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Liberals don't want us
running around -
unsupervised -
and free
George Will |
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Elected
Officials that Frequent FTR:
SteveOlsta - Broomfield City Council Ward 2 (CO) |
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What is a vet?
He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day
and making sure the armored personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel.He is the barroom
loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behavior is outweighed
a hundred times in the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th
parallel.
She - or he - is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every
night for two solid years in Da Nang.
He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back AT
ALL
He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless
lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching
them to watch each other's backs.
He is the parade - riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic
hand.
He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.
He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the
Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes
whose valor dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.
He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly
slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife
were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.
He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of
his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his
ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs.
He is a soldier and a savior and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than
the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.
So remember, each time you see someone who has served our country, just lean over and say
Thank You. That's all most people need, and in most cases it will mean more than any
medals they could have been awarded or were awarded.
Two little words that mean a lot, "THANK YOU".
It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is
draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the flag
Father Denis Edward O'Brien, USMC |
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University College
Oxford, England
December 3, 1969
Dear Col. Holmes,
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 here for 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 at 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 in 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. His
country needs men like him more than they 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 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 l-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 |
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