MktBuzzer says you're disgusting but I say good for you J. Chris for speaking out plainly and honestly.
It was a little different then when the network news showed the hundreds of coffins filled with the torn and rotten bodies of our young men coming home every week from that muddy, bug-infested, hothouse war. A war where we fought for a local population that largely hated us and for a cause that was unclear and specious.
I remember that it was standard for almost everyone I knew of draft age to avoid the risk and misery of serving in Vietnam. Most got deferments of some kind. Those with money or influence, or with the resources and intellect to maintain a college deferment, like the Cheanys of the world, avoided the draft easily. Some, like Bush, avoided the draft through privileged appointments and a National Guard deferment. Some who were drafted actually refused to serve and served time or fled to Canada. Dean was lucky with his congenital back medical deferment. Some had the gout, some claimed to be homosexuals, the list was long.
You made your choice and you're man enough to stand up and say so. It was the choice of almost every young man of that era. It made sense then and virtually every one of our current same-age politicians made the same choice.
It amazes me that some people on this thread who will never serve and probably never did, see themselves as John Wayne types now, and feel they have the right to show contempt for someone who made a rational choice to legally evade potentially lethal service in an irrational war. It's sooooo easy to be tough when you're hiding behind the skirts of mamma while someone else, or someone else's kid, is getting shot. |
