Posted on 02/07/2003 8:25:21 PM PST by John Lenin
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 for the demonstrations Oct. 15 and Nov. 16.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar 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 "participation in war in any form."
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 (i.e. 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. 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 begin 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 because 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 my 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 Sept. 12 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 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 Col. Jones for me.
Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Colonel Eugene Holmes' September 1992 affidavit concerning Bill Clinton and the draft:
If he could have only seen into the future.
The genesis of a miscreant.
I don't believe Truman ran in '52. Ike ran against some wreck of Democrat (Stevenson?) and won handily.
Exactly my point. It gives me no pleasure to infer our service time was abused, but it was. The personal bravery and actions of the soldiers themselves earned the honor that is deserved for their service. However.......
Bill Clinton was the ultimate "JODY" and Lyndon Johnson was the b*st*rds cowardly "Ol' Man".
You're correct. It was Adalai Stevenson & Ike in '52. I believe Truman declined the Dems nomination in '52 because of the Dems trying to get Ike to run as a Dem. Ike creamed them as a Repub.
I do, however, stand by the crux of my point and recall that LBJ feared what happened to Truman would happen to him. From 1952 to 1964 was not a long time in the political mind of LyndonJohnson. A self fulfilling prophesy, to be sure.
What bothers me most about this is that Clinton voiced early on that he had political aspirations to "lead"...and eventually became Commander in Chief.
Even more troubling to me is that I also wear the PurpleHeart...and it's symbol is our first president....that saddens me...that a scum bag like this protested the war does not bother me at all...the disturbing thing is that perhaps one day, his profile or portrait may emblazen a military decoration, simply by virture of his status a POTUS.
"JODY" was the guy that stayed home in the US. Slept in your bed. Drove your car. Ate your Mom's home cookin'. Slept with your girl. Rode your motorcycle. Jody is a universal name for either a draft dodger or a 4F (not fit for the military).
Through basic combat training (BCT) and advanced individual training (AIT), we marched to songs that told stories of what "Jody" was doing while we were in the service.
Just for the record, for you potential "Jody's" still out there, when we got home we kicked their A$$!
You're right! There are. Though this exercise seems futile, and to some degree it is, it is necessary to conjure up the Devil, every so often so that none forget what he looks like or sounds like. Most important, what the Devil pretends to be when he tries to fool us.
Had the public been able to recognize Clinton, as many of us had recognized LBJ as the "Devil", a lot of suffering could have been avoided.
If I recal correctly, 3 guys got spinal meningitis or some thing. I remember being kept in the barracks a couple days when training was suspended because of the outbreak.
Yes it was cold!
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