[Marxism] "The Quiet Mutiny" (1970)

[Joaquin Bustelo]

	I happened to recently download a DVD of John Pilger documentaries
that included his first documentary, made in 1970 in Vietnam, "The Quiet
Mutiny."

	In 26 minutes, he cuts through all the bullshit and explains why the
Vietnam War was ending: because the 80,000 "grunts" --overwhelmingly
draftees who did the actual fighting out in the field-- were refusing to go
on with the war.

	"The grunts are dying, at a level acceptable to both the American
military and the American public," Pilger says in a standup halfway through
the documentary. "Another 65 this week, about the same next week, and the
next, and the next, until the very last American division ... combat
division ... is withdrawn, and so far for all the words from Washington only
paper soldiers have gone home.

	"The war isn't over, but it is ending. It is ending not because of
the Paris talks or the demonstrations at home. It is ending because the
largest and wealthiest and most powerful organization on earth --the
American Army-- is being challenged from within. From the very cellars of
its pyramid -- from the most forgotten, the most brutalized and certainly
the bravest of its members. The war is ending because the grunts are taking
no more bullshit."

	Black GI: "I just don't like, I just can't take too much pressure
from the army.

	Pilger: "What happens to an unpopular officer out in the field?"

	Black GI: "Mostly the unpopular officers, from what I heard, if they
mess with the grunts too much they get shot up."

	White GI: "A friend of mine, a captain, got shot in the back."

	Pilger: "What was he doing, what was the captain doing to deserve
being shot in the back."

	White GI: "Well, my friend said he was telling them to just go on
through They were getting hit pretty bad, and he was telling them to just
keep on going. They said no. He kind of got shot."

	Latino GI: "Well, yeah, there's a lot of mistakes. But, you know,
the grunts don't always do what the captain says. The captain will stay back
and tell a platoon or something to go out so many hundred meters, you know.
We don't do it. We only go as far as to get out of sight and sit down. We
don't want to hit contact, that's the one thing we don't want to hit."

*  *  *

	This was Pilger's first documentary and it shows. There is a jump
cut (from one take of Pilger looking at the camera to another) in the
"standup" I quoted, and a number of abrupt transitions not handled very
artfully in either the writing or the film editing. The image quality is
tolerable but won't benefit from being put up on a really big screen, like
just about all TV news film of those years. 

	But if anything, the relative lack of production values, as well as
its brevity, only heightens the film's impact. This IS the way things were,
honestly filmed, honestly told and honestly presented, and without the
bullshit "balance" of American TV News to obscure the truth.

	Pilger says in what I quoted that the war wasn't ending because of
the protests at home, and in a direct sense that is certainly true. But he
does single out the importance of the antiwar movement and the youth
radicalization in general earlier in the piece. 

	"The grunts in 1970 are a very different kind of American foot
soldier," Pilger says a couple of minutes into the film. "They are mostly
from a world unknown to their commanders. They're the graduates of an
American rebellion that stemmed from the war that they've been sent here to
fight. And quietly but massively they've brought that rebellion with them,
here, to Vietnam."

	"For the grunts are unraveling the very fabric of the military.
They're growing their hair, wearing love beads, smoking pot, flourishing the
peace sign of peace. And some are refusing to fight. The young men you see
in this film are not a selected griping minority. I've spoken to hundreds of
young soldiers, and the rebellion they feel so deeply is everywhere."

	I was struck by Pilger's report that the U.S. had 80,000 front line
troops in Vietnam (although when asked about this at one of the daily "five
o'clock follies" press briefings, the briefing officer refused to confirm
the figure, saying "60%" of the then-403,000 troops in 'Nam were combat or
direct combat support). It is striking that by then, 150,000 troops had been
withdrawn, but no combat units, according to Pilger.

	At any rate, 80,000 is roughly the same number of front line troops
as are in Iraq now, by my calculation, or more precisely, that are in the
fighting units (Brigade Combat teams) in Iraq, though a number of the 4,000
troops in a BCT --I *think* a few hundred-- are really in support functions.
Since I don't know how the Vietnam number was arrived at, or whether it
includes the Marines, a very exact comparison is impossible, but this does
confirm that Iraq is not a qualitatively smaller war than Vietnam was, which
is the impression you get by looking at the total troop raw number (160,000
in Iraq now versus 550,000 in Vietnam at the peak of the war). 

	The resilience of the Iraqi resistance becomes all the more
astonishing given this reality.

	This documentary is included in the collection "Documentaries that
Changed the World," of which there appear to be a couple of different
editions, with the more complete one not readily available in the U.S.
(i.e., not on Amazon). 

	Amazon UK does carry a four-disk version, but they are Region 2
DVD's, meaning they won't play on DVD players sold in the US Market, at
least not until you've hacked the region restrictions (usually done by
entering a few numbers in a hidden menu -- instructions for many players can
be found with a Google search).

	The American version of the collection is just one disk but it does
include Quiet Mutiny and is available only through Bullfrog Films
<http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/>. It is a DVD-R (i.e., burned, just like a
home-made one, not manufactured) and older players may have a problem with
it.

	This US release is priced at --get this!-- $595, although you can
rent it for $200. This obviously is meant for universities and institutions
and I assume includes the necessary permissions to use for public showings.
By comparison, the FOUR disk British DVD --for home viewing only-- is 16
pounds.

	You can save yourself a lot of hassle and a little money and just
download the DVD's through bittorrent as "ISO" files. An "iso" is an image
of a DVD in a single file that you can burn to a writable DVD using a
program like Nero Burning ROM. Just do a search for Pilger at
www.onebigtorrent.org (formerly chomskytorrents.org). 

	BTW, this case is a good illustration of why Hollywood anti-"piracy"
measures are really attacks on free speech, and the importance of a free
Internet --and what the media monopolies decry as piracy-- in combating this
censorship. My daughter this year in high school is studying modern history,
and I've been astounded at how her textbooks don’t include some of the most
relevant facts, like that the reason the U.S. had to withdraw from Vietnam
was because of the collapse of the morale of its army in the field. She, at
least, will know.
	
Joaquín