ON GI-CIVIhlAN SOLIDARITY
I think that the only really large-scale promising area of
action for the antiwar movement today is the GI: the army
and the morale factor.  (It is) the one crisis which we
can relate to tangibly, which will consume on-going time,
money and attention, which has any real hope of introducing
a profound crisis in the whole structure of war...The fact
of the matter is that there are 350 bases throughout the
world which should have active GI projects but do not for
want of funds...We now have 10-20 million Americans who are
against this war with their heart and soul# and who have
nothing to do.  If the people on campuses would have assumed,
campus by campus - one campus per (military) base - all
fiscal responsibilities for an active GI project; if the NSA
would have said to its 250 campus representatives who showed
up in St. Paul last August 'each campus takes a base and
is responsible for the servicing of the base in terms of
funding, in terms of manpower, in terms of everything that
goes into the social activity' - if the NSA would have done
that rather than spend the time and money that it has invested
in the Peace Treaty, we would have been one step forward.
Gabriel Kolko, liberation, Spring issue, pp. 87-90.
These comments by one of America's most perceptive political and
social critics are in response to the rapid deterioration of the U.S.
Armed Forces in recent years.  Never before in our history have the
services been in such a state of rebellion and disillusionment while
still engaged in a foreign war.  Even military journals, including
ARMY magazine and the Armed Forces Journal, have openly discussed
the "alarming" decline in the morale of American GIs.  While the
Movement has been organizing all its teach-ins, rallies and lobbies,
American soldiers have been making peace, consciously and unconsciously,
by resisting the Machine and avoiding combat in Indochina.
An important part of this phenomenon is the organized GI movement,
which at times has reached major proportions.  Approximately 100
antiwar newspapers are now being published by GIs at bases in the U.S.
and around the world.  Tens of thousands of servicepeople participated
in the recent spring actions, most particularly for Armed Farces Day.
Ft. Bragg, Ft. Lewis, Ft. Hood, Ft. Bliss, San Diego Naval Station and
other bases have strong GI organizing projects, with newspaper
circulation of from 3 to 8 thousand (almost all to GIs) and with
JR.-        . t
highly developed political and social criticism of the entire American
system of exploitation.  The organized GI movement, however, is only
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