Sir! No Sir! Just saying no (barf alert!)

Chicago Sun Times ^ | 06/09/2006 | Roger Ebert

[KeyLargo]

Sir! No Sir! Just saying no

Release Date: 2006

Ebert Rating: ***

BY ROGER EBERT / Jun 9, 2006

Quick question: When Jane Fonda was on her "FTA" concert tour during the Vietnam era, who was in her audience? The quick answer from most people would probably be, "anti-war hippies, left-wingers and draft-dodgers." The correct answer would be: American troops on active duty, many of them in uniform.

"Sir! No Sir!" is a documentary that about an almost-forgotten fact of the Vietnam era: Anti-war sentiment among U.S. troops grew into a problem for the Pentagon. The film claims bombing was used toward the end of the war because the military leadership wondered, frankly, if some of their ground troops would obey orders to attack. It's also said there were a few Air Force B-52 crews that refused to bomb North Vietnam. And in San Diego, sailors on an aircraft carrier tried to promote a local vote on whether their ship should be allowed to sail for Vietnam. One of the disenchanted veterans, although he is never mentioned in the film, was John Kerry, who was first decorated for valor, and later became a leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and testified before Congress.

After the turning point of the Tet offensive in 1968, troop morale ebbed lower, the war seemed lost, and a protest movement encompassed active duty troops, coffeehouses near bases in America, underground GI newspapers, and a modern "underground railway" that helped soldiers desert and move to Canada. According to Pentagon figures, there were some 500,000 desertions during the Vietnam years.

The film has been written and directed by David Zeiger, who worked in an anti-war coffee- house near Fort Hood, Texas. In a narration spoken by Troy Garity, the son of Fonda and Tom Hayden, his film says, "The memory has been changed." The GI anti-war movement has disappeared from common knowledge, and a famous factoid from the period claims returning wounded veterans were spit on by "hippies" as they landed at American airports. According to the film, that is an urban legend, publicized in the film "Rambo II: First Blood."

When we reviewed "Sir! No Sir!" on "Ebert & Roeper," we cited the film's questions about the spitting story. There is a book on the subject, The Spitting Image, by Jerry Lembcke, whose research failed to find a single documented instance of such an event occurring in real life. I received many e-mails, however, from those who claimed knowledge of such incidents. The story persists, and true or false is part of a general eagerness to blame our loss in Vietnam to domestic protesters, while ignoring the substantial anti-war sentiment among troops in the field.

Parallels with the war in Iraq are obvious. One big difference is that the Vietnam-era forces were largely supplied by the draft, while our Iraq troops are either career soldiers or National Guard troops, some of them on their second or third tours of duty. The Vietnam-era draft not only generated anti-war sentiment among those of draft age, but supplied the army with soldiers who did not go very cheerfully into uniform. The willingness of today's National Guardsmen to continue in combat is courageous and admirable, but cannot be expected to last indefinitely, and the political cost of returning to the draft system would be incalculable.

A group of recent documentaries has highlighted a conflict between information and "disinformation," that Orwellian term for attempts to rewrite history. The archetype of "Hanoi Jane" has been used to obscure the fact that Fonda appeared before about 60,000 GIs who apparently agreed with her. The Swift Boat Veterans incredibly tried to deny John Kerry's patriotism. The global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is being attacked by a TV ad campaign, underwritten by energy companies, which extols the benefits of CO2.

No doubt "Sir! No Sir!" will inspire impassioned rebuttals. No doubt it is not an impartial film, not with Fonda's son as its narrator. What cannot be denied is the newsreel footage of uniformed troops in anti-war protests, of Fonda's uniformed audiences at "FTA" concerts, of headlines citing Pentagon concern about troop morale, the "fragging" of officers, the breakdown of discipline, and the unwillingness of increasing numbers of soldiers to fight a war they had started to believe was wrong.

Cast & Credits

A documentary narrated by Troy Garity and featuring Edward Asner, Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Terry Whitmore, Donald Duncan, Howard Levy, Oliver Hirsch, Susan Schnall, Randy Rowland, Louis Font, Dave Cline, Bill Short, Dave Blalock, Greg Payton, Darnell Summers, Michael Wong, Terry Whitmore, Joe Bangert, Richard Boyle, Jerry Lembcke, Terry Iverson, Tom Bernard and Keith Mather.

Balcony Releasing presents a documentary written and directed by David Zeiger. Running time: 85 minutes. No MPAA rating.

[Wuli]

Ebert decided some years ago to join the political Hollyweird crowd.

[Ax]

Ebert was pushing that lunatic Gore in 2000. Like I'm going to pay any attention to ANYTHING he has to say?

[brant]

"It wasn't a mistake to the estimated 2 million southeast Asians who died in communist purges after the US left."

The figure I heard for South Vietnamese murdered after the Communist takeover was about 300,000. Where do you get 2 million?

[Old Professer]

It isn't exactly like he has a lot left to lose:

"Roger Ebert to Have More Cancer Surgery
Thursday June 1 11:48 AM ET


Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert, who has battled cancer in recent years, will undergo cancer surgery again, according to a published report.

In Thursday's Chicago Sun-Times, where Ebert has been the movie critic for nearly 40 years, columnist Robert Feder reported that Ebert will have surgery June 16 to remove a cancerous growth on his salivary gland.

"It's not life threatening, and I expect to make a full recovery," the 63-year-old critic and host of the nationally syndicated movie review show, "Ebert & Roeper," told Feder. "I'll continue to function as a film critic during this time."

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Ebert has undergone cancer surgery three times before once in 2002 to remove a malignant tumor on his thyroid gland and twice on his salivary gland the next year.

But Feder reported that Ebert is not expected to require radiation treatment as he did when he underwent the previous procedures.

"This is known as a slow-growing and persistent cancer," Ebert said. "You live with it."

Ebert recently returned from the Cannes Film Festival in France. He said he plans to tape enough shows with Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper that the program will continue to air during his recovery.

Ebert has been a film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1975, the same year he teamed up with Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune to launch their movie-review show. Siskel died in 1999."

[jordan8]

I am reading Case Closed, Gerald Posner's brilliant skewering of JFK conspiracy mongers again. What Posner makes clear is that the conspiracy mongers are not just in error but are consciously deceptive and dishonest, and more importantly, so are the mainstream media and liberal establishment that have let them peddle their hogwash for decades without any real critical analysis because the message being peddled, that America is run by a secret fascist cabal, is a culturally destructive message that is useful to them, and truth has no relevance. Here is Ebert's review of Oliver Stone's hallucinogenic film JFK. He gives it four stars and also puts it on his "Great Movies list." Here is the opening of his "Great Movies" remarks on JFK:

"I don't have the slightest idea whether Oliver Stone knows who killed President John F. Kennedy. I have no opinion on the factual accuracy of his 1991 film ``JFK.'' I don't think that's the point."

Indeed it's not. I am struck while reading this by the hypocrisy of the left that whines about "McCarthyism" because it allegedly unfairly accused people of disloyalty but blithely support decades of knowingly false accusations of treason and murder conspiracy in the JFK case.

[Snickersnee]

The figure I heard for South Vietnamese murdered after the Communist takeover was about 300,000. Where do you get 2 million?

Ever hear of a place called "Cambodia"? Well, it's in Southeast Asia. And a few people died there too, I hear.

[LibertarianInExile]

If we are going to be an active participant in overseas nation-building/interventionism, then we need a larger active-duty regular military, not the current alignment of National Guardsmen for offensive combat. Besides, the current regulations have limits on redeployment of Guardsmen, such that we are having to dig deeply into inactive reservists, like the 70-year-old sent to Afghanistan in 2004.

Yeah...yeah! In fact, what we need is a sixth service, one that just focuses on cleanup operations after the rest of the military beats the crap out of the organized opposition.

[LibertarianInExile]

"Boy, there's three winners. I can't wait to see that film."

No kidding, how did Tim Robbins, Alec Baldwin, and Sean Penn miss out on cameos in that one?

[LibertarianInExile]

ROFLMAO! Every time I think of that movie I think of the lampooning they did of that crappy show in Team America, World Police--second time on this thread that movie relates, and I SWEAR I am not hijacking it! They did a faux-musical called "Lease," and sang this song right at the start of the movie (every bit as subtle as Rent):

Everyone has AIDS!
AIDS AIDS AIDS!
AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS!
Everyone has AIDS!

And so this is the end of our story
And everyone is dead from AIDS
It took from me my best friend
My only true pal
My only bright star (he died of AIDS)

Well I'm gonna march on Washington
Lead the fight and charge the brigades
There's a hero inside of all of us
I'll make them see everyone has AIDS

My father (AIDS!)
My sister (AIDS!)
My uncle and my cousin and her best friend (AIDS AIDS AIDS!)
The gays and the straights
And the white and the spades

Everyone has AIDS!
My grandma and my dog 'Ol Blue (AIDS AIDS AIDS)
The pope has got it and so do you (AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS)
C'mon everybody we got quilting to do (AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS)
We gotta break down these barricades, everyone has
AIDS!

[Borges]

Rent is a hugely popular Broadway show. A modern day rethinking of La Boheme. It's not surprising that there was a movie made from it.

[Borges]

But it was a great film. There's a very high level of craftsmanship there. It's not a documentary but a fever dream about the national paranoia about those events. No one claims it's historically accurate.

[Valin]

Well put.

[RightWingAtheist]

Roger's bouts of ill health are the main reason for the inconsistency of his writing of late. There are times over the past five or six years where his writing style lacks the flow, the wit and the ability to explain and argue a postion well, things which he was long famous for. But he's still provided some excellent film writing, especially for his regular Great Movies columns.

[Borges]

When it comes to movies he's an expert. His commentaries on the Citizen Kane and Casablanca DVDs are models of the practice and must be heard by anyone who loves those movies.

[XR7]

I've seen the anti-war movement up close and personal in downtown Chicago
when I was discharged from the Navy in '69.
I was cursed at, yelled at, ridiculed, and denied entrance
to Nortwestern University simply because I was a Viet Nam Vet.
Then, as now, my support for the 1st amendment and free speech remains the same.
One thing HAS changed, if I see an anti-war protestor
HARMING anyone in the military OR anyone who supports our country,
OR damaging government or personal property
I will personally exercise my right to defend my country from those who seek to destroy it.

49 posted on 09/25/2001 9:05:36 PM PDT by 68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub