re: The real reason Muhammad Ali refused the draft

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soon as Ali became a Black Muslim

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Well what other color Muslim was he supposed to become?

This board can't even hide it now.

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soon as Ali became a Black Muslim


Well what other color Muslim was he supposed to become?

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You realize that was a specific thing at the time (I think it still is, but I'm not sure)?

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Ok, but I'm not that attached to this country.

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What does this mean?

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It means I'm still not going to fight to keep the USA exactly how it is. If some things change, ok. If I don't like the changes, I have enough money to move somewhere else.

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The Fascists who have taken control of this country makes it very difficult for the average American to remain "attached" to it.

That's why a "boogeyman" must be conjured up to fight against.

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is that Ali refused induction not out of principle but from fear of disobeying Elijah Muhammad, who had stipulated that the champ not serve in a “white man’s war.”

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well it's to bad that Elijah Muhammad couldn't convince him that "rope a dope" while being effective as a strategy might not be in his best long term health interest.

i was in high school from 75-79 and i remember it like it was yesterday.

the forman fight the rumble in the jungle was when he first rolled out rope a dope.

really it was the ernie shavers fight that was the beginning of the end and followed by the two spinks fights and then ending with larry holmes

Holmes was a former Ali sparring partner and came in as an undefeated champion. The famed Mayo Clinic had found that Ali had “mild ataxic dysarthria,” a problem using the muscles required to coordinate speaking, and that he had trouble even conducting a basic finger-to-nose coordination test. Ali was beaten for eight rounds, even though Holmes had backed off and later cried about beating a man who had given him his start and probably never should have been in the ring. Dundee mercifully stopped the fight after the 10th round.

hard to watch.

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Bombing innocent civilians is never a sound military strategy.

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The NVA was using eastern Cambodia as a bypass for funneling men and material into the South and those men and materials were being used against American troops. Destroying the supply lines which the North intentionally put near civilian centers is not pretty, but trying to choke off the enemy's supply lines and ammo dumps is absolutely good military strategy.

Nixon was faced with a whole host of problems about doing this. First and foremost, he was not loved by Congress and the anti-war left who would have acted "shocked....shocked I tell you" that the NVA was doing whatever it could to destabilize it's enemy....and it was our fault of course because we controlled the DMZ there.
Plus this was tabout the time the anti - war movement was at its highest and Nixon was probably pretty sensitive to the press. Like I said, it was a crappy war in a crappy place

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I would have avoided the draft as well.

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It's not too late to catch a plane to Canada. They have all kind of free stuff over there. Just stay the hell there.

Lived that time little boy, lost two people that were friends. People like you just lite me up speaking of things you know fricking zero of.

Nevermind

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Because he doesn't want to die in some pointless, immoral, dick measuring contest?

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Did you hear or see that on your I-phone or the lightship lollipop?

Note to Self: Nevermind, just ignore stupidity when you see it.

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You got to explain that one seeing as to how he wasn't in power until '73 and the war was officially over about 22 months later

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Actually, if you want to blame one person, blame David McNamara who was Sec of Defense under Kennedy and part of LBJ's tenure. LBJ relied heavily on his opinions about building up troop levels in Vietnam until McNamara crawfished and told LBJ that maybe he was wrong. Shortly thereafter, LBJ arranged for that SOB to have a different job than Sec of Defense.