DUNCANThe Haymarket Square GI coffee-house opened Saturday, August i1,with a program of speeches, moviesand music that ran from early «~afternoon until midnight. "Battleof Algiers," a film dramatizingthe Algerians fight for indepen-dence against the French, drew alarge afternoon crowd. FolksingersBarbara Dane and Bob Laroy thentook the stage and earned warmapplause from the swelling (andoften sweltering) crowd with theirrepertoires of popular and anti-war songs. A cooler, standing-xroom-only evening audience of 200heard main speakers Don Duncan,@exz-Green Beret, and Susan Schnall,~@ze-Navy nurse, blast the U.S.military and call for its reforn.Sue Schnall began by describingher career as an officer in thenurses corpse OCS training dis-illusioned her. oAs officers," sherecalled, owe were told we weren'tSupposed to fraternize with enlist-ed personnele The example that wasgiven was that if you were bankpresident, you wouldn* be seenfraternizing with the janitor."At Okono Naval Hospital in Oak-land, her duties caring for wound-ed Marines turned her azainst theWare After marching in uniform inpeace rallies and taking part inan anti-war leaflet drop, over thehospital and Treasure Island areashe was brought before a generalcourt martial board.~ Sehnall cited her court martialas a typical exmaple of militaryinjustice. At a hearing to testthe impartiality of board menbers-all superior officers, she noted--her lawyer asked their opinion onpeace demonstrations.oTerrible,� was the unanimous ans-Wel e"What would you think of militarypersonnel taking part?""That's even worse$T""What about an officer who takesPartece?"�"�"inexcusableeseea breach of loyality"was the verdict.Schnall was found guilty andsentenced to six months at hard la-bor and six month forfeiture of payBecause she was a woman, however,the sentence was eventually sus-pended by the Navy."T*'m Sure you guys are aware thatif the same circumstances appliedto you, you would have served thesentence," she concluded.Don Duncan's hard-hitting talkclimaxed the evenings Sitting cas-ually on the edge of the stage,he recalled his years of Armyservice-in Germany, at Bragg andin Vietnam as a Special ForcesNCO=-and his change of mind overthe wareAmericaTs evolution into amilitaristic power was Duncan'smain thesise "We have a nationof people now who have ll beenthrough basic training, directlyor indirectly," he charged. Toprove his point, he touched on awide variety of toplcgg. amongthem: adBASIC TRAINING: oThe whole think-ing process changes in a fewweekse Things that were incompre-hensible when you were inductednow seem reasonablee It doesn'tseem unreasonable to you gettingup at 6 AM to go pick up cigarettebutts.�INSPECTIONS: oYou see grown menStanding along side beds pulledso tight no human being couldpossibly sleep on theme Displayedon 'the bed is equipment no onehas any use for. An officer re-marks, "Good bunk, Smith," andyou say, oThank you, sir"--as ifall of the sudden making a goodbunk has become the most impor-tant thing in the world. What'shappened to one's value systemand how much of the mickey mousedo you take back into civilianlife?"MICKEY WOUSEs: oFor instance, canSe a ee en ee . . .you imagine=--1it 1s not againstVIETNAM BETRAOn July 4, 1976, we: Americanswill officially celebrate the200th anniversary of our Revolu-tion. Unofficially many Americansand mixdtons of disappointed for-eignerd will be questioning whether we really have anything leftto celebrate.Twenty-five years ago thiseymonth H6 Chi Minh stood on a balecony in Hanoi and read the Viet-namese Declaration of Indepen}dence,This is how he began:"All men are created equal.They are endowed by their.creatorwith certain inalienable rights;aomong these are Life, Liberty,and the pursuit of happiness,After noting that "this immor-tal statement was made in the De~Claration of the United States ofAmerica in 1776, Ho said: "A peo-ple that has courageously opposedFrench domination for more than60 years, a people that hasfought by the Allies side theselast years against the Fascists,such a people must be free, sucha people must be independent, o+The people of Vietnam wereoverjoyed. They thought that theWar was over and Vietnam was inedependent.instead the British and theFrench, with American acquies-cence, began to use troops of thedefeated Japanese army to restoreFrench rule in Vietnam.Of this, General Douglas Mac-Arthur said it made his "bloodboil to see our allies in Indo-china "deploying Japanese troopsto reconquer the little people wepromised to liberate, He said itwas "the most ignoble kind of be-trayal."But the worst was still tocome,In 1950 the American govern-ment began to actively supportthe French reconguest in Vietnan.By 195% when the French weredefeated at the battle of DienBien Phu, the United States haddirectly paid for over half thecosts of the French imperialists.M#hus did the first modern .na-tion to revolt against Europeancolonialism become a supporter ofcolonialism 200 years later.Since 1954 the American gov-ernment has been trying to pre-sérve the power of an unrepresen-tative elite who gained theirspecial ~privileges when theFrench were in power.Robert Frost, one of our greaé-test poets wrote that "América ispromises."How much longer can we allow oour guns, tanks, napalm, our CIAmen, missionaries and greedy cor-porations to betray our finesttraditionscand ideal which is thetrue promise of America to theworld.HERELIES THE REMAINSAMERICANREVOLUTIONBovn 1776pied 19762BEI RAYED ANDBLED TO DEATH ING PAIN, C HINA,HAITIANGOLA, GREECE,VIETNAM~ la {ui 1/) yeic Cass ploMAYBE WE WON'T wave ;To WAIT WNTIL 1994 AFTER ALL f...atCoffeehousearmy regulations to carry an un-brella while in uniform. But itis against AR's to open an um-brella, when it*s raining, whilein uniforme"DISSENT WITHIN MILITARY: "Depri-vation of individual rights anddignity under the guise of mili-tary discipline just isn't goingdown anymoree There are so manyguys=-both in and out of service-who are no longer buying theargument that you can*t let peopleexpress a political opinion orit's going to cause the countryto fall apart.The Army has put down the GIpeace movement as being only 2%of the Armed Forcese Well, evengranting this low figure, that'sstill equivalent to four airbornedivisions%" 3GI_ OFFICE IN WASHINGTON: "Whathappens if your senator is JohnTower of Texas, or what if yourRepresentative is Mendal Rivers ofSeCe--who do you write about denialof @ivil liberties? Or a Congress-man gets a letter and the Armytells him this is an isolated in-cident, caused by an aberrant ind-ividuale.e.e. We're going to compilethese complaints, document them,and get Congressional hearings--with the aim of eventually takingthe court martial system away fromthe UeSe military."JANE FONDA: oShe got tired of beingripped off posts for doing nothingillegal. She complained to a fewCongressmen about it and they re-fused to believe themilitary couldbe that flagrant in ripping peopleoff and asked her to prove ite Oneof the Congressman's aides accom-panied Jane to Ft. Belvoir and allthey were carrying with them wasa copy of the Bill of Rights. Theywere on post three minutes, slammedup against a car and iven ordersto get off. The Consressnan wasOoutragedt"�BLOODBATH IN VN: "We've been toldthat we can't get out of Vietnamor we're going.to see a bloodbath.That's based on the assumptionthat what we've done has not al-ready been a bloodbath!"FREE WORLD FORCES: "In most cases,the so-called 'free world forces!are countries ruled by militaryjuntas or dictatorships, sometimeswithout benefit of a constitution.In Laos, Vietnam, Thailand,Greece, Spain, Portugal, Brazil,Bolivia, Taiwan, and so on...Wepay to keep crooks and tyrantsin power!"In a question and answer ses-Sion later, Duncan was asked whatpractical changes he wanted tosee in the military."We can make the military liveup to its own rules and regula-tions."We can weed out the psycho-paths that are now commandingunits."We can put the military outof the propaganda business."We can start paying people adecent wage."We can take the court-martialsystem away from the generals."We can put the military backunder civillan control.Asked for his opinion on theprovosed all-volunteer army,Duncan replied: "The idea thatwe're going to lose control ofthe military because we have anall-volunteer army begs twopoints: First, the fact is wealready have a professional military, over 50% of personnelbeing in grades E-5 and above*and second, we already have lostcontrol of the military, witnesswhat they can do with absoluteimmunity--either in court mar-tials, in foreign policy, withkickbacks on war contracts, orwhatevert"*The Uniformed Service Almanacof 1969, pel5l1, shows the per-centage of E-5 and above to beHUG.