During the Vietnam War, 58,220 young men and women died. Every one of the young men had a draft registration card. It was not a matter of all the wealthy ones skipping out, because the greatest majority by far went to war. Yet, a person did show his character by how he responded to the draft. There were three basic choices.
First, there were the brave ones who knew they were headed into a country where death lived with them, but they went anyway. Then, there were those who thought war was wrong. They were the conscientious objectors who had the option of serving in the Peace Corps, etc. Then, there were the cowards. Those who could afford it sometimes ran to Canada, those who could not tried to hide. In a society where many judge a person’s character based upon their wealth, some believed they did not deserve to go and bought their way out of going. Yet, they were really the cowards, and they knew it. Donald Trump was a coward.
Perhaps the draft should be reinstated with no exceptions, none. Those with real limits could be accommodated, too. Wealthy kids could not escape it, and members of the Senate and House would have to send their children, too. It might make a difference whether they decided to okay war, if they knew they were sending their own children to fight and to die.
South Bend mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was one of the brave. He volunteered to serve in Afghanistan. At a live Washington Post event, Robert Costa interviewed him and asked how he felt about Donald Trump avoiding war. The mayor said he was not angry. He was disappointed:
‘I don’t have a problem standing up to somebody who was working on season seven of Celebrity Apprentice when I was packing my bags for Afghanistan.’
Costa asked:
‘Do you think he should have served in Vietnam?’
Buttigieg responded, saying Trump faked “a disability:”
‘I have a pretty dim view of his decision to use his privileged status to fake a disability in order to avoid serving in Vietnam.’
The mayor continued with a stark thought:
‘pretending to be disabled so that somebody could go to war in his place.”
The youngest presidential candidate at 37-years-old, he appeared to dismiss Trump as a sad and pitiful human being rather than buying into Trump’s rage. POTUS already had a nickname for Buttigieg, Alfred E. Neuman, but the younger man took the air out of the president’s slur when he said:
‘I had to Google that … I guess it’s a generational thing.’
Check out Buttigieg’s response below:
‘Pete Buttigieg responds to Donald Trump calling him Alfred E. Neuman: “I had to Google that. I guess it’s a generational thing.”‘
Pete Buttigieg responds to Donald Trump calling him Alfred E. Neuman: “I had to Google that. I guess it’s a generational thing” pic.twitter.com/SUQFzQIcRS
— Edward Hardy (@EdwardTHardy) May 11, 2019
Trump was 6 feet 2 inches tall, he recently grew an inch, and he was an athlete. He could be found on the football field or playing tennis, squash, and golf. His only medical condition was an appendectomy when he was 10-years-old.
He obtained four draft deferments for going to college, but he graduated from college in 1968. Still, he found a way to collect one of the cowards’ sought-after 1-Y medical deferments. There were 300,000 men in Vietnam that year. The news wisely carried the gruesome visuals every night, and terrible news of a friend’s brother or a high school mate being killed brought a hush until the next death occurred.
At the Democratic National Convention, the father of a dead soldier Khizr Khan looked into the cameras and spoke to Trump:
‘You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump attacked the man via tweet. On the campaign trail, the candidate told the press that he had “temporary, minor” bone spurs. Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) fighter jet was shot down over enemy territory. He was captured and tortured for five and one-half years. When his captors found out that his father was the Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command (CINCPAC) head of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater from 1968 to 1972, they offered to let Senator McCain (deceased) go. He refused to leave until his men could go, too. McCain said according to The Bustle:
‘We drafted the lowest income level of America, and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur.’
On the campaign trail, Trump said he liked men who were not captured. Speaking about his bone spurs, the president said:
‘I had a doctor that gave me a letter — a very strong letter on the heels.’
He later added:
‘They were spurs. You know, it was difficult from the long-term walking standpoint.’
Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) gave Trump the nickname of Cadet Bone Spurs. She was a Black Hawk helicopter pilot during the Iraq War when a rocket-propelled grenade shot her down. The senator lost both of her legs and nearly lost one of her arms, too.
When a group of Democrats did not stand during Trump’s first State of the Union, he said it was “treasonous.” Duckworth responded:
‘We don’t live in a dictatorship or a monarchy. I swore an oath — in the military and in the Senate — to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not to mindlessly cater to the whims of Cadet Bone Spurs and clap when he demands I clap.’
Lest we forget, there was also Special Counsel Robert Mueller III’s military service. He is a Marine, because once a Marine always a Marine. He had to have knee surgery to qualify for service.
Featured Image is a Screenshot via YouTube.
