re: Thoughts on people to dodged the draft for the Vietnam War?

I just can't see a draft even being useful. Today's wars are not like WWII where you need 12 million men. We can't train people in 6 weeks to work the technology. We have a professional force for a reason. A draft would be counterproductive for many reasons. Do you really want that soft arse commie neighbor covering your platoon? Do you want unskilled fighters coming home in body bags?

Wars are a stupid waste of life and treasure. But if you have to fight have trained professionals with the best weapons in the world. And take the best care of those guys when they come back. Don't give illegal aliens better health than veterans.

This is a dangerous sentiment to express on this forum as it is over run by keyboard warhawks...Viet Nam was minor incursion and Nixon a great President. They know because of reading articles, watching movies and films made about it.

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This is a dangerous sentiment to express on this forum as it is over run by keyboard warhawks

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Its ok they have a containment thread.

My perspective on this has changed a bit from my younger days. I have proudly served in the Marines. I love my country and it’s traditional values. I knew at a young age I wanted to serve. I have two sons who spent many an evening as babes rocked to sleep while I lightly sang the Marines Hymn. I would never push military service on them, but for various reasons I always thought of that as a great option for them. With the woke push in our military, I would now strongly oppose them serving. Our military warrior class is being destroyed. I believe that this warrior mentality traditionally bleeds through our society and our national identity, and has made us stronger. My boys will still be warriors, but will likely not have the same formal training and fostering of the mentality that I had.

I have discussed this with many of my brethren, and they feel the same way. There will still be many that are recruited just for the benefits, but the warrior class of people drawn to service for duty and love of country will dwindle.

Wolfhound, I agree with all of that. It would seem that the answer should be no we (our country) don’t have interests over there but our government certainly has interests over there for, I’m sure, a wealth of reasons. To protect those interests, they will utilize their propaganda arm the best they can to get us to see how those interests are somehow ours.

To the Vietnam draft dodgers, I can’t imagine they had the amount of information we have today. So were a majority of the dodgers just fearful and not wanting to go to war or did they see this as unjust?

A lot of people(see Bill Clinton) dodged the draft because they thought their arse was too precious to risk.
That was for poor white guys, blacks and Hispanics.
Although white Southerners were overrepresented

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Same caveat I always have, attack the Homeland? Sure than I am all on board.

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We’d all line up for that?

Some BS war with modern progressive rules of engagement on foreign soil. frick that.

I was very critical of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War in my youth and my near worship of our military forces. As I've aged and as I have seriously studied US history in depth, my opinion has changed completely. Our government had absolutely no business getting us involved in that war under the false premise of protecting the world from the spread of communism.

Little, ol' Vietnam was never going to be one of the dominoes of democracy falling to the red plague and infecting the rest of the world. It was simply a chance for our government to fight a proxy war with the Soviet Union and show Moscow a thing or two.

By the same token, I am against a military draft today, except in the case of a direct attack against our nation which threatens our sovereignty. Too many thousands of young Americans have been pumped full of patriotism on the false premise that some little Podunk nation was a threat to our sovereignty.

There has been no declaration of war in ANY of these instances since the conclusion of hostilities with Germany and Japan in 1945. If congress (who holds the sole authority to declare war) doesn't deem a declaration of war necessary, then there is no reason to believe it is necessary to send young Americans off to kill or be killed for some vaguely understood political reason.

There is also no good reason at all that the US should become involved any further in the war between Russia and Ukraine. It's not our business. It doesn't threaten our nation's sovereignty. No one has invaded our shores. The greatest current threat to our nation lies within the halls and walls of the White House and the chambers of the US House and Senate. Hopefully this upcoming election will help rectify that situation to some degree.

My dad's rejection letter from Officer Training School and his draft notice came in the mail on the same day. His cholesterol was too high to be an officer, but not to be cannon fodder.

He became a teacher, and got a deferment. I don't know if that makes him a draft dodger or not, but if it does, my opinion of draft dodgers is pretty high.

I love my nephews. I'd probably shoot them in the foot.