While Scylla and I do not always agree, I will say that I would rather have a hundred of him around here than the scads of hit-and-run or argument-without-alternative-solution style posters that clog these boards (especially in GD). Through most of my life I have expressed a preference for people who have vocal opinions (even if they do not agree with my own) over those that are mealy-mouthed or noncommittal. I still maintain that today.
[[Protests in America dropped to near zero when the draft was ended, it was all self serving bullshit. Nothing wrong with that, but just admit it, you didn’t want to fight and die for non defined goals.]]
Then how come so many of us females were protesting? It was about a lot more than the draft, Dave. And the war ended very shortly after Nixon ended the draft, anyway.
Jill
(Ah wuz theah)
[Edited by JillGat on 11-11-2001 at 07:26 PM]
Hmmmm…they might be Amish?
Ouch! OoohKAY, so Auntie Veb needs to work on the consolation stuff. Copious amounts of beer and succulent viands might help. (hint, hint)
FTR, I get really pissed–beer aside–when ahistorical labels get slapped around on any side of an issue. They’re sloppy and unworthy, even for near-past history. They degrade the wrenching decisions ordinary people had to make in the thick of events.
Anecdotal but maybe illuminating: my father was a self-made man who defined himself as a conservative, a life-long Republican and a citizen-warrior who rose to Army Master Sergeant in WWII and whose sacrifice helped defeat tyranny. He was a quiet, stubborn patriot.
He hated the VietNam War for a cynical, political, ballyhooed, unwinnable mess that threw away lives wholesale. Nobody recognizes that faster than a battle-hardened soldier. The bluff, no-nonsense old coot took his own vacation time, tapped his savings, loaded up the car and relocated 2 draft-fodder guys to Canada. (That I know of.) Go figure.
It wasn’t a simple time. NO time is. Tidy labels on ANY “side” ignore reality.
Auntie Veb is through seething for the moment. A beer might be soothing.
Sounds like one hell of a man.
Yes, he was.
OK, guys, look. I gotta sweep the place out and stuff, turn out the lights. So howzabout we just let this drift on off the page. See you all later at the “See! I told you Gore won!” thread.
Of course, many of them wouldn’t have had to go at all, if people like you hadn’t decided you didn’t have to. For every one of you who decided you were a little too busy to go to Southeast Asia, one of them had to. But I guess you’re pretty proud of that, huh? After all, you got yours, right–let everyone else worry about theirs.
Nah, you can go stand in the corner with Clinton and Bush and Gramm and Quayle and all the rest of the draft-dodging schmucks. In fact, I have to give them some credit–at least they beat the system, played the system. The rest just said, “Fuck the system!” as if they were doing something noble. You folks couldn’t even get enough votes together to keep Nixon out of office – twice! – but you were on the side of the angels, oh yes.
Oh, you martyr, you. You poor, poor baby, suffering in the miserable US of A, maybe risking a tear-gassing from the cops at a protest every once in a while. Oh, and you probably got called some nasty names by some rednecks. Must have been awful! I don’t know how you survived!
If you’re ever in Northern Virginia, I’ll introduce you to my 2nd cousin, Freddy. You’ll have to talk real loud to him, since he’s only about 4 inches tall and carved into a black granite wall. I, of course, never met Marine Lance Corporal George F. Edwards. An NVA grenade took care of that before I was born.
Or I’ll let you talk with my dad. Oh, don’t worry–he’s alive. He can tell you about how he spent most of the 80’s either drinking heavily or under medication so he wouldn’t dream. The only dream he ever had the courage to describe to me was the one where he’s wandering through a field and human faces are falling from the sky like raindrops, bursting into flames when they hit the ground. That was one of the less bad ones, I think.
Yeah, I’ll introduce you and y’all can swap war stories. I suspect yours will pale in comparison, you hero, you.
I’m sorry about your cousin. Sorry about your Dad. And my cousin Cole, who came back with a heroin monkey the size of Mighty Joe Young. About all of it. Did what I could, it was little enough. I would dearly love to believe that those efforts directly effected a shortening of the war. No such luck. Is it impossible for you to believe that anyone such as I might have had honorable motives? Which is to ask: are you some kind of blind and bigoted asshole?
Tell you what: you show me where I made any claim to heroics or martyrdom, and I’ll kiss your ass till you bark like a fox.
I honestly don’t give a shit what your motives were, elucidator. The point, again, is that for every one of you who decided you had more important things to do than go to Vietnam, somebody else had to go. When you, as you so blithely put it in a GD thread, “declined” your “invitation,” somebody else got invited. And that somebody else got shot at, or got killed, or got PTSD, or got a drug habit, or became an alcoholic, or became a POW and got abused, or committed suicide, all so that you could have the luxury of being back Stateside exercising your Constitutional rights. I bet they would have enjoyed doing that too. Sucked to be them.
“Blind and ignorant bigot”? Because I recognize that the Powers That Be got your RSVP that said, “No thanks, I will be unable to attend,” that they didn’t simply say, “Well, I guess that’s one less troop we ship over there?” No, anything but blind, I’m afraid. I got to grow up in the shadow of it. I got to see my dad rotate back to SE Asia every single year from 1967 to 1974. I’m sure he, too, would rather have been doing something Stateside than being called a baby-killer by the daughter of my grandparents’ next-door neighbors. (Yep, it happened. My mother and my grandparents both witnessed it.) But he was just too damned dumb to realize he could decline his invitation, I suppose.
You should be sorry. You should feel guilty, too, every day of your life. You didn’t end the war. The guys in Washington ended the war, when they finally decided it was too costly to continue. In another sense, the NVA and the VC ended the war, by putting bullets or shrapnel into those 60,000 folks whose names are carved in that wall. “Sorry” doesn’t even begin to cover it. “Sorry” is what you say when you step on someone else’s foot. When you send someone else off to get killed for you because you dodged the draft, groveling is more appropriate.
And then to sit back and accuse others of blindness and ignorance and bigotry? You can feel free to kiss my ass whenever you are up to it, and use a lot of tongue. I’ll even make sure I don’t wipe for a couple of days beforehand, so it’s nice and tasty for you.
I’ll give this to your boy Al Gore–at least he served. At least he went over there, even if it was in a non-combat position. But you? You get to be in that honorable class with George W. Bush–the ones with “honorable motives,” who had “other priorities.” Hope you’re proud, even in your sorrow.
That’s it? Thats all it takes to send you spiraling into a shit fit? Man, you gotta get over yourself!
Your self-righteousness is clotting your brain. How the hell do you know what you would have done, you weren’t even alive!
Now, I’m going offer you the respect of a honest answer, if you return in kind, so much the better.
My phrase about “declined to attend” is a breezy and off-handed, and, in intent, a mildly self-deprecating way of describing the situation. In actual fact, as it turned out, I would never have been sent, not even accepted had I volunteered. In my opinion, thats neither here nor there. In all probability, I would have rather moved to Canada, live in an igloo and live on seal fat. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I damn sure wasn’t gonna shoot somebody to save Nguyen Cao Ky’s sorry ass!
How does a man honor his country by aiding in something dishonorable? Would you insist that he has an obligation to enroll in something he believes to be wrong, simply because his country is wrong? Would you have said the same to a WWII German who refused to serve in the Wermacht?
If my way of expressing that offends you, I am mildly sorry. Very mildly. But do you seriously expect anyone to go tip-toeing around for fear they might step on your sensibilities? Don’t hold your breath.
You got a legitimate beef. You should take it up with Robert McNamara, who signed the orders when he knew what he was doing was not only wrong, but doomed. Why waste all that vitriol on me? You should write him a couple hundred letters a week before you get around to shitting on me.
And when someone dies and makes you God, you can look into my heart and tell me what is written there.
Are you comparing our troops in Vietnam to the fucking Nazis? :mad:
Yes, our policy in Vietnam was muddled, supporting one bad regime against another in a war-by-proxy with the Soviets, using the antagonists in the Vietnam civil war as pawns. IN NO WAY does that compare with the Wehrmacht.
What PLD said, jackass! (Phil, I really wanna have your babies!)
Boy, are you a dick. Yeah, my father spending seven years in Vietnam while a bunch of self-important draft dodgers got to kick it back in the States gives me a “shit fit.” You bet your life.
Hmmm . . . 1969 < 1974 . . . uh, yeah, I was, in fact, alive. See, my father got to come home often enough that my mother got pregnant twice, but he wasn’t home for the births of either of his children. The Red Cross got to track him down in the field and tell him about it.
In any case, when I turned 18, I registered for Selective Service, and I know what I would have done had there ever been a draft.
Well, that’ll be a first for you.
Oh, I see – it was the kind of statement that, when other people make it, you call it a “lie.” In fact, the kind of thing you just dragged Scylla to the Pit for. Imagine that.
Million of Vietnam veterans thank you for that, too. I can’t believe you don’t see the problem here, so let me spell it out for you: By doing so, you would be responsible for getting another American sent to Vietnam in your place. I cannot possibly make it more clear.
Did you just try to Godwinize the thread? Nice try.
How does a man honor his country by getting another American killed in his stead? Would you insist that that is a noble endeavour?
You think that’s what this is about? Then I submit that you are not only morally deficient, but stupid, too.
When he starts posting here, I’ll be sure to post a Pit thread about him.
Because you seem awfully cavalier about playing with other people’s lives and excusing draft dodgers, whether in theory or in practice.
What, you think you’re above it? You think you don’t deserve it? I gotta work my way through the architects of the war before I get to you? That’s pretty weak. Ain’t nobody above a flaming, and if you can’t take it, mayhap you oughtta not dish it out, you know?
Balderrot, sir! Tommydash! I can only respond to the things you write. You want different responses, write something different.
There isn’t anybody at the Straight Dope whose shit doesn’t stink, and that includes you. It seems you’re one of the unfortunate few who doesn’t yet realize that.
Of course not, you ditto-head robot moron! And further, you know it!
The point is this: which is the higher calling: patriotism and/or nationalism or your personal judgement of right and wrong. I say the latter of the two.
Hey, I don’t want to keep you, G. Gordon Liddy could use a good blow job, hurry along now.
Ok, thanks for sharing!! Next? 
-Rav
You ignorant fuck! I thought you were doing okay until I read that drivel.
What the fuck was dishonourable about about an American who was called up to serve in the Armed Forces?
The Americans made a promise to aid the South Vietnamese against the North. Maybe it was a promise that should not have been made, but to call the men who went over there “aiding in something dishonourable” is just disgusting beyond words.
You, elucidator are an asshole of major proportions, and if something like this ever happens again, stay the fuck out of Canada.
We don’t want you here.
And comparing this to the nazis is just too much.
Asshole.
Sorry for repeating myself. I do that when I get mad.
The above immediate is adressed to Goober-Bear.
Without wishing to take up either side on this one, there’s one thing in your argument I don’t follow Phil.
You say that by refusing to honour the draft, another person must take your place. But why can’t they refuse to honour it as well? How come you get the choice and they don’t? And how come you’re asked before they are?
By that reasoning, can one not say that by refusing to volunteer before you are drafted, they are forcing you to fight?
If one man has the choice, then so does another. If one man can decide not to go, then so can another.
I’m really not following your line of reasoning on this one.
pan
I can hardly believe I’m having this conversation, I thought all the brain-dead were long gone. But fuck it, you want to fight, you got the right guy!
So if someone throws a rock at a crowd that both you and I are in, I duck, you don’t and the rock hits you, I threw the rock? Huh? I didn’t send anybody anywhere, if there was any way I could have stopped it, betcherass I would have.
The regime of S. Viet Nam was rotten to the core, top to bottom. Our leaders knew it. LBJ totally screwed what up to then had been an honorable political life. Hell, they even got it on tape, he fucking knew he was sending soldiers to die in a hopeless cause. For a rotten, corrupt regime. And I’m the villain here? You gotta be fucking kiddin’, shit-for-brains!
Whats stopping you? You got a shit load of moral outrage, I’ve already got more than my share. Spread the wealth of your generosity. By your own admission, Geo. the 2nd is at least as complicit as I. Get yourself a stick of wood and a bit of poster board, go picket the rear echelon motherfucker! You got so much guts, lets see some!
But you never did answer the core question, did you? If you believe that what your country is doing is wrong, what is your obligation? Will you shoot a man whose cause is just? I say no, not just no, Hell, no!
Whats yours?
Wow, it didn’t take you long to descend into “everyone who disagrees with me is stupid” mode, huh? How can you even live with yourself, being so correct all the time? It must be nigh unto physical pain.
Note to observers: This is typical of the modern partisan. You will see it regularly from both sides of the aisle. Learn it. Know it. Shun it.
Oh, the irony, the irony.
Bad analogy. If you have a ticket for a bus trip, and you know the bus is going to crash, and you “generously” step aside so I can have your seat – in fact, am required to take your seat – you are complicit in my death. If you then stay behind and protest the use of that bus when we all knew it was dangerous, you’re an asshole to boot.
Did I vote for him? No, I didn’t. Did his not serving play a part in that? Well, not really. I don’t vote for Republicans as a general rule. Do I hold it against him? You bet your ass I do.
Boy, that’s funny, coming from you. Glass houses, and all that. In any case, not only do you not know what I do outside of the SDMB, you probably aren’t even capable of guessing correctly, nor is it any of your business, so you’re battling a straw man here.
That isn’t the core question, I’m afraid, unless you’re going to argue that the people who did go to Vietnam just didn’t have the moral certainty that you did, didn’t have the guts to stand up to their country and say, “No,” in which I case I would invite you to bite my crank. The core question is, “Is it right to make someone else take my seat on that bus?” Apparently, you believe it is.
Kabbes, if the Army requests another 5,000 troops, and the draft board draws enough numbers for 5,000 names, and 300 pull an elucidator, the Army isn’t going to just say, “Well, I guess we have to just take 4,700.” They’re going to get another 300 guys to make up the difference–300 guys who otherwise might not have had to go. I suppose we can theorize a situation in which everyone refuses to go, but that isn’t very bloody likely.
I do have sympathy for what you’re saying pld. I’m not one to play the semantic game of insisting that the victim of a mugging has the “choice” of handing over the wallet or being shot. I accept that some choices are no choice at all.
But I don’t see that as the case in this scenario. The elucidator-replacer has exactly the same choice as the original elucidator did. To use your bus analogy, the replacement would also have to know that the bus is going to crash and would also have to have the choice of handing over to a new unfortunate.
I honestly don’t get it. If the replacement has the same choice as the original, then the replacement can choose the same path as the original. Yes the American military won’t like it and will seek another victim. But that doesn’t mean that the choice is the same for each and every case.
Your take on the situation is a discussion I would also quite like to have, to be honest - to what extent is one justified in handing this kind of Greek gift to another person? But I’m afraid that I don’t actually see that as the key point here, since the “gift” can be passed on and on and on and…
pan