Posted on 06/04/2016 8:42:53 AM PDT by KeyLargo
Joe Bruno on Boxing – Muhammad Ali is Not a Hero.
Muhammad Ali passed away Friday night, June 3, 2016. I wrote the article below around the year 2000.
I got to know him fairly well in the 1980’s, when I was Vice President of the Boxing Writers Association. He was a real friendly man, and we had several nice conversations about what I have written below.
Still, his death doesn’t change what he was, and what he did early in his career.
It is with a sad heart that I stand by what is written below.
It’s just the truth, and a man’s death doesn’t change the truth.
Muhammad Ali Hero?—Not!!!!!!! There’s a new phenomenon taking place in boxing, and in the news media in general, which I’ll gracefully call revisionist history. I’m talking about the way the so-called media portrays one of the most controversial figures of all time – Muhammad Ali.
Former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali may have been great fighter, but he was also a shameless draft dodger, who refused to fight for his country in the Vietnam War.
If you say the United States didn’t belong in Vietnam–I agree. If you say it was a stupid war, a war we couldn’t win — I also agree. I didn’t like the war any more than Ali did, but me and hundreds of thousands of other men like me, black, white, or whatever, went into the United States armed service because it was our duty to our country and to our families.
Ali’s refusal to be inducted wasn’t a black/white thing like he and his people tried to shove down our throats. Hundreds of thousand of white men chickened out and avoided service in Vietnam too.
Ali claimed to be a Muslim minister as his exemption
(Excerpt) Read more at joebrunoonboxing.wordpress.com ...
When confronted with your own hypocrisy, suddenly its “you love Ali and hate Trump.”. No, actually I hate hypocrisy. And intellectual dishonesty. If Ali was a draft dodger, then Trump was one also. If you hate one for it, then you must hate the other also.
Unfortunately you’re too blinded by your hatred for one and devotion to other to realize it. And I, like every other sane American, wouldn’t vote for Hillary if my face was on fire, and she was standing next to me with a bucket of water she’d be willing to trade for my vote. But believe what you will.
If you don’t see the difference between a guy who got a couple of student deferments and then couldn’t pass the physical from a traitor who disavowed his country, there is nothing I can say to you that will add to the discussion.
Quite the contrary. Ali never disavowed his country. He never ran to Canada. He stated his case, stayed here, and faced the music.
Trump? SEVEN deferments before his supposed 4-F. Seven.
Now, which one was the draft dodger?
Besides, Vietnam was a war started by the Rats.
Here’s a little more for you:
“You don’t see me running off to Canada,” he said. “I’m not burning my draft card or burning the American flag. You can put me in jail or shoot me but I’m not going in no army to fight against people that don’t even call me the names I’ve been called in my own country.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/muhammad-ali-knew-tribute-late-bill-gallo-article-1.2660767
Doesn’t sound like a guy disavowing his country to me.
That is called sedition and most people who have taken that position in our 200+ year history were executed for it, the Viet Nam Era excepted.
Commies come in all colors...
Sedition??? “Conduct or speech inciting people to rebel against the authority of a state or monarch.” I see no incitement in his speech. Far from it. He’s speaking for himself, not others.
Weren’t the founding fathers therefore seditious?
Please find me a list of people executed for Sedition in the last 200 years. In fact, find me even one.
A private citizen making a statement against his government isn’t sedition. Its called free speech. Look it up. If it was, given the current government, half the people on this board would be guilty of sedition.
First, I don't hate Ali. I just don't idolize him. He was a great fighter and a flawed hero. The term draft dodger is really a loose one. Clearly if Trump had fled to Canada, he would be a draft dodger. No one has charged Trump with violating the Selective Service law. His student deferments were routine. And unless someone has new information, there is no legal issue with his medical deferment. Trump had the opportunity to volunteer and the record speaks for itself that he did not.
Ali fought the draft saying that his religion, Islam, was a religion of peace and prevented him from serving. He was initially convicted of violating the Selective Service law. It was later overturned by SCOTUS. We can differ about whether Ali was a true believer and that Islam is a ROP or that Ali was looking for any excuse not to serve. I guess it was a coincidence that his conversion to Islam was around the same time as his draft notice.
Again, this thread is not about Trump. It is about Ali and what Joe Bruno wrote about him. You want to conflate the two. I am not going to change my opinion about Ali and neither are you. Why don't you just let it stand. And stop making it personal.
Lets put it this way. Neither one wanted to go, and both found a way to get out of it. Equals the same result to me.
The 2-S classifications are Trump’s student deferments. The first two covered his time at Fordham University in the Bronx, and the second two allowed him to stay in school when he transferred to study business at the University of Pennsylvania.
When he graduated in 1968, Trump’s classification shifted to 1-A, or “available for service.”
Had that stood, Trump would have been drafted.
But Trump had a physical exam in September 1968. He had taken one less than two years earlier that did not disqualify him for service as we can tell from his 1-A classification in July 1968. However, his second physical was followed in October with a new classification, 1-Y. That designation put him near the bottom of any call-up list. It meant he would only be drafted if there were a national emergency.
"Ali refused to be inducted into the armed forces, stating that he had "no quarrel with them Vietcong". "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape or kill my mother and father.... How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail."
Aligning himself with the Nation of Islam, its leader Elijah Muhammad, and a narrative that labeled the white race as the perpetrator of genocide against African Americans made Ali a target of public condemnation. The NOI was widely viewed by whites and even some African Americans as a black separatist "hate religion" with a propensity toward violence; Ali had few qualms about using his influential voice to speak NOI doctrine. In a press conference articulating his opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali stated, "my enemy is the white people, not the Vietcong".
In relation to integration, he said: "We who follow the teachings of Elijah Muhammad don't want to be forced to integrate. Integration is wrong. We don't want to live with the white man; that's all." And in relation to inter-racial marriage: "No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters." Indeed, Ali's religious beliefs at the time included the notion that the white man was "the devil" and that white people were not "righteous".
Ali registered for the draft on his eighteenth birthday and was listed as 1-A in 1962. In 1964, he was reclassified as 1-Y (fit for service only in times of national emergency) after two mental tests found his IQ was 78 (16th percentile), well below the armed force's 30th-percentile threshold. (He was quoted as saying, "I said I was the greatest, not the smartest!" By early 1966, the army lowered its standards to permit soldiers above the 15th percentile and Ali was again classified as 1-A. This classification meant he was now eligible for the draft and induction into the United States Army during a time when the U.S. was involved in the Vietnam War.
When notified of this status, Ali declared that he would refuse to serve in the Army and publicly considered himself a conscientious objector. Ali stated: "War is against the teachings of the Holy Qur'an. I'm not trying to dodge the draft. We are not supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or The Messenger. We don't take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.
On June 28, 1971, the Supreme Court in Clay v. United States overturned Ali's conviction by a unanimous 8–0 decision (Justice Thurgood Marshall did not participate). The decision was not based on, nor did it address, the merits of Ali's claims per se; rather, the Court held that since the Appeal Board gave no reason for the denial of a conscientious objector exemption to Ali, and that it was therefore impossible to determine which of the three basic tests for conscientious objector status offered in the Justice Department's brief that the Appeals Board relied on, Ali's conviction must be reversed.
Whoever, when the United States is at war, willfully causes or attempts to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or willfully obstructs the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, to the injury of the service or the United States, or attempts to do so—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
And, by the way. Scum Ali did not refuse to serve due to conscientious objection. He refused because he hated the US and answered to another power, the Nation of Islam. Should have been shot.
We declared war on Vietnam? That’s news to me.
So the Quakers and the Amish? Do we shoot them too?
Is Islam the religion of peace? How can you compare it to the Amish and the Quakers?
In the eyes of the constitution, rightly or wrongly, they’re all the same.
The Constitution is not a suicide pact.
This revealing article deserves 24-hour bumping to counteract the non-stop Ali adulation on TV.
Love him or hate him, he was not a head of state, nor a pope, nor a Kennedy.....and the over-done, round-the-clock media slobbering over Muhammad has become this week's slain-gorilla story.
Leni
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