I also think motive matters. Are you avoiding the draft because you don’t think anyone should fight, or because you want it to be someone else? A lot of people who avoided the Vietnam draft (both legally and illegally) didn’t think anyone should be sent from the US to fight in Vietnam.
Motive certainly matters in my book. Yugely so.
My earlier post was just throwing out the biggest single item I hadn’t noticed anyone else mentioning yet. And it seemed at least some folks upthread were conflating the two terms, which invites muddled thinking.
This ^
I think regardless of position, you cannot be CiC of the military if you’ve avoided the draft - hawkish or dovish position. I want a president who uses militarism as a last resort but I wouldn’t want a total pacifist in the Oval Office either, so I wouldn’t be impressed with that kind of moral consistency either.
But I am particularly unimpressed with someone who on one hand talks about bombing the shit out of people but who thought he was too good to serve his country. And that’s what bothers me more than anything about Trump and his control of the military. I get the sense he really has contempt toward service people, as if they’re just a bunch of suckers or morons who were too stupid to do anything else. It’s their integrity, as it is with civilian civil servants, that keeps society running and functioning. It doesn’t just run itself. He has no fucking clue about that and neither do his sycophantic leaders and brainwashed voters.
May i claim the higher ground here? I could have applied for deferments, but chose to let the draft lottery decide my fate. I came up #17. They cancelled the draft instead of taking me. (1974 - you can look it up.)
I seem to have some weird refresh bug. This is the second time I’ve replied to what I thought was the end of the thread, only to learn after I post that there’s way more there…
Yes, this is what I feel, too.
You weren’t the only one who struggled with that. I read a study of grade inflation at Harvard, and the Vietnam war inflated the “gentleman’s C” to a “B”, because professors didn’t want their students to be drafted.
Bill Clinton had an uncle who was a judge and he asked the local head of the draft board as a favor to hold Clinton’s draft card until he was safe at Oxford. He received his next order from the draft board late because of mail delay to England. Because of that he had already started his term and was safe for another semester. When he returned from England he got a couple of friends to get him an interview with the head of the Arkansas selective service where he promised to join the ROTC at Arkansas while he went to law school. When his draft status was changed he changed his mind and went back to England. Once there he heard that Nixon was planning to drawdown US forces and he figured he was unlikely to be drafted because of the new draft lottery. He then got his draft status changed and entered the draft lottery where he received a very late number.
No worries. There is still not that much awareness concerning great chunks of the Latter-day experience or life. While Romney was posted to France, even those missionaries posted in the United States were also exempted from conscription. Romney’s experience was not exactly a cakewalk either; a drunk driver crashed into the car Romney was driving, killing a passenger in Romney’s car–that passenger was the mission president’s wife. Also, Romney did participate in the draft lottery when he returned to the United States after his student deferments. He did draw a high number but I do not see how he could have had control over that.
The way I see it is that if the person did nothing illegal, there is no valid criticism regarding being conscripted or not. After all, there was no prohibition on enlisting voluntarily; one did not have to wait to be drafted. Another issue is the morality of the war itself at the time. Then there’s also the issue that people change as they grow older. People are more complex than one issue frozen in the past, as are nations.
Many legal acts are immoral.
Interesting thread.
I was born in 1955, and thus had no difficult choice to make. But if a little older, I hope I wouldn’t have made a choice putting someone else in harms way.
An avid teenage newspaper and non-fiction book reader (as now), I though our participation in the war a mistake, but also thought our side less in the wrong than the enemy. I also, if memory serves, was confident I wouldn’t commit war crimes, and less confident about that concerning some of the other boys in my high school. Knowing that someone else, conceivably an uglier American, would have to take the spot if I didn’t, I had a duty to serve if called…
Now, I don’t think taking a deferment, to avoid breaking up your undergraduate education, was wrong. For all you knew, such deferments would push you into a time when ongoing warfare was worse.
Complicating it is that people like me did not get put into heavy combat unless they, like John Kerry, volunteered. So did an older version of me have a responsibility not only to accept being drafted, but also to volunteer for the true horrors of war I knew from my reading? While I admire Kerry, my shaky personal answer is – no. I respect the man who did his bit without evasion, without saying he needed to go out of his way to get himself killed.
Ah, that’s the rub, isn’t it? If I may paraphrase–and embellish–a touch, “One man’s morality is another’s immorality; however, the law is the law”.
The issue does not seem to be immorality, or the embrace of a moral code I do not like. The issue is the lack of any moral code at all. That is amorallity. If your moral codes not stop you from things you want to do (or if it allows you to do whatever you want to do), do you have any moral code at all?
Refusing to kill people isn’t a moral code?
What you wrote is internally inconsistent. Let me tweak that a bit:
If your moral codes do not stop you from doing anything you want to do (or if it allows you to do whatever you want to do), do you have any moral code at all?
IMO the answer to that question is “No you do not have a moral code”.
Now let’s try
If your moral codes do not stop you from doing some things you want to do (or if it allows you to do some things you want to do), do you have any moral code at all?
IMO the answer to that question is “Yes, you do have a moral code”.
So now we can discuss whether that moral code is a loose one or a highly restrictive one, and whether whatever it permits or prohibits is sound according to what logical and social standards. IOW, is it a “good” moral code or a “bad” moral code?
Chew on this one:
If China attacks and conquers Taiwan here in 2025, is the willing participation of a Chinese infantryman moral or is his desertion moral? Which? Why or why not? Who decides?
Interesting thread.
Many of the responses seem to indicate that because the Vietnam War was unjust in their opinion that makes draft dodging either okay or better or mitigating in some way. Would these posters feel the same way about a WWII situation? (Or if for some reason, you don’t believe that WWII was a justifiable war, then pick a scenario where you think it would be)
Because I think it is self-defeating to argue that a draft is okay, so long as you personally agree with the war or at least don’t think that it is wrong. It is sort of like the old states rights doctrines of nullification and interposition. If we are going to have a draft, then individuals simply cannot be allowed to determine for themselves whether to comply with the draft law, or otherwise say that I will go for this type of war, but not that type of war. That makes it a volunteer army and not a draft.
Don’t elect a government that gets us into stupid wars? I’m all for that, but once the process has worked itself out and we are in a war, isn’t it inconsistent to say that you are in favor of a draft generally but want to allow individual exceptions?
Let me throw another wrinkle into the mix. I was attending college full time in 1967 (pre-lottery) when I was suddenly reclassified from 2S (student deferment) to 1A. I most definitely did NOT want to go to Vietnam, but running away didn’t seem like an option, nor did claiming CO status. I puzzled over this right up until I was called in for my physical and told that I would be draft eligible in 21 days.
So to avoid being a ground-pounder in the Army infantry, I went to the Navy recruiter and enlisted. This didn’t mean that I couldn’t be sent to Vietnam (and in fact, since I was designated as Naval Construction, it was quite likely) but it certainly significantly reduced my risk of being killed or maimed, and dramatically reduced the chances that I might have to shoot someone.
So here’s the question: did I dodge my responsibility? Did my avoiding the Army then mean that some other shlub then had to take on my risk? Is someone’s blood on my hands? Was I a coward or merely exercising my options? Where is the line drawn?
No, no, and no.
You took on real risk. They could have changed their enlistment policy, maybe due to a staffing shortage, or some minor rule-breaking on your part, and thrown you onto a riverine combat swift boat. If that happened, you’d be in worse danger than most draftees. (And since your post doesn’t say, whether or not you actually wound up in Vietnam, maybe something in that direction did happen!)
Life is often a matter of degree. You seem to have, at a minimum, done your bit. There is a continuum between faking a medical condition to exempt yourself, and volunteering to be a tunnel rat. Being in the middle is morally fine.
Each of us is a moral actor. Each of us is responsible for what we do. We must all decide on the morality we keep.
But you didn’t start the war, or continue it, or create the draft. There are people to blame for that bloodbath, but it would not have been you. Some scared kid, or someone who felt the war was evil, should not take the blame for the sins of Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert MacNamara.
Normal flawed people who made mistakes, not realizing the the U.S. and the Vietnam bordering China are natural allies – yes. But I think that, reading what was then available, pro and con, regarding U.S. involvement, calling them evil was not justified and fits too nicely into the natural human desire to avoid danger.
Also, they didn’t necessarily evade the draft out of even partial idealism. I’m sure that Donald Trump didn’t. Perhaps mixed motives were more common.