Few pieces of mail ever incited the same combination of panic, anticipation and resignation as a draft … Protest to conscription has been a feature of all American wars, since the Spanish-American War in 1898 and continuing through the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
In early January 1964, less than two months after taking office, Johnson ordered the Selective Service, the Department of the Army, the Department of Labor and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to address the problem.Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara actively wanted the armed forces to be part of the solution. "Voices of Our Times: I Refuse: Memories of a Vietnam War Objector".Peters, Pamela J. Wikimedia Commons. 1–6.Joseph, Paul (April 2015). The recollection of arrival is still fresh even 53 years later.
The resulting legislation, the Military Selective Service Act of 1967, rationalized the deferment system, but it did little to stifle public resistance to the draft. McNamara hoped that a stint in the military would make New Standards men better husbands, better fathers and better breadwinners, and thus better citizens. Scholar Michael Foley argues that it was not only relatively ineffective, but that it served to siphon off disaffected young Americans from the larger struggle.Some draft evaders returned to the U.S. from Canada after the 1977 pardon, but according to sociologist John Hagan, about half of them stayed on.Two academic literary critics have written at length about autobiographical novels by draft evaders who went to Canada – Rachel Adams in the.It is to be expected that the draft dodgers denounce the state as an oppressive bureaucracy, using the vernacular of the time to rail against "the machine" and "the system." Approximately one-third failed. 1968), cited above, pp. In Selective Service Acts.
"Artful Dodgers".Noriyuki, Duane (15 July 1990). San Francisco Chronicle, October 18, 1967. Unlike during World War II, most factory and agricultural workers could not gain occupational deferments by the late 1950s.
By November 1967, American troop strength in Vietnam was approaching 500,000 and U.S. casualties had reached 15,058 killed and 109,527 wounded. For this answer, one must look to the goals of Cold War liberals, both Republican and Democrat. Results for Men Facing the Draft in 1971.
Factories, hospitals and schools, for example, can operate only when fully staffed with skilled employees. If a nation does not require all of its citizens to participate in the armed forces, then someone must decide who goes and who stays.
Farmers and agricultural workers maintain necessary food supplies.
Deferments allow those with skills needed on the home front to exempt themselves from their military obligations because, especially during the upheaval of war, they ensure a viable domestic economy and stable society. As a result, they were more likely to be drafted, serve in combat and die in Vietnam.
“Greeting: You are hereby ordered for induction in the Armed Forces of the United States.” In 1967, more than 300,000 American men opened envelopes with this statement inside. In the words of one planning memo, the Selective Service could use the “club of induction” to “drive” individuals into “areas of greater importance.” This policy, known as manpower channeling, specifically defined these pursuits as service to the state on a par with military service.The availability of deferments for men attending college and in professional fields ballooned.
During the Vietnam draft, people would stay awake for days ahead of their medical screening, do a lot of illegal drugs, or otherwise make themselves appear generally unhealthy to avoid being draft. Significant draft avoidance was taking place even before the U.S. became heavily involved in the Vietnam War.The large cohort of Baby Boomers allowed for a steep increase in the number of exemptions and deferments, especially for college and graduate students. 1952).Gitlin (1993, orig.
These included.Canadian historian Jessica Squires emphasizes that the number of U.S. draft evaders coming to Canada was "only a fraction" of those who resisted the Vietnam War.The number of Vietnam-era draft evaders leaving for Canada is hotly contested; an entire book, by scholar Joseph Jones, has been written on that subject.Though the presence of U.S. draft evaders and deserters in Canada was initially controversial, the Canadian government eventually chose to welcome them.In Canada, many American Vietnam War evaders received pre-emigration counseling and post-emigration assistance from locally based groups.Those who went abroad faced imprisonment or forced military service if they returned home. Stories of privileged men finding ways to beat the draft began to circulate. Most ended up as infantrymen in Vietnam.It was no coincidence that those men who already fit the middle-class mold of domestic masculinity — those men who were college students or teachers or scientists — received deferments. Increasingly, opponents of the war had taken to destroying their Selective Service registration certificates (draft cards) as …
Although the Selective Service called relatively few men between the end of the Korean War in 1953 and American escalation in Southeast Asia in 1965, the draft had been in almost continuous operation since before the United States joined World War II. During the Vietnam War era, between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military drafted 2.2 … Registration with the Selective Service System was suspended on April 1, 1975, and registrant processing was suspended on January 27, 1976. At least as portrayed by reporters, these men were almost always middle class, with seemingly All-American families.Critics at the time and since have identified the Selective Service’s system of deferments as the main cause of military inequity during the Vietnam War. 247–252.Foley (2003), cited above, Introduction and Chaps. According to politicians and intellectuals, American superiority rested on outpacing Soviet technological development, both in the domestic realm and in the military sector. 172–181 ("The Alternative America in Draft-Dodger Novels" sub-chapter).Beelaert, Amy M. (November 1993).