existed within the movement. There was never a cohesive, national ideology guiding this work; rather, different project staffs struggled out their orientation toward military organizing, some projects achieving a unified direction, some projects remaining scattered in their approach. As the war escalated, though, and as discontent and anger swept the ranks of GIs, the majority of coffeehouses abandoned the old orientation toward cultural alienation and consciously set out to do direct political organizing.
The primary function of these projects was to provide off-base meeting places for GIs. The majority of guys who came to these storefronts were attracted by their anti-brass atmosphere, stuck around to rap with some people and perhaps read an anti-war paper, and generally got exposed to left-wing politics. The service was permeated with an FTA ("Fuck The Army") consciousness, and many GIs felt so mind-blown by their recent experiences that they were actively seeking a new way to understand the world around them. Consequently, they were open to heavy raps about the war, imperialism, and the class nature of society. A certain number of GIs who came around reached a point where they wanted to participate in direct political work, and they plugged into various activities. The most common form was the creation of a GI newspaper. While some of these papers developed spontaneously at certain bases, the overwhelming majority were begun through joint work by GIs and civilians.
These papers were the most visible and consistent aspect of the GI movement. Starting with early papers like FTA at Fort Knox and FATIGUE PRESS at Fort Hood, local papers mushroomed around the country : SHAKEDOWN at Fort Dix, ATTITUDE CHECK at Camp Pendleton, FED-UP at Fort Lewis, ALL HANDS ABANDON SHIP at Newport Naval Station, THE LAST HARASS at Fort Gordon, LEFT FACE at Fort McClellan, RAGE at Camp Lejeune, THE STAR-SPANGLED BUMMER at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base... the list could stretch to over a hundred different papers. Their contents varied, from paper to paper and at times from issue to issue, from local gripes and a basic anti-brass, anti-war, anti-racist consciousness to an understanding of the nature of imperialism and attempts to move toward revolutionary socialism. Some lasted for only a few issues, folding when the guys putting it out were transferred or discharged. But most of those connected with organizing projects came out consistently, if sporadically, through the war years.
Generally, the papers were produced by small groups of GIs who then received help from other guys in circulating them. It was illegal to distribute on base, but nonetheless countless copies were smuggled on and placed around the barracks, stuck in bathrooms, casually left in lounge areas. A few found their way into the stockades, often through sympathetic guards, A large number were simply distributed in off-base towns, and were well received. As one marine organizer put it, "Guys ask if the paper is underground. If we reply yes, they take it. Guys identify with a rebellion if not with the revolution." It was generally through these papers that the mass of discontented Gis were exposed to a sense of solidarity with other GIs and some level of political analysis of their situation. While the number of GIs who created these papers might total in the hundreds, the number who helped distribute them numbered in the thousands and the number who read them and related to them numbered in the tens of thousands.
Relations between GIs and civilians on the projects took many forms. On the one hand, civilians provided some essential functions, could keep the places running and do legal and organizational work while guys were on base, and generally provide contacts and resources from the world of the movement. These contributions were valued by GIs. But civilians clearly didn't share the same experiences or the same risks, and this at times led to conflict. Most projects experienced an ebb and flow of conflict and unity. A large degree of the conflict occurred because of civilian proficiency at certain tasks, which at times led to their domination. As one organizer expressed it, "People assume power depending on how priorities are defined and what skills are valued. If skills that only educated people have, such as speaking eloquently, laying out newspapers, gathering literature for a bookstore, legal assistance, etc. are rewarded, then people who don't have those skills become intimidated, feel useless, and do basically what they do in society at large-they withdraw and fuck up."
The problem was not simply a civilian-GI dichotomy. One organizer at Fort Lewis wrote, "Often, the problem was much more blatantly one of classism, that is that the middle-upper class people would dominate the meetings and directions, with the lower class people doing most of the work. The way the problem looks is that the civilians dominated no more and no less, on the whole, than middle class educated GIs." But there were few middle class educated GIs in the movement; the general situation was that the bulk of the GI dissidents were blue collar working class youth, while most of the civilian organizers were middle class. A positive situation, in that it was a meeting between the middle class left and the working class, but it was a constant struggle to overcome the inherent roles established in relations between the classes. Similar dilemmas have confronted the left whenever it has attempted to change its class base.
Despite these internal struggles, the high degree of transience among GIs, and the pervasive power of the brass, the overriding intensity of the war ensured that the work continued. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>