November 25, 2005

Peace Love Dope

Back in the news (but just barely) is left-over Vietnam-era fossil Daniel Ellsberg. He was among a dozen or so antiwar protestors arrested in Crawford TX on Wednesday (note to Cindy Sheehan: Forgive your son).
Ellsberg maunders through the usual B.S. about having “seen through” the Vietnam War. These people can’t speak two sentences without bringing up the good old days of Vietnam War protests. And ya know what? They’re full of it.
It is a tenet of the revisionist history crowd that no one remembers anything beyond last Wednesday. Unfortunately they’re usually right. These people are of course in full flower with the “Bush lied about WMDs” mantra.
Well let me tell you a big secret about the Vietnam era antiwar protests.
It was mostly about the draft.
You children have heard of the draft, haven’t you?
As mentioned in the previous post I grew up in Washington DC. I was a teenager during the late 1960s – early 70s. Yes, I’m that old. I attended a few of the big demonstrations because it was the trendy thing to do. To the vast majority of us hippies the slogan “Make Love, Not War” really meant: “Please don’t draft us because the birth control pill is here and all the girls are willing – pass the spliff.”

The number one issue during the Vietnam War was the draft. Turning 18 was an event that we teen boys feared. Statistics say that some 70,000 young men fled to Canada. Burning your draft card was an act of protest. I never burned mine. Most of us didn’t because the draft card was your ID – the drinking age in most places then was still 18. No draft card – no booze.
The draft lottery was enacted in 1969. My turn came in 1971 for the ‘72 draft. My birth date October 9 drew the high number of 254, which virtually exempted me from the draft. Note: my best friend from high school’s birth date was October 6. He drew #6. But that’s another story.
My memories of that period are conflicted. I didn’t dodge the draft and if my number had come up I probably would have gone. There is no point (and little truth) in looking back from age and wisdom (such as it is) and claiming to know the feelings of one’s callow youth. But I probably would have gone because of family tradition. My father served in WWII and got the Purple Heart when his ship was kamikazied. His father served during WWI. My grandfather’s grandfather was a Union soldier in the Civil War, and his grandfather was in the Pennsylvania militia in the early days of the American Revolution. Yep, I’ve got the documentation. 

But I digress…

My point (assuming that I have one) is that a long bitter battle was fought to abolish the draft. Everyone now serving in the military is a volunteer. All the hysterical comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam fall to this one hugely ignored point. No amount of screaming “Chickenhawk” by those who just woke up last Wednesday can stand to the fact that the slave army was abolished in 1973.

PS – my son is a former Marine.