Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaah hahahahahah when draft dodgers aren't draft dodgers!!

like so many words it seems to have changed, at least in some "minds", for some stupid damned reason I can not fathom.

Their tribe did it so it must be bad so we must describe it in bad terms. They are bad. We are good.

Simple.

Bryant

A draft dodger is someone who got drafted and has then fled, or it also might be a person who made a statement by not registering (for the draft).

But that's a completely subjective definition. There is no legal category named "draft dodger." It is a cultural designation only. Now, if Schuback - a lawyer(!) - wants to argue that none of the named GOPers are technically guilty of draft evasion under the law, that's one thing. But claiming that they are not technically draft dodgers is nonsensical, since there is no such technical category. Draft dodger, rather, is a cultural category used to designate people who avoided the draft, by hook or by crook, as it were. To be sure, it usually doesn't get applied to people who received legal deferments - especially among those who tended to receive legal deferments! The Schuback's of the world want to consider others to be draft dodgers, not themselves. But there's no good reason it couldn't be so applied, and there's plenty of evidence that people who were unable to receive legal deferments (for all kinds of reasons) at least looked with sidelong glances at those who did. (Needless to say, the specter of race and class privilege loom fairly large here, which is why Schuback's try to retreat into a non-existent technical category).

The article is also deceptive to some degree. It notes that the draft lottery for Vietnam began in December 1969. Well, yes, but there was a general draft in place in the United States between 1948 and 1973. Millions were drafted into service in the Vietnam era, or coaxed into volunteering through the draft (i.e. volunteering for a specific posting rather than being thrown into general infantry).

If I had to use one word only to describe Republicans it would have to be Hypocrites.

in the USAF. It happened in a bar, and was said by a guy in an Army uniform. I was somewhat puzzled. He was right, though, in a way. I enlisted for four years as an alternative to being drafted for two years. Such were the choices in those days.

...who enlisted in the National Guard to avoid the draft.

...to avoid getting drafted into the army. Still got onshore posts that had lead flying his way.

And he ended up serving in the brown water navy, so didn't avoid it anyway.

He would go along with. Very cramped engine rooms. The pictures he showed me appeared to be leftover WWII stuff, mostly.

Primarily they seemed to be delivering stuff, but they did come under fire more than a few times.

Navy was very popular in my town. And, if you joined before you were 18, you could be done with active duty in 3 years instead of 4. Knew some who did that, too. All of them came home except one, and that was an accident aboard an aircraft carrier. But no one called them draft dodgers. That would be the guys with deferrments, back in the day, especially spurious ones. Guys who went to Canada or Sweden were called draft evaders and those few who went to jail were called refusers. Or at least that's the way I remember it, some 45 years later.

He went to college on a Naval scholarship, so he spent his summers as a mid-shipman--until he lost the scholarship, then they put him in Marine boot-camp for a summer.

Then he got out... and was drafted into the Army four weeks later. Once the active part of that was done, he was snapped up by a military contractor (rocket engineers were very popular then), and shipped off to Utah.

When his new employers discovered that he was still on the hook as a Guardsman, they freaked out. Utah, it was believed at the time, was going to be the first to volunteer its Guard for regular duty in Vietnam. Engineers who were rocket scientists were not defined as exempt from being activated. Not enough letters behind the name.

So my father's employers intervened, pulling strings to get his Guard service transferred back to his home state so that their precious rocket-guy wouldn't be sent to die in a jungle. Then the paperwork was "lost," not unlike W. Bush's, and he was never bothered again.

The important part to note here is that there was no legal solution for the problem my father faced; only bending and breaking the rules prevented my father from serving a full ten--mostly involuntary--years in the armed forces while also being a civilian national security asset for the training and education he had received.

and Navy.

No joke. They kept good records of those who were pushed toward those voluntary enlistments through the draft process. As it turns out, you're one of millions who chose to enlist in perceived "less dangerous" postings rather than face the vagaries of the draft process that might end them in front line infantry combat units. Your experience in the bar is also fairly typical. The historical record shows us much resentment built around this particular effect.

get drafted at some point, since that was pre-lottery days in 1965. So, I chose my service branch and enlisted. When I did, I had no idea what duty I'd be doing. I chose the USAF because my father had served in WWII as a B-17 pilot in the USAAF. That was my reason. As it turned out, I ended up being sent to Russian language school and doing something involving that. That wasn't my choice, either, but just how it turned out.

Not a draft-dodger. An enlistee. I had a choice, and I made a choice. After four years, I was a civilian again, and went back to college. And so it went. I suppose what I did in the USAF was useful in some way, although I'm not certain of that. But the only choice I made was the branch of service, and that was made on historical family grounds.

I wasn't sent to Vietnam. Others in my basic training flight were. Some died. You make your choice and you take your chances. I was lucky.

They had no obligation to me and I could have been sent to Vietnam anyway but I got lucky and went to a Submarine. I still received hazardous duty pay which was the same as combat pay.

I also lost half of my thyroid a few years ago which may or may not have been due to living in a closed environment with a nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons for what amounted to almost a year of my life.

By both of us being born in 1961 and too young to be drafted before it ever ended.

after boot camp I was sent back to boot camp to train new recruits then I was sent to SERE school and then they left me there to train new students in survival training. While there most all the guys I was stationed with were straight from 'Nam so by the time it was time for me to leave there I volunteered for Vietnam. Spent 15 months in country then came home a very changed man. War has a tendency to do that to a person.
The draft dodgers who had enough together to leave and go to Canada in protest I have no problem with its the asshole shitheads who did every thing possible to stay out of VN who I have no use for. Those who went to Canada were just as brave as we who went to 'nam were in my eyes, those who took college deferments to stay out not so much.

ETA: By the time I left SERE school I felt my duty was to use what I had been taught to help my fellow brothers and sisters and thats why I made the decision to volunteer to go.

This thread tastes like chickenhawk!

and it's that nasty ReTHUG chickenhawk to boot

Back before I retired, I was in the locker room of the employee health club where I worked and one of the individuals in there was laughing and joking about Viet Nam and how his Dad has paid for 6 years of college so he wouldn't get drafted. Since I tend to go off at the slightest instance, I told him that he should go to the Traveling Wall and pick out a name, take a tracing of it and put it on the wall of his bedroom and every night Thank that guy that died so his precious ass didn't have to go. It became very quiet in there.

Army of the United States. For those not in the know, both of us were on loan from Congress.

It did not begin with anything... There were four type of serial numbers when I first went in. ER stood for enlisted reserve, NG stood for National Guard, RA stood for regular Army or enlisted, US stood for drafted.....After we switched to SS numbers there were no longer any prefixes...

Nevertheless the AUS (US) codes continued to follow us on paper. My DD214 indicates I was in The Army of the United States (AUS).

US54928557

But I volunteered for that number.

If you enlisted your number should have started with RA not US..

Thus the US. We were singled out in boot camp. All RAs got better treatment than the USs.

Also, this was before you were assigned a number in the draft. 1967, exactly 1 week after I turned 18.

They are quite different from the ones who opposed the wars and avoided killing in them.

"Limbaugh and Nugent were ultimately disqualified from service for medical reasons, according to Snopes.com and TheSmokingGun.com."

They're still nothing but RW hypocrites. Yes, being enrolled full time in college kept you out of the draft, but about 3 weeks before graduation (1970) my friends started getting notices to show up for their draft physicals. I was a PE major, so a LOT of my male friends were athletes and most of them had screwed up knees from football, soccer, etc. Some of them were draft exempt because of it. Know what? They JOINED other branches of the service. Limbaugh, Nugent, et al., were just too gutless to stand up for what they supposedly believed it. War is fine...for OTHER people to fight. If I'm not mistaken, Limbaugh's deferment was based on an "anal cyst" (he had a boil on his butt), and Cheney had "other priorities." Nugent was probably too whacked out for the Army.

You are what you eat, so it only goes that one would be a boil on our Asses and the other would be full of shit and could not keep it in. Or maybe his incontinence came from being a chicken shit basterd that did not have the guts for Combat. Either way it sounds like they all needed a visit to the Wizard of Oz.

Airborne Ranger volunteer.

if they had all died in Viet Nam.

IMO the only true "draft dodger" was someone who received a draft notice and illegally avoided being actually drafted. That being said, sometimes being a "draft dodger" was in fact more honorable than being a legal "draft avoider," imo. For in fact there is no way to legally be a conscientious objector to a specific war (as opposed to being a conscientious objector to serving in any war). However, it is clear that some young men were sincere about being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War but they would have served in a war like WWII, for example. In cases like that it seems to me that draft dodging is an honorable choice. Also for young men who WERE conscientious objectors to all wars but were not members of a traditional peace church it could be difficult to have that belief recognized. Local draft boards could be very reluctant to grant CO status in that situation, particularly if they were having difficulty filling self imposed quotas which they had set for a given area because of their "patriotic" fervor. It was a strange time.

Others seem to be the exception to rules. Of not being able to serve two masters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_W._Bennett_(conscientious_objector)


But the Medic MOS is where a lot of CO's were put, thus putting them in grave danger.

In 1992 Clinton who arguably dodged the draft went against Bush I a WW II vet. The vet lost. In 1996 Clinton went against Dole a WW II vet who had been badly injured in the war. The vet lost. In 2000 Bush who had marginal National Guard service went against Gore who served in Vietnam. The Vietnam vet lost. Same in 2004 when Bush went against Kerry who had Vietnam service. The Vietnam vet lost. In 2008 Obama with no service went against McCain a Vietnam POW. The Vietnam vet lost. 2012 was the first election in the modern era when neither candidate had any military service.

Started off as a Conscientious Objector and was working in a mental hospital. Couldn't take it.

My wife at the time was English and we moved there. Lived there from 1971 to 1981.

So yes, I'm a draft dodger.