re: Why are lefties condemning President Trump for avoiding the Vietnam war?

My dad was a draftee in 1965. Got shipped over there with the Army 1st Cav (Airmobile). After he got back, he would go to the local National Guard Armory and harass the guys there (because in the 1960's you could dodge the draft by joining the Guard). He despised draft dodgers.

I don't know if he ever experienced the whole "baby killer" talk, but I doubt it. Knowing his temperament he would have killed them. Then again, most of that shite happened in bigger cities or on college campuses and not in small towns (where he was from). He never talked to me about the war or the aftermath. Everything I know is from my mom or my uncles.

It was pretty rough, though, for a lot of the guys. A lot of them just became alcoholics and drug addicts, committed suicide, or got put in prison. My dad went through that spell in his 20's. He was in a bad enough mental state that his family wanted him to be committed to a mental hospital. He got arrested a few times for serious (violent) crimes, but because he was a vet, the judges let him off.

Luckily he snapped out of it, got a good job, got married, and had kids. He still had "episodes" later in life and could fly off the handle and become violent, but he managed things fairly well all things considered.

This is why I am not crazy about Vietnam. I think it was a waste of 50,000 lives and untold misery for the vets who did survive. I am not happy that the communists took over Asia, but I don't think it was our war to fight. The people in Vietnam were dirt poor regardless of what government was in place.

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"why have conservatives villified draft dodgers for generations but have now voted one into office?"

I get what you're saying, and I'm starting to deal in shades of gray here, but avoiding the draft in order to go to Russia, later protesting the war, smoking dope, and harassing returning soldiers (Bill Clinton)... is much different than avoiding the draft and studying at Wharton Business School and building a business and providing jobs.

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I'll double down and say, from someone who has criticized every stupid arse liberal in this thread, that this is some stupid arse logic, too.

A privileged a-hole avoided going to war for his country that had afforded him and his family with every possible advantage he could ever want in this world with every possible lever he could pull. He didn't have enough courage to even put his pampered arse forward for the Guard or Reserves. Screw him for that, too.

I say the same for Cheney and Blumenthal and Rumsfeld and all the rest of those turds. At least Webb and McCain had the guts to actually go and physically answer their calling.