@Finn dAbuzz,
As a matter of fact I missed the national draft by one year. By the time I turned 18, Nixon was withdrawing large numbers of troop and they weren't sending anyone new over. I wasn't about to enlist anyway though as it seemed clear to me that there was a) No reason, at all, for us to be there, b) No desire or intent to actually win the thing and c) I didn't want to get my ass shot off. By the time I turned 18, Nixon was withdrawing large numbers of troops and they weren't sending anyone new over. What I would have done if this was the case can't be known with certainty, but I very much doubt I would have enlisted, however if I had been drafted I would have gone wherever they sent me. I never had any intention of going to Canada or employing any other means to avoid the draft.
I never, in any way, held it against anybody that fought there, although some of my anti-war associates did. It was always a source of friction. I had friends and relatives who were there, and some (not all) told me what it was like. One guy (on the night of the first time he ever smoked pot) took wounds from a grenade and a rocket and came home in real bad shape. I haven't heard from him in over 20 years, but the last time I saw him he had a severe limp (probably still does) and shrapnel was still coming out of his back and buttocks. My cousin was a helicopter gunner, and while he wasn't wounded he came home a wreck. The only guy I knew who was over there and actually liked to talk about his experiences was someone who was an MP in Saigon.
By the time the stench of Vietnam started to clear, I was married and into a career, and didn't feel I was in a position to or that it was necessary for me to join the military. This was a selfish point of view, but I'm not hypocritical enough to tell young kids that it’s their duty to serve their nation by enlisting. By the time there was another real war, I had three kids and was too old to join.
Sometimes I regret that I wasn't there but that's based on a crazy desire to know how I would have reacted, and to have experienced the sort of bond soldiers develop, not because I feel guilty.
My father won a bronze star in Korea (drafted) and my Uncle left the beaches at Normandy with his whole left calf shot off. Both of them told me their stories of what it was like only once. In a bar, while the family women were at my wife's bridal shower. Neither of them nor my cousin nor my friends ever made out like it was a heroic adventure. They all hated it.
So, while I certainly don't have first-hand knowledge of what it's like to be part of a war, I don’t kid myself about the reality either.
I don't have any kind of ax to grind with pacifists and especially not if they've fought in a war. It's too bad the world isn't filled with only pacifists, but of course it's not, and this is what has led me to supporting certain wars. I do think though that if you've supported any war for any reason, your feelings about the rest of them are simply boil down to a question of politics.
I also don't think that the only people entitled to voice their opinion about wars are people who have fought in them. They certainly have an understanding of the horrors of war that people like me can't share, and they know better than us the realities of how the military operates. I bow to their experience whenever appropriate.
I know, though, that one of our greatest generals and, arguably, a pretty good president, Dwight Eisenhower never saw combat and neither did General David Petraeus, and I don’t think too many people ever questioned their right to their opinion on a war. Presidents Clinton and Obama never served, and Presidents Bush, Reagan, and Carter didn’t see combat. The last president to serve in combat was George H W Bush and he, of course, ordered Gulf War I. One might argue that it was his first-hand experience with war that led him to, as president, fight a war that was over quickly and with an incredibly low casualty rate, however Lyndon Johnson also saw combat in WWII (awarded the silver star) and his name is almost synonymous with one of the most pointless and heinously fought wars in our history. A war which led to the deaths of 58,300 members of the American military and 153,303 wounded; with almost a million people dead all told. So while service in our military, and particularly in combat, is to be respected and appreciated, it obviously doesn’t guarantee any particular wisdom or even common sense, even when the subject is war itself.
So by your estimation, I must be a chicken-hawk because I supported Gulf War I, the Afghan War and the Iraq war, but have not served myself. I might even agree with you if I was forever calling for sending troops overseas to solve each and every foreign policy problem we face, but of course I’m not. I'll save for another time an explanation of what I have called and what I am calling for, for another time.
