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Poll: Would you have dodged the Vietnam draft?

8 points by falsestprophet ↗ HN
I don't mean to call either fraction killers or cowards. I found this question often leads to interesting conversations.

(Apologies to the non-American audience who many not relate.)

24 comments

[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 62.9 ms ] thread
pg
Do college and grad school deferments count as dodging?
falsestprophet
According to the law, no. But, I think it may be a more complicated question than that. Most people had things they would rather be doing than wading through a jungle full of surly Vietcong.

I think the fact that graduate student deferments were ended in 1969 simplifies the question. At that time a student could be deferred for the term of his undergraduate degree, but would then have to properly dodge the draft afterwards (like President Clinton for example) to keep out of the war.

(Interestingly second lieutenants suffered the highest casualty rate during the war, so their deferments ended up putting them in a disadvantageous position.)

pg
I meant, do they count for purposes of this poll? Because that is probably the option most of the 1960s equivalent of News.YC readers chose at the time.
falsestprophet
I understood what you meant. My response was less coherent than I would have liked. Let me try again.

I don't think undergraduate deferments count, because most students would graduate before the draft ended. They would not escape the decision to illegally dodge the draft or go to war.

bilbo0s
Only if you ever want to run for high office. High being a senatorial seat or the Presidency. The issue is that there is bound to be a Kerry, McCain, Murtha etc when the time comes for you to run. Meaning you would have to search for a state without Ivy league war heroes, or opt out of being an office holder.

I think in our generation, though, that less heady decisions will impact our future lives and careers. I chuckle at the number of 'political' types that are shooting off emails, sms messages, Facebook posts, blog comments, and having phone conversations that will summarily disqualify them from, not only high office, but any of the nation's meaningful C-level executive suites and boardrooms of note. Certain executive search committees are already starting to sift through that stuff, where national security is involved. This practice will trickle down first to economically important corporations, like large banks or GE for example, and then on to the rest of the economy.

Chances are, your iPhone and your Facebook, coupled with a big mouth, will get the nation's elites to look down on you more than your decision on what to do when drafted will. Just imagine, for instance, the number of 20 year old democrats in 2003 who sent emails that may be misconstrued on the invasion of Iraq. Or the number of 20 year old republican hot heads who sent emails or sms texts when the hurricane Katrina incident happened. Many won't even make the connection when 25 years later they are summarily rejected by executive search committees.

So the next time you see one of those east coast boarding school type, Ivy league educated, lacrosse playing young men of ambition who refuse to use cell phones or email, I wouldn't snicker at them.

gunderson
you're probably right about the future of search and people's words coming back to bite them.
pg
I don't know. Once the elite encountered a generation who had practically all used recreational drugs, that ceased to be a disqualification.

But, strangely enough, it would probably be a good thing if all the clever outliers were rejected by large organizations. Then they'd go off and start things of their own, which would be good for both them and the world.

robg
Ask an expert of five deferments - Dick Cheney.
rms
I'm curious to hear about the people that say no. Duty to your country? What makes me consider yes is the idea that war is an essentially human experience that may not exist for much longer, as we become more and more peaceful as society becomes more globalized. It is certainly not a good or romantic human experience.
missenlinx
Duty & self accomplishment.
petercooper
I admire your sense of duty, but want to play devil's advocate for a second.

Should a slave continue to be enslaved out of a sense of duty to their master? Should a kid brought up in a religious family choose to remain in that faith merely out of a sense of duty?

It's curious how patriotism seems to instill a sense of duty in rational minds where even religion can find it tough to stick.

dazzawazza
It's interesting that people are comparing the draft to slavery. Aren't wars fought to avoid being enslaved to the enemy.

I think modern wars are less clear cut but certainly for WWII Brits signed up to avoid slavery under the hun.

lesslucid
If the people of a country are in serious danger of being enslaved by an enemy, chances are that many people will voluntarily join the army. An unpopular war of choice, on the other hand, may struggle greatly to raise as many voluntary troops as the government desires, and this is a circumstance where conscription is both most likely and most questionable. In WW2, British men not only "signed up" but were conscripted, but in this case I think you rightly allude to the fact that it was called for under the circumstances; there was a real danger of much greater evils than conscription being visited on the British people if the Nazis were to triumph. But since the thread started with a question about Vietnam, I think it's worth considering the smallness of the possibility of the Vietnamese achieving the enslavement of the American people or anything of the kind at the point in time when conscription was instituted for the prosecution of that war.
petercooper
I was comparing patriotism to slavery, not the draft per-se. The concept of feeling duty for "one's country" seems very weird when you look at it with some detachment. In a very literal sense, my loyalties end at my family, let alone my town, county, country, planet, or whatever.

In any case, modern wars are far less clear. In terms of this specific post, no-one from Vietnam was getting ready to invade or enslave the US or Europe. It could be argued Vietnam was a necessary show of force to demonstrate that the West wouldn't allow the USSR to mark its mark all around the world, but it'd be a tenuous argument at best.

run4yourlives
I was in the army after high school, albeit Canadian, and I don't think my choices would have changed if a war was on or not.
pg
war is an essentially human experience that may not exist for much longer

Not likely. It will just get more specialized. In a way, that's a return to its origins.

rms
50 years from now, units of unmanned robots will be able to do a lot of if not all of the winning fighting. We're going to have ground troops in exoskeletons. If Africa isn't stable yet, you could send a mechanized army into an airport before landing your invading force. See Simon Mann's failed run into Equatorial Guinea in 2004 (funded with only $20MM) for a way to impact Africa without an army of deadly robots.

Then, once the UN gains more power as Europe gains more power the world will get a lot more stable. What do we have left to fight for? Water can be distributed to everyone. Food can be distributed to everyone. If we just stopped all the fighting then we could afford to give everyone in the world food.

Do you think humanity is going to take more than a few hundred years to reach practical utopia? I'm very optimistic.

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astrec
Australia implemented conscription in 1964.

'65-'69: Probably not.

'69-'72: Yes.

Which pretty much mirrors popular opinion at the time.

colinplamondon
Without a moment's hesitation, and the same goes for today if the draft were to be put in place for Iraq- I'd likely emigrate the next day.
SwellJoe
Since it's hard for me to view conscription as anything other than human slavery, I'd be pretty much ethically bound to not only dodge the draft, but also discontinue paying taxes and work daily towards an end to the draft. But, it's easy to talk tough when the situation doesn't exist. The war in Iraq is pretty despicable to me, but I don't spend an inordinate amount of time fighting to end it...though I have given over $2000 to pro-peace candidates for office this year alone. It's far less than I could be doing, I suppose.
narag
Last years that we had the mandated military service in my country, a lot of people were choosing "substituroy social service". I didn't because I didn't consider that I had any moral reason not to serve. Neither had most of people that were choosing it anyway, but that's another story.

In war time it would have been a very different matter. I won't pretend I have the faintest idea of what I'd had done if I'd been an american.

dougfort
After dodging the draft in college for 4 years, I enlisted in 1972. Because back then a white boy with a college degree wasn't going to end up in a rifle company.