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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Win Smith who wrote (135330)	6/2/2004 12:13:07 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I have no idea how old you are, so have no idea how well you know, and remember, the calculations young men went through when considering how to deal with the draft during the Vietnam War. Since it was well known that a tour of duty in Vietnam was one year, the choice you mention, two years for being drafted vs. four years for enlistment, wasn't a choice between two or four years in Vietnam, per se. It was well known that your odds of survival as infantry were low compared to other means of service. I don't mean to get into a debate here about what forms of service were more dangerous than others. I was born in 1952, so the young men my age were facing the draft in 1970 or so. By that time, the war had been dragging on for 6 years. Johnson had already been caught lying to the American people about the war many times. Nixon would be caught lying about the war to the American people many times. Gulf of Tonkin, Haiphong Harbor, Cambodia, etc., etc. I don't mean to refight the Vietnam war. Honestly, I have a hard time believing that the American voters care anymore about the distinction between Swift Boats and Air National Guard. I have a hard time believing that anti-war activists are pushing Vietnam service as a Good Thing. But such is politics. In real life, none of the guys I was friends with in high school or college went to Vietnam. Not one. I knew a guy who said he was planning on enlisting after college, who asked me out, but he was too square for me and I did not date him, just had coffee with him a couple of times. I can't even remember his name. I just remember he wanted to serve on the Swift Boats, for some reason. In contrast, I knew a couple of doctors who made it known that they would give 4Fs on appeal, and I used to take people to see them. I helped a lot of guys avoid the draft. I knew people who went to Canada, and I knew people who had friends and family pull strings to get put into military intelligence or be stationed in Europe or serve in places or stations that would never see combat, like submarines. During the war and after the war, of course I met men who had served there, but they were not from my type of background, upper-middle class college educated suburban kids with high SATs.