http://abcnews.go.com/onair/nightline/clintonyears/clinton/etc/draftletter.html
Clinton's ROTC Letter As Entered in Congressional Record (Page: H5550) 7/30/93
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 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 only for saving me from the draft, but for being so kind to me last summer, when I was as low as I have ever been. One thing that 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 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 October 15 and November 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 is 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 country 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 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 only, 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 in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and the 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. 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 near 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 itself and all I seem to have done was to protect myself from physical harm. Also, I had begun to think that I had deceived you, not by lies--there were none--but by failing to tell you all of the things I'm telling you now. I doubt I had the mental coherence to articulate them then.
At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1D 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 September 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 with 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 the 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 understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves loving their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men have devoted years, lifetimes and the best service you could give. To many of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is dis-service, 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 Colonel Jones for me. Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
Bump
BILL CLINTONI 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 October 15 and November 16.
Connection? You decide. REVIEW WHOLE THREAD
America (a certain percentage of Americans, anyway) gave Clinton a pass, even tho he protested against the war and evaded service -- and look what we got, a Prez who ran from Somalia when the Black Hawk Down incident caused eighteen American casualties. Eighteen!
We don't need another girlie-man Prez like Kerry in office as Commander in Chief.
Anyone who has paid any attention to Kerry's Campaign would easily conclude that John Kerry has a hard time admitting a mistake.
When John Kerry was confronted about a false statement he was making on the campaign trail, John Kerry said his speech writer was told to remove that line from his speech weeks ago!
When John Kerry took a spill on the Ski Slope, he blamed one of his Secret Service Agents
When the Kerry Campaign Train blew past a large gathering of supporters that he was scheduled to speak to, he blamed the Conductor.
It's his life story
bump for amazing reference work by Calpernia - God Bless Ya - and for later use.
The blood of tens of thousands is on John Kerry's hands...and yet he pretends our hatred of him is political.
Kerry is a traitor ang may God help us if he's elected Commander in Chief.
"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."
The friend he's alluding to would be David Mixner, one of five key leaders of the Moratorium, the other four being Jerome Grossman (founder), Sam Brown (primary organizer), David Hawk, and Marge Sklencar.
On a related note with respect to Kerry, in early 1970 while he was running for Congress Kerry became friends and political allies with Grossman and Brown; it was at Grossman's suggestion that Kerry agreed to drop out of the 1970 Congressional campaign and support Robert Drinan instead. My next article gets into some details of this. One thing I'll note here is that the leadership of the Moratorium was interlocked with the leadership of the New Mobe (New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam), which a 1970 Congressional report found to be under “communist domination”. Walinsky was the most prominent leader of the New York branch of the Moratorium. In other words, by flying Walinsky around, Kerry was supporting a Communist front group while still on active duty. This is evidently why Kerry's accounts emphasize that "Mr. Kerry has said he did not take part in the protests". I guess flying one of the key speakers around isn't taking part. . .evidently as Clinton would say, it depends on the meaning of "taking part". . .
Another scum who never should have even been anywhere near the White House let alone polluting it's sink!
Wowsa. Powerful letter from
Bill Clinton admitting he was a
protestor against America in Post #1
Is this letter the real deal?
ping
http://boycottliberalism.com/Scandals.htm
scandals involving leaders from the Democratic Party
Boycottliberalism.com- Home
Cross post. Thank you. bump.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1844177/posts
A Lament for Vietnam
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/B?r106:@FIELD(FLD003+d)+@FIELD(DDATE+20000628)
WWII POW SLAVE LABOR LAWSUIT
Committee on the Judiciary: Committee concluded hearings to determine whether those who profited from the forced labor of American World War II Prisoners of War once held and forced into labor for private Japanese companies have an obligation to remedy their wrongs and whether the United States can help facilitate an appropriate resolution, after receiving testimony from Senator Bingaman; David W. Ogden, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division, Department of Justice; Ronald J. Bettauer, Deputy Legal Adviser, Department of State; Harold G. Maier, Vanderbilt University Law School, Nashville, Tennessee; and Harold W. Poole, Salt Lake City, Utah, Frank Bigelow, Brooksville, Florida, Lester I. Tenney, La Jolla, California, Maurice Mazer, Boca Raton, Florida, and Edward Jackfert, Wellsburg, West Virginia, all former WWII Prisoners of War.