FIGHTS FOR RIGHT TO VOICE HIS VIEWS IN U.S. ARMY AGAINST VIETNAM WAR
By Lew Jones
A twenty-one-year-old soldier in the United States Army has been threatened with court-martial for the sole "crime"’ of expressing socialist opinions against the war in Vietnam to his fellow soldiers.
Private First Class Howard Petrick had been active in the socialist and antiwar movements before he was drafted into the army last July. In the summer of 1965 he had become active in the Minnesota Committee to End the War in Vietnam. His opposition to the Vietnam war led him to socialist convictions and he became a memper of the Young Socialist Alliance and then the Socialist Workers party.
The army has not accused him of disobeying orders or of failure to carry out his duties as a soldier. The sole issue involved is whether GIs, as United States citizens, are entitled to exercise the democratic rights of free speech and assembly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution.
The Emergency Civil Liberties Conmittee has agreed to provide Victor Rabinowitz and Leonard Boudin as Petrick's civilian legal counsel. They are two of the most eminent constitutional attorneys in the United States.
Petrick returned on April 1 from a ten-day leave from the army, during which he attended a national convention of the Young Socialist Alliance. Upon his arrival at Ft. Hood, Texas, he was interrogated by Military Intelligence and assigned an army lawyer who told Petrick that there was a definite prospect he would be court~martialed. The lawyer said the charges in such a court-martial would probably be "subversion," "making ~ disloyal statements," or "creating disaffection" within the army. Each of these counts carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison at hard labor.
Howard was held and questioned for several hours on his political views, especially on whether he was a. member of the Socialist Workers party and was circulating literature put out by the SWP.
Later Howard found out from his fellow GIs that there had been a shakedown of his entire unit, and his closest friends had been questioned by Army Intelligence. The lockers of the soldiers in Petrick's unit were searched. All literature against the war which Petrick had given out was confiscated, as well as any antiwar literature the soldiers had of their own.
Howard's friends were asked such questions as whether he had any relatives living in Communist countries, what he thought about communism, about the Vietnam war, about the United States government, and about the civil-rights movement.
In an interview, Howard described this harassment of his friends: “About five GIs who had quite a bit of my literature were segregated from the rest of the unit, and were made to eat after everyone else did. They had guards watching them so they wouldn't talk with the other guys. These guys were all questioned later by Military Intelligence."
It was rumored in Petrick's unit that they would be sent to Vietnam this summer, so Petrick found much interest in his ideas and literature. Howard stated, "Most of the GIs don't want to go to Vietnam, don't understand the war, are not satisfied with the answers they are given by the military, and they want to know more about it. Mainly, they don't agree with the war enough to face being killed over there. The guys who come back have told of complete platoons being wiped out, in territory that is supposed to be ‘'secure.'"
He went on, "In any discussions about the war I always tried to enter them to present what I thought about the war, which is basically that the United States has no right to be in Vietnan.
"I found that there were other GIs who agreed with me, or didn't know much about the war and wanted to know more about it. I mentioned to them that I had literature on the war and if they wanted any, they could have it. Soon GIs would come to me asking for literature and we would get into discussions about the war, and it would lead into other topics, such as the labor movement, and I would give them a pamphlet I had on labor unions.
"Or speaking with black GIs about the war, the ideas of black power would come up, and how black power organizations have come out against the war. And this
would lead into such things as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization, independent political action by black people, the ideas of Malcolm X, and such questions as nonviolence or self-defense, and the racist character of the war...."
The pamphlet Petrick found most popular in the army was War and Revolution in Vietnam, a Young Socialist pan- . phlet by Doug Jenness. He had distributed about thirty of these in the course of his ten months in the army. Also he gave out about twenty of the pamphlet GIs and the Fight Against War by Mary-Alice _ Waters. This pamphlet describes the "Bring us Home" movement of United States troops after World War II.
Demonstrations and letter-writing campaigns were organized by the troops, who wanted to be demobilized, since the war was over, and not remain stationed in such places as China. Soldiers Howard met didn't know anything about these events, which are never mentioned in school history books, and were very interested in learning more about it.
Howard figured out many different ways to explain the war to his fellow soldiers, depending on what their interests were and how much they kmew about history and politics.
"Some people, especially those who have had some college or have done some reading on Vietnam or Cuba, I could talk to them on a much higher level," he said. "I could explain to them that it is basically capitalism that creates the conditions which lead to these revolutions. When people are being exploited they can only be suppressed so long before they realize what is happening and begin to resist. Many GIs seem to understand that if people are suppressed they are going to fight back.
"Sometimes I said, as an illustration, what if the people in the United States were all of a sudden taken over by a dictatorship and the people were forced to return to the way of life. they had in the 1900s, with wages like that, and poor living conditions. They would probably resent this and try to organize some type of a movement to get rid of this dictator.
"If this dictator was getting help from the outside, well then, that would be the role of the United States going in to help the south Vietnamese regime of Diem or whoever the dictator was. We Americans would be in the position of the peasants whom the U.S. is now fighting in Vietnam, and we would be fighting for a better way of life.
"A lot of soldiers can see that very well and ask why the Vietnamese people let the dictator get in power in the first place. Then I would go back and explain the Geneva Accords and how the United States had almost completely set up the dictatorship of Dien."
Petrick continued, "To different people you can use different approaches. I have a good friend who is interested in South America and Cuba so I related the Vietnamese revolution to the Cuban revolution and explained that if the Vietnamese people win, they would probably set up a system like Cuba has now. Also, I pointed out that the United States has troops in Guatemala, which he knew, and that eventually Guatemala could become another Vietnan.
Although the army might courtmartial Howard for expressing socialist and antiwar views within the army, Army Intelligence knew he was a socialist when he was drafted.
At the point of induction into the Armed forces, the draftees are asked to sign a loyalty oath and a disclaimer, which is supposed to establish that the prospective draftee is not a member of, or associated with, any of several hundred organizations arbitrarily branded "subversive" by the U.S. Attorney General. Petrick refused to sign this, on the constitutional ground that such an oath violated his First Amendment right of free political association.
Because Petrick would not sign, the army did not induct him immediately, but said they would first conduct an investigation to determine whether he was acceptable for service. During this investigation Petrick joined the YSA and the SWP. Throughout the period he was active in the antiwar movement.
The army, knowing that Petrick was a@ socialist and against the Vietnam war, nevertheless drafted him into the army, and is now attempting to infringe on his right to express his views there.
A Provisional Committee to Aid Pfc. Howard Petrick was formed by friends to publicize the case and raise the money for legal defense. The committee hopes to receive solid support from the antiwar movement, since this case is also an attack on the right of citizens to express opposition to the war.
Petrick thinks that this defense effort can aid in assuring other GIs that they have the right to voice opposition to the war in the army. Commenting on this, he explained, "Several GIs who saw I had antiwar literature and heard I was making statements against the war, asked me wasn't I afraid to do this.
"I tried to explain to them that this is a constitutional right which also
applies to GIs, and that they could exercise these rights. After a while a lot of these guys would speak out more against the war and also read the literature more openly. After I had explained to them that they had a right to this literature if they wanted it, many of them would keep it in view in their locker even during an inspection. They weren't so afraid to have it then. "But now I'm sure that what the army is doing to me is going to make a lot of the GIs worry about just how many rights they do have. If, through a strong defense effort, we can make the army back
down from what they're attempting to do,
I'm sure that this will renew their faith
that they do have constitutional rights,
even though they may have to fight for
then.
"Such things as my case, with a
broad defense from the antiwar movement,
would bring the antiwar movement a lot
closer to the GIs. It would show them
there are people in this movement that
really care about what is going to happen
to them and don't want to see them go to
Vietnam and get shot up or just go to
Vietnam, period."
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL