I’m actually not upset that people get college deferments or medical or any other deferrals. I do find it upsetting when people act superior because their deferment was more acceptable than someone else 's. The fact of the matter is I don’t know why John Wayne didn’t want to enlist. Was he a coward? Possibly. Did he not support the war? It is also possible. Did he just want to continue building his career, quite probably. At the end of the day he didn’t serve when he probably could have. It is also true that people change constantly. Think about yourself 10 years ago. Were you the same person? No. Will you be the same person in 10 years, not a chance. The man also gave support to our troops at a time when the country often didn’t. When it would have been easy to not.
FTR, I didn’t have a deferment. I had luck: both a high draft number and a high birth year, missing the end of the Draft by about a year. Would I have gone had Uncle Sam’s invitation to the party in SE Asia been more insistent? I don’t know for sure but probably, with me pursuing a cushy stateside berth if I could. I’m a coward. I have never suggested otherwise. I have nothing but respect and admiration, and sympathy, for those who went then and go now, but I also feel that it is my duty as a citizen and a human being to work so that they are not sacrificed in a war with a dubious foundation where the government, existing or one we install, is corrupt, and where the population suffers more because of our efforts than they would have otherwise.
On the other hand, Wayne was a blustering blowhard who didn’t turn his words to action when his country asked him to fight in a rare justified war. At best, he’s no better than I am. Which is not the sort of goal a hero should strive for.
cf James Stewart and David Niven, who didn’t have to, but did.
I do like a lot of the Duke’s movies. But there’s no question that I regard him personally with contempt.
Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of political leaders who whole-heartedly support going to war but even more emphatically decline to participate themselves. A good list can be found here: http://www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks/
I laughed.
Uh, Ann Coulter? Britney Spears?
Rather than insulting, I find that improbable. Eisenhower never struck me as being that stupid.
I agree. I think Cheney and Gingrich and Nugent should be annually flogged for promoting the deaths of younger citizens after they managed to avoid serving, but an awful lot of the people on that list were not actively avoiding service. The author is just too happy to hurl insults that are rather pointless.
This. It was an idiotic thing to say by a man not prone to saying things that were idiotic. And I’m having trouble verifying it anywhere online than internet message boards, and we know how reliable THEY are!
Anyway, by then Murphy had grown to 5’-7" and Ike was only 5’-10". Not enough difference to get snarky over.
Duke?
- Uncle Duke from Doonesbury
- The Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke of York, the Duke of Windsor, or the Duke of Cambridge
- David Duke, the Klansman
- George Deukmeijian, the California governor
- Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor
…
John Wayne? How about putting his name in the thread title.
John Wayne dodging the draft during WWII is the minor issue. Wayne made it into his major moral failure when he repeatedly lied about the Vietnam War and made propaganda movies like The A-Team to sucker naive men into dying for nothing.
Since the commentator’s draft status or military service appears to be important to people here, please note that I received a college deferment for two years, but when the lottery came out, my number 107 was just four places higher than the people called up for the draft, so I won that “lottery.”
Hypocritically propagandizing the Vietnam War and calling for people to enlist and support it, a war most Americans were against, after he shrugged his duty during the Big War, when it was really all on the line, when almost everyone who could serve did serve, when it was really possible that America would be overrun by Fascists from abroad, that was his crime: his hypocrisy.
It does not matter if he did that to boost his sagging career among young people (the main movie ticket buyers back then, too) in the 1960s who had rejected him or to psychologically make up for his cowardice during WWII when it counted.
Back in the 1960s, John Wayne was like the right-wing Baldwin brother who just filed for bankruptcy, or Charleton Heston: a fading actor who automatically supported right wing causes with lies in order to grab some box office returns to remain relevant and employed. John Wayne was HATED by half the country for those lies.
Wayne dodging the draft earlier and lying in order to sucker more Americans into Vietnam made him into a chickenhawk, that most despised species of American. A chickenhawk, like Cheney, Bush the Younger, and most of the politicians who most strongly supported Bush’s Iraq War and the Vietnam War, too, is a politician who is a coward and afraid to serve during a war he claims, in hindsight, to support, while he advocates for Americans to go fight an unnecessary war with lies about the current war and his own patriotism. Chickenhawk has another definition, as used in the movie Taxi Driver, and surprisingly, that definition is often valid for these chickenhawks, too.
These threads don’t seem to realize that John Wayne was hated by many more Americans than Charleton Heston, and if the truth about his service was popularized back in the 1960s, Wayne would have been hated by even more Americans.
What?
Ah pity the foo’ who didn’t recognize John Wayne through his “B. A. Baracus” costume and makeup! 
Okay, I guess it is safe to assume that Rasillia Ramire was probably referring to “The Green Berets”
Don’t be silly. Wayne played the team’s leader, Colonel Genghis Khan Smith.
Ann Coulter definitely belongs since she not only didn’t serve in uniform (women are allowed to, after all) but openly has questioned the courage of anyone voicing opposition to W’s 2nd Iraq war. I remember her saying in a speech that we were letting “them” attack us over there so that “they” wouldn’t attack us here. Add to that her vile remarks about combat veteran Max Cleland.
As for the lip-syncher, “chicken hawk” may be too harsh a label for someone who may not be too swift on the uptake, which her quote seems to indicate.
Bumping this thread because the article is back on the SD front page.
Without a doubt, Audi Murphy was a war hero. But that’s not the end of the story. For the rest of his life he suffered from what is now referred to as PTSD. That doesn’t make him a coward == just a human being with frailties.
And it doesn’t make those who did not serve cowards either. There are those who genuinely believe that it is immoral to serve in war time. Cassisus Clay’s refusal to serve in Vietnam, and consequental imprisonment, did not make him a coward.
Audi Murphy’s life after the war was not all heroic. He was charged (and acquitted) with murder in a bar fight. Plagued by insomnia and nightmares,
In his later years, Audie Murphy threw away his fortune on gambling and investments, and was in ruin when he died in a plane crash on May 28, 1971.
I don’t particularly care for John Wayne except for his being an American icon. He was a movie star, not a war hero. But he inspired war heroes. That’s part of the battle too. There are others who bravely stood for not killing other men, women, and children.
We can’t know for certain another’s motives. Labeling someone a “coward” because he did not fight is ignorant. There are also those who were “war heroes” who protested the war.
I haven’t read the column recently, but I don’t recall that he decided not to join because of moral issues. As you say, we’ll never know his motivation. It could very well be that he didn’t want to get croaked. If that’s the case, then labeling him a ‘coward’ would not be out of line. If, as Cecil implies, he stayed out of military service to further his career, then a more appropriate label might be ‘chickenhawk’. He had an opportunity to join a Naval photography unit, and he let it slide. Now, the Navy wasn’t especially safe in WWII; but it wasn’t as dangerous as flying (or flying in) bombers over Germany, as Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable did.
Were Wayne’s films important to the war effort? Yes, they were. Were they more important than actually being in service? They were to Wayne. Military service didn’t seem to hurt the careers other actors and filmmakers who went to war. Had his chance; muffed it.
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He made great cars, too!