re: Tell me, is my view on the draft really THAT crazy?

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86% of the Americans killed in Vietnam, when there was a draft, were white males.

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Yes, there has always been that inaccurate perception that minority kids died in outsized numbers in Vietnam - minority kids actually died at a slightly lower rate than their percentage of the military-aged male population of the time.

The difference is far more pronounced now, though, for a lot of reasons. It was not something I necessarily expected before I was in - to see how lily-white a lot of infantry and special operations units are now. It is arguably counter-productive when going into a place like Iraq or northern Africa or Latin America.