The Cause That
Passes Through The Military Prisons-With The Heroic Whistle-Blowers And
Military Resisters Supported By “Courage To Resist” In Mind
From The Pen Of
Sam Lowell
Ralph Morris, ex-
Army soldier, Vietnam, 1968-70, was furious when he heard the news recently
that Private Chelsea Manning, the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower who blew the
lip off of American military atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan and other
nefarious acts by the American government under both Bush II and Obama, now
serving a thirty-five year sentence at Fort Leavenworth out in the wheat fields
of Kansas, had been threatened with solidarity confinement for some trivial
offenses. Her offenses; having unauthorized printing matter and other
“contraband”, the prize possession being a copy of Vanity Fair, the issue not unimportantly featuring the former
Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon Bruce Jenner in her new publicly
declared sexual identity as Caitlyn
Jenner. As Ralph told his old friend and political comrade Sam Eaton whom he
had met under his own prison-like circumstances on May Day 1971 on the floor of
RFK Stadium after both had been arrested with other members of their respective
contingents (his Vietnam Veterans Against The War and Sam’s The Cambridge
Radical Front) for attempting to “shut down the government if it did not shut
down the war” this was to use an old Army phrase “chicken shit.” (The war
Vietnam for those with short memories or who were too young or not born in case
there was a question of which of the endless wars of the American imperium of
the past few decades.)
[That “not
unimportant” mentioned above in regard to the Vanity Fair copy is particularly relevant since Ralph and Sam had
both worked hard from the fall of 2010 on after hearing about Chelsea’s
incarceration in solidarity and under torturous conditions down at the Marine
base in Quantico, Virginia after she had been “finked” out by a fellow soldier
trying to get out from under his own problems with the military. At that time
as both men knew Chelsea, then known as Bradley, had her own sexual identity
questions which were kept under wraps until after the trial and sentencing were
over. So it was very appropriate for her to find out about Jenner’s story and
condition although transgender issues were not relevant to the specifics of
Chelsea’s case, of her heroic actions in exposing the common military
atrocities attributable to American/Allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and
other nefarious actions of the government via Wikileaks and their support for
her.]
Although Private
Manning was found guilty of the various transgressions, those prison
disciplinary infractions, as charged by the Army and those will show on her
record and affect her time going forward, perhaps affecting parole and time
considerations she was not placed in solidarity at least in part through the
beauties of the Internet, for once. Once the charges and possible penalty
became known a very fast Internet petition gathered over 100,000 signatures and
that slowed the Army down a bit. Still the whole “chicken shit” scene as he had
seen in Vietnam, stuff like setting up any guys who talked back, talked about
the craziness of the war although he was not one of them, he held his tongue,
for the “kill” by having them walk point which in his years was like painting a
target on their backs made Ralph very angry, anger that the now gentle angry
man usually kept in check. And Sam knew that the episode would have that effect
on Ralph since he had been through this kind of thing before when the cases of
military resisters hit the front pages of his mind.
Ralph to his
eternal sorrow had not been a resister, had in fact extended his tour of duty
during Vietnam from a year to eighteen months in order to get out a little
early not for political reasons then but just to get on with his life. That
extra six months though and the hell he and his company went through in the
Central Highlands finally turned him against the war. Finally got him
“religion” about the issues of war and peace. Thereafter he would tell anybody
who would ask (and will still tell if anybody is willing to listen) that he did
what he did, he wished that he had not, and wished that the American government
had not made him and his Army buddies nothing but animals toward people whom he
and they had no quarrel with.
See too Ralph knew stuff, knew some ugly
intelligence about certain massacres happening in his sector, and kept as quiet
as a church mouse, quieter, about it. Such things weigh on a man, weighted on
Ralph. Ralph had been doing “penance” ever since. So it was no accident that
working-class Troy, New York-bred Ralph Morris turned up in Washington, D.C. on
May Day 1971 in Washington with his contingent of fellow Vietnam Veterans
Against the War (VVAW) and met working-class Carver, Massachusetts-born with
his contingent of Cambridge radicals there to avenge a fellow Carver corner boy
killed in the war. (Jeff Mullins who in an ironic twist also served his time in
the Central Highlands and who begged Sam in repeated letters home to tell the world
what a fucked up war that was if he did not make it back.)
And it was no
accident that through a long and hard political career of anti-war street
politics that Ralph would work hard for soldiers who resisted the American
military juggernaut. And not as the Chelsea Manning case illustrates just for
the “chicken shit” stuff either, not by a long shot. The road to freedom for Chelsea
just got harder but Ralph and Sam would stay the course, would as Ralph had
heard a speaker mention during a speech in defense of Chelsea on Armistice Day in
an anti-war program at a Veterans For Peace-sponsored ceremony at Sam Adams Park
in Boston one year when he was visiting Sam-“we will not leave our sister
behind.”
