While he was fighting, I was only a kid and a teenager. I didn’t like him much because he had a big mouth, and I always rooted for Frazier or Foreman or ANYONE to beat the stuffing out of him. That he was a draft dodger didn’t exactly improve my opinion of him.
However, over time I have changed my thinking toward him. What he accomplished, he accomplished through sheer will and despite a lot of handicaps. I greatly admire him as an athlete and a competitor. I still don’t like the guy’s religious views - but he apparently doesn’t try to force them on others, so I guess that it is a live and let live thing, a big part of what this country is about.
As for avoiding going to Vietnam, I at least admire his guts in staying here and facing the music, rather than running away like a coward. Whatever else anyone can condemn him for, being a coward is NOT one of them. Still, I believe that he was very wrong. Part of living in a country and benefiting from what it offers is to serve if called upon to do so - and that is what he should have done. I’m sure that he wouldn’t have gone into battle, but would have been used for entertainment...and that is not “shooting the brown man.”
Americans have a long tradition of mistrusting governments that want to go to war. Giant propaganda campaigns, movies, media events and extreme atrocities have to be invoked to get any traction (Remember the Maine, etc). General Lafayette even complained to General Washington that the Americans under his command had no military discipline because they would argue amongst themselves and with him about his battle plans before they would agree to carry them out.
After all, the reason Americans fight is to protect such freedoms of conscience. And as you pointed out, Ali stayed and faced the music, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
As for his decision, I disagree with it as well, but because I understand the treachery and madness of communism. What I disagree with about the war is that we were hamstrung, undermined and even sabotaged by our own government leftists, and it would have been much better to get out after that was shown to be militarily effective against us, than to stay on and increase the draft while enduring such subterfuge. It got a lot of men killed who would have otherwise lived. And not addressing the Leftist problem back then enabled it to grow into the multi-tentacled monster we're fighting today throughout the entire government.