Sure but Trump is a republican, who are traditionally much bigger on supporting the military and lauding people for service. I say they should make an attack ad showing him walking around playing golf over the quote about bone spurs and then include his quote about how “sleeping around” was his own private Vietnam.
Remember we don’t need to convince Republican voters to vote for Clinton, we just need to convince 2 or 3 percent of them more to stay home than would otherwise vote for Trump.
No matter what, though, Hillary is going to be held responsible for Bill’s behavior during this time and all Trump would have to say to any attack like that is to say that a doctor told him he couldn’t serve and to say that unlike Bill, he stayed in the U.S. just in case he might be needed (knowing full well that he was effectively safe from ever getting drafted with a 1-Y designation).
Since we all know how the Vietnam War turned out, any attempts to avoid it, legally or illegally, don’t seem to have any impact on people. Especially those who might be persuadable to either stay home or write-in another person, who are not likely to have been of age for Vietnam and are more likely to be middle aged. Hitting Trump’s perceived strengths would likely have a better chance at this - attacking his business record, his anti-immigrant bona fides, and his toughness.
Hillary didn’t even meet Bill until 1971, long after the possibility of him being drafted had been settled.
How adorable - you think facts still matter.
No No, the evil democrats have invented time travel but are keeping it to themselves. That’s why Obama is to blame for changing the rules of engagement which killed Captain Khan.
Republicans must have it, too, hence Bush is credited with killing bin Laden.
Many people Donald’s age avoided the draft any way they legimitely could. I did not know any young men my age who wanted to go. I knew plenty of young men who entered the seminary. I know a few who went to Canada. At the time it was not seen as disgraceful by the majority of their peers. I’m not quibbling over the legitimacy of Donald’s deferment.
But put put that deferment in the context of his campaign today:
He is the one who claimed that he has made sacrifices comparable to the Khans’ losing their son in combat.
He’s the one who accepted the gift of a Purple Heart, saying “I always wanted a Purple Heart.” Does he even KNOW what the Purple Heart means?
He’s the one who said avoiding STDs was his own personal VietNam–such a statement makes a mockery of the 58,195 individuals named on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.
He claims his military school experience is the equivalent of active military duty.
He is always placing himself among and with veterans as one of them. That makes him a different sort of draft [del]dodger[/del] avoider.
False! How dare you malign Mr. Trump’s statements!
He told a biographer that his military school was harder than what many service members experienced. Cite.
Don’t ever make the same mistake again. I hear the SERE training at the New York Military Academy (which by the way recently went bankrupt and was bought by the Chinese, so I’m sure we’ll have those Chinese super-soldiers being trained in Cornwall-on-Hudson any day now) is extremely tough.
Pretty much. The strictness of a draft is going to be directly related to how much trouble the military is having meeting its manpower needs. A lot of the guys who actually got drafted into Vietnam, and who actually went and fought, were the guys who maybe didn’t “want” to go, but took the view of “it’s my duty, if I’m called, I will.” If you really really didn’t want to go there were indeed a lot of paths to avoiding it. Keep in mind only 25% of forces deployed to Vietnam were draftees.
The Vietnam era draft was essentially an unnecessary ‘strategic’ move, we did need more manpower, but we actually could’ve filled it using the National Guard (we never even came close to needing a draft while fighting dual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in part because the manpower needs of those wars were lower, but also because National Guard units were regularly rotated into those countries.)
Don’t forget that Trump also said he wasn’t interested in serving in Vietnam because “he had other things to do.” Pretty close to the words Cheney used. And those things didn’t include taking to the streets or protesting the war.
Taking steps to avoid the Vietnam draft seems extremely reasonable to me. It’s the fuckers who SUPPORTED THE WAR but made sure they got to stay home who can fry in hell. Trump, Cheney, Dubya, and the rest of the slimy little chickenhawks.
They got rid of the champagne units?! Goddamn Baby Boomers, is there any ladder they won’t pull up after themselves?
In Dubyas defense I doubt he supported the Vietnam war during the conflict, he was far too drunk to have any real political opinions.