It's long been noted by many people that the biggest reason for the end of the Vietnam war was not social pressure or political logic, but actually soldier dissent within the military, both in the form of refusing to fight and in organizing political movements within the military (for an excellent political doc on the subject, check out 2006's Sir, No Sir).
There has been a fairly good lit on the left produced about the Winter Soldier movement, the coffee house movement, the various resistance publications produced by soldiers, and the myriad other techniques utilized to bring down the war from the inside.
What is heartening is that it's happening again. Recently, Jessica Lynch, the young private form West Virginia who went down in a blaze of glory and was rescued by heroic soldiers bursting into an Iraqi prison camp to free her. Now, of course, those amongst us with critical thinking skills tended to believe the eye-witness accounts that her convoy was hit by a missile and she didn't fire a single shot. Then, instead of being burst out of a prison camp, she was instead simply retrieved from a hospital, where doctors had been working on her injuries and notified American officials that they could come get her and take her home.
But finally, private Lynch has spoken out herself, calling for an end to the prefabricated lies being told about her and many other soldiers. Joined by the family of Pat Tillman, the ex-football star who turned down a lucrative contract to join the Army post-9/11 and was killed by friendly fire but a similar heroics story was spun about him, Lynch has joined a congressional investigation into the cover ups.
I'd like to say this is the beginning of the end for the war, but we all know better than that. But at least it's a good sign...
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