As they say, what goes around comes around…and so it is with the military draft, which is receiving new attention primarily due to calls for its reinstatement from a general with high media visibility, Stanley Mc Chrystal. The general, who is too young to have had firsthand experience with draftees, reasons that a strictly professional force as we now have is not representative of our nation as a whole. And while that may be true, my own experiences as an NCO dealing with draftees in Vietnam leads me to the conclusion that the general ignores a few simple truths: America’s military forces have traditionally been volunteer, with conscription only resorted to during the Great Wars up until WWII when the program was left in place until being abandoned during the waning years of the Vietnam War. Conscription has been in place in only a small fraction of America’s military history.
I believe GEN Mc Chrystal also ignores the fact that our highly professional fighting force is representative of those Americans whose upbringing and personal beliefs make them want to serve, young Americans who value service to their country above their own lives and possible civilian careers.
Our volunteer forces are also representative of those possessing the courage to serve in frequent combat, an issue that was quite controversial back during my war where many of us voluntarily serving suspected that many young draft age men were hiding behind the anti-war protests for much less noble reasons than those they advanced publicly. As the following essay I wrote back in 2006 illustrates, our suspicions were not baseless. Jonn has graciously allowed me to dust off this old piece to run by his readers. I’m sure there are a few here like Zero and 1stCav who’ve seen it before but most of you probably have not.
Before you read this, please understand that I am not condemning all draftees, many of whom served well and courageously in past wars including my own. However, as the piece below points out, during the Vietnam draft, many who were motivated more by fear than philosophy were able to evade and avoid. However many who were similarly motivated by fear were caught in the government net and impressed into service. Of those, we will never know the total impact their presence had on the morale and performance of the units in which they served, especially the ground combat units. My personal observation was that some draftees accepted their fate and soldiered well but many others were highly risk averse and did only the minimum required of them to complete their tour. Keep in mind, I’m writing purely from my own perspective and in no way claim to be speaking for other Vietnam veterans. Here’s my original piece from 2006:
Good Enough to Die For
I have just read a mea culpa by Vietnam War protestor, novelist and poet, Pat Conroy, http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=397352, (link no longer works) who possesses the literary skills to express what I am willing to bet many other older American males, his former brothers at the barricades, also feel, but lack the skills and the honesty to articulate. It is left to men like the politically born again David Horowitz and novelist Conroy to speak for these old troupers of the Left’s long-haired legions, to reveal their long hidden recognition that they were possibly misguided in their protesting but more often than most will ever admit, motivated more by fear of serving in combat than by any sense of moral/political rectitude.
For that reason this is an issue that reverberates only within the ranks of male protestors of that era. For the braless, hygiene and make-up challenged young women of the movement, there existed no threat of death or disfigurement in combat, so the purity of their motives is questionable only in the intellectual, not the moral sense. They may have been naïve fools but they weren’t hiding a blushing personal cowardice behind the skirts of world socialism. This then, is an issue of character only for these now old, graying men who, like Conroy, must eventually face the moral consequences of their actions in those turbulent days.
As someone who, like most of us, has experienced events in my life where I now wish that I had shown more moral and physical courage, more honesty, and most importantly, more unquestioning love and understanding of family, I know how those failures live with you long after the memories of trying to do so many things right have dimmed. Many of my lapses involved nothing more than minor events where I failed to speak up, or stand up and be counted, or even stand up and be knocked down; but regardless of their minor nature, it is these life events that forever remain active in my psyche. In my mid-sixties now, I have learned all too well that it’s not the fights you won or even the fights you lost that keep niggling away at the edges of your conscience: it’s the fights you failed to fight when you knew damned well that you should.
Deceased author John D. MacDonald, who wrote the wonderful Travis McGee mystery series, once explained through his fictional hero, McGee, the way to make correct moral decisions and it is a simple wisdom that has stayed in my brain, but not always exemplified by my behavior, through the remainder of my life. It is nothing more than this: do the hard thing. When faced with tough choices, look to that course of action which is the one you want least to follow because it appears to be the most difficult for you; it may hurt personally, but almost always, it is the right course for you to follow for the good of others.
My belief is that a lot of Vietnam War protestors were rightfully fearful of the physical perils of combat, as were all those of us who chose to serve there; but where we tamped down those fears and continued the mission, they wrongfully used a contrived moral outrage against the war as convenient cover to conceal their cowardice. To buttress that theory one simply has to look at how the huge, angry protests diminished, and ultimately disappeared in a remarkably short time once Congress ended the military draft. As young, draft-age men, all those angry protestors were able at the time to righteously rationalize away their true motivation until Congress stole their alibi, and only now, with the awareness and self-accounting that comes with age, are they, like Pat Conroy, facing the truth of their personal cowardice. Sadly, too late, they have come to realize the truth of Conroy’s most perceptive quote:
“America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong.”
I believe those are words worthy of being carved into every war memorial in America. And I am thankful that I and all my brothers and sisters at arms who served then, and those who serve now, possessed then and now, but even in our callow youth, the intrinsic wisdom to recognize that truth. All Americans must die, but those who understand this fundamental reality about this very unique nation will die with their chins held just a few degrees higher than those who didn’t realize it when they should have, but now do, like Conroy and his legions, and sadly, those young people of today who still do not.
