Donald Trump set to come under attack over Vietnam deferments

Telegraph ^ | February 13, 2016 | By Nick Allen and David Lawler in Washington

[2ndDivisionVet]

In the staunchly pro-military state of South Carolina - where the next Republican primary will be held - the issue of Donald Trump's draft deferments is likely to be central

As the US presidential election reaches the pro-military state of South Carolina, the Republican front-runner Donald Trump is set to become embroiled in a new controversy: the story of how his bony feet kept him out of the Vietnam War.

The southern state is home to eight military bases and 58,000 veterans, and 25 per cent of those expected to take part in Saturday's primary vote for the Republican nominee are either serving or former members of the armed forces.

Mr Trump, who has led polls in South Carolina since July, received a deferment from the Vietnam draft because he had bone spurs in both heels....

[Tennessee Nana]

Kid, Romney was a draft dodger...

and he himself admitted he was not a Conservative...he called himself a moderate progressive at a rally in 2012...

he supported Roe V Wade, gays as boy scout leaders, gay marriage, global warming, AMNESTY, you name it he was for it...

no kid, Romney was a lot of things but he was not a Conservative...

FReepers cried and held their nose to vote for him but they knew he was not a conservative and their vote was against Obama but hardly for Romney..

[Rome2000]

Wow.

That is insane!

[jersey117]

Oh, I must have missed the part where Jeb, Cruz, Rubio, carson, obama, Hillary and Bernie setved.

[Tennessee Nana]

well your language is like a RomneyBot so how would I think otherwise...

[Leto]

Well you at least admitted you are fos, that is a start.

Trump was one of many rich kids who dodged the draft with medical deferment. People over 60 are well aware of that fact.

So he went from rich coward to richer bully.

[Tennessee Nana]

I originally answered your post where you were claiming this was true of soldiers during Nam...

The conversation is about Trump and Nam...

If it is about Canadians and soldiers during the time Cruz was old enough then Cruz didn’t serve at all while he could have done so as a Canadian...or as a half or full American citizen whatever pleases you about the subject...

[Freedom56v2]

Royal Mounties?

---

Very clever :)

[2ndDivisionVet]

None of the other Republicans, save for Bush, were draft age during Vietnam. As a matter of fact, Rubio and Cruz were little toddlers when the war ended. Women still aren’t drafted, but I don’t know the story on Bernie Sanders.

[Tennessee Nana]

But Romney who was the son of not only a rich father but also the son of the governor of Michigan who sat on the draft board and excused both of his eligible and healthy sons, never had a medical problem..

and it seems Trump at least went down to the induction center and was processed while Romney ran off to Canada err France ...

BTW Romneys deferments were for college plus other reasons but not for health...

[Hoodat]

He is still more conservative than Trump. Take any position Romney held during the 2012 election. You will find Trump's current position is to the left of that. Immigration? Romney said no return for illegals. Trump will expedite them back in. Planned Parenthood? Romney said cut funding. Trump says keep funding. Taxes? Romney said no increases in tax rates. Trump says increase the top rate (on top of what Obama already raised it to). Health care? Romney said it is a state issue - that the federal government shouldn't get involved. Trump says that the 25% of the people who don't have insurance will have their bills paid for by the federal government.

Next to Trump, Mitt Romney looks like the second coming of Barry Goldwater.

[SamAdams76]

Our recent presidents have taken the issue of military service as a “pre-requisite” to be president completely off the table.

[Leto]

The Romney straw man is lame did I miss wher he is running this year? If he were running but he is not running and Trump another yellow bellied draft dodger is running currently.

Why are you worried about the draft dodging go a clown who isn’t running but unconcerned about the coward draft dodger who IS running.

Are you drunk?

[AmericanVictory]

The best summary is in Jacques Servan-Schreiber's The American Challenge. He lays out in a few paragraphs how, as we were winning on the ground, Ho Chi Minh defeated us in the media and on the college campuses.

I can still hear Tom Moorer growling, everytime you mentioned the media's role in defeating us: "Seems like they turned all our victories into defeats."

[Freedom56v2]

No, Ted Cruz was a baby in CANADA during the end of the Vietnam War. His parents didn’t formally apply for him to became an American citizen until 1986! He was still a CANADIAN in 2014!

---

Huh???

Of course Cruz was not going to serve in Vietnam...that is not the point though is it? Point is he could have could have served in Iraq, etc.

According to Cruz, he did not know he was a Canadian till a little over a year ago—so fact that he was CANADIAN really should not have been an impediment in his serving. Actually, had he chosen to serve, then he would have found out he was a Canadian long ago...

Cruz could have served since 1986-—that is 20 years, yet he chose not to instead opting to go to Harvard, etc.

Trump is the only candidate who was subjected to a very unpopular draft. I will wait for him to tell his story if he wishes. However, NONE of the other candidates have chosen to serve—bone spurs or not...so I think there is little room to criticize, and it is a non-starter for me.

[mkjessup]

Some of were in the military at the time being mocked by draft dodgers like Clinton and Trump.

First of all FReeper Leto, unless you can produce something which establishes that Donald Trump was a.) a 'draft dodger' and/or b.) 'mocking those in the military', you can take that fake self righteousness and shove it where the sun don't shine, all the way up to your damn tonsils.

First we'll begin with Trump:

Trump had a physical exam in September 1968 which resulted in his being classified 1-Y (medical deferment) the following month, reportedly due to bone spurs which would have prevented him serving unless a true national emergency endangering the United States as a whole presented itself.

At no time could Trump have been legitimately labeled a 'draft dodger' because he took no actions beyond seeking legal and valid student deferments as did 15.4 million other American men who were granted deferments, exempted or disqualified.

When were you in the military?

I served proudly in the United States Navy, not that my military service is relevant to this discussion, nor any business of yours, why do you ask and who wants to know?

Now to provide you with some additional intellectual illumination, review the following letter that Bill Clinton wrote back when he was truly doing all he could to evade the draft for far more political reasons than anyone could accuse Trump of, this letter alone provides the most stark contrast between Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, so your attempt to associate Trump with Clinton receives nothing but a world class FAIL.

Now read what comes next and familiarize yourself:

February 1992

"Dear Colonel Holmes,

I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have had to have some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to say. First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind and decent to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC. Let me try to explain.

As you know, I worked for two years in a very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the experience and the salary, but also for the opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter lightly, but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did. I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations here October 15th and November 16th.

Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not simply to, quote, participation in war in any form, end quote. From my work I came to believe that the draft system itself is illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of the nation.

The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight if the nation was to survive, for the lives of their countrymen and their way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea, an example where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated above.

Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their country, that is, the particular policy of a particular government, right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter which I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.

The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years (the society may be corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all finished anyway).

When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way left in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and resistance. Going on with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School, because there is nothing else I can do. In fact, I would like to have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether to attend law school or graduate school and how to be putting what I have learned to use. But the particulars of my personal life are not nearly as important to me as the principles involved.

After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program in itself and all I seemed to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I began to think I had deceived you, not by lies - there were none - but by failing to tell you all the things I'm writing now. I doubt that I had the mental coherence to articulate them then. At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1 - D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of self-regard and self-confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally on September 12th, I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for trying to help me in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as possible.

I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every day until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the Army and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something of this second year of my Rhodes scholarship.

And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or if it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal. Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.

Sincerely,

Bill Clinton"

[jospehm20]

I never claimed anything was true during Nam because I do not know. I was responding to a post in which the poster said he did not know if Canadians could serve in US the military. I was replying to that when I said I had a friend who was forced out in the late 1980s because he did not want to give up his Canadian citizenship. I never claimed it was true before then because I don’t know or even care very much. The current correct answer is non US citizens can serve in certain jobs for one enlistment period and cannot reenlist unless they become US citizens. That I know. What the rule was in the 1960s, I do not know. I apologize if I confused the issue.

[Billthedrill]

Sanders was a war protester, a member of the SNCC. From his Wiki article:

Sanders applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War; his application was eventually turned down, by which point he was too old to be drafted.

He ran out the clock, in other words. If you were the right age it wasn't hard to do.

Cruz, also, was the right age to avoid the draft. He was three years old when the last one went down. ;-)

[Tennessee Nana]

Take any position Romney held during the 2012 election.
_______________________________________

Yes we will but first let’s take any position Romney held during the 1994 and the 2002 elections ...

In those we get a better measure of the man’s lifetime liberal causes embracing...

Both times he ran left of the Democrat nominee. one of them old Teddy Kennedy himself..

and let’s look at the 2008 run for POTUS where during what might have been the 1st or 2nd debate he gave the reason he is for abortion being legal telling the story of his aunt who had died during one before Roe V Wade...

or back to the 2012 if you must torture yourself into a pretzel of denial where he again during a debate explained how proud he was of his mother Lenore Romney pushing abortion as a platform during her 1970 run for US Senator from Michigan..

And Barry Goldwater oh groan you want to go there ???

Oh then OK

The Romneys hated Barry Goldwater and his best friend Ronald Reagan...

In 1964 Big Daddy George Romney wanted to be POTUS... in the Republican convention that year Barry Goldwater got 800+ votes while George Romney got 41...

George stomped out of the convention with teenager Willard Mitt Romney in toe and went and supported the Democrat Johnson for President instead...

George Romney fought so ugly against Goldwater that in January, 1965 Reagan said that Romney and his moderates caused the Republicans to lose the election...and even he was shocked at how Romney had fought dirty..

Willard idolized his parents who were hardly conservatives...do you really think he would turn against his ingrained liberal upbringing ???

[Leto]

Getting medical deferments to avoid the draft was common in the 60’s among the rich and connected, you seem quite unaware of that getting 4 of them is what a rich pussy would do at that time deal with it.

[Tennessee Nana]

I didn’t know about the newer rule that requires them to become US citizens after one enlistment...

I wonder if its based on the fact that they will receive retirement pay if they stay in 20 years...

But since there are so many foreigners in the military today I think that might change or be tweaked..since they can become American citizens after serving the reason for enlisting could fast become one of self gratification and not from any form of love or loyalty to our country...