Road to Moscow: Bill Clinton’s Early Activism from Fulbright to Moscow

Original FReeper research | 08/22/2007 | Fedora

[Paperdoll]

You are both awesome!

[Fedora]

Hillary met a couple Kennedy associates on the faculty at Yale who got her on the Watergate prosecutors' staff. This would be a few years later, around 1972-1974, somewhere in there. There's some discussion in David Brock's Seduction of Hillary Rodham, and I think Jerry Zeifman, Without Honor: Crimes of Camelot and the Impeachment of Richard Nixon.

[Fedora]

Aww, thanks! :-)

[dynachrome]

Thanks.

[the invisib1e hand]

great moments in the history of white trash.

[JDoutrider]

A fine addition for my archives... Great work!

Thank You!

[Calpernia]

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

[Calpernia]

Fulbright, ping

[Calpernia]

Mr. Walinsky recalled that Mr. [John] Kerry flew him around the state of New York for several Vietnam Moratorium protests in October 1969.
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As September approached, Bill Clinton fails to enroll at the University Arkansas and returns to England around mid-September of 1969. It is quite clear that major changes in the draft would be forthcoming in the next few days or weeks. Clinton's appearance at Oxford was unexpected and he had to sleep on the floor in his friend's room.

In October and again in November 1969 Clinton organized and led anti-war demonstrations in London, England with the support of the British Peace Council, which was backed by the World Peace Council who was a front for the KGB.

October 30, 1969 Clinton was automatically reclassified to 1-A eligible for induction, after he failed to enroll at the University of Arkansas. Bill Clinton today, claims he volunteer for the draft but has no proof. Regardless, by this time a freeze was put on the draft until the lottery was established.

The Selective Service Lottery was held on December 1, 1969. Clinton's birthday draws number 311 in the first lottery. This high number guarantees Clinton will not be called up for the draft.

Two days later Clinton writes his infamous ROTC letter to Col. Holmes thanking him for saving him from the draft.

-----------------------------------------

[Calpernia]

More on Tariq Ali:

While studying at the Punjab University, he organized demonstrations against Pakistan’s military dictatorship. Ali’s uncle was chief of Pakistan’s Military Intelligence. His parents sent him to England to study at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. He was elected President of the Oxford Union debating club.

His public profile began to grow during the Vietnam War, when he engaged in debates against the war with such figures as Henry Kissinger and Michael Stewart. As time passed, Ali became increasingly critical of American and Israeli foreign policies, and emerged as a figurehead for critics of American foreign policy across the globe. He was also a vigorous opponent of American relations with Pakistan that tended to back military dictatorships over democracy.

Active in the New Left of the 1960s, he has long been associated with the, New Left Review. He was drawn into involvement with revolutionary socialist politics through his involvement with The Black Dwarf newspaper and joined a Trotskyist party, the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1968. He was recruited to the leadership of the IMG and became a member of the International Executive Committee of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International.

During this period, he was an IMG candidate in Sheffield Attercliffe at the Feburary 1974 UK general election and was co-author of, Trotsky for Beginners. In 1981 the IMG dissolved when its members entered the Labor Party and was promptly proscribed. Ali then abandoned activism in the revolutionary left and supported Tony Benn in his bid to become deputy leader of the Labor Party that year.

In 1990, he published the satire Redemption, on the inability of the Trotskyists to handle the downfall of the Eastern bloc, which contains parodies of many well-known figures in the Trotskyist movement.

His book, Bush in Babylon, criticizes the WOT by President George W. Bush. The book portrays the war in Iraq as a failure. An atheist who grew up around Muslims, Ali believes that the new Iraqi government will fail.

He currently lives in London with his partner Susan Watkins, editor of the New Left Review. He has three children: Natasha, Chengiz and Aisha.

http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth164#bibliography
Tariq Ali

http://www.newleftreview.org
New Left Review

The Black Dwarf:

The Black Dwarf was a political and cultural newspaper published between May 1968 and 1972 by a collective of socialists in the United Kingdom. It is often identified with Tariq Ali who edited and published this newspaper until 1970, when the editorial board split between Leninist and non-Leninist currents.

The Leninists, including Ali and other members of the International Marxist Group, went on to find the Red Mole.

The Black Dwarf published a special edition in autumn 1968 devoted entirely to the Bolivian Diaries of Che Guevara, in a translation first published by Ramparts in the United States. Included is an introduction by Fidel Castro. This edition appears to be in response to a version of the diaries being published by “some publishers in league with those who murdered Che”.

[Calpernia]

Tariq Ali Interview - Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

The fuse often comes in ways that are unpredictable. The big fuse which stopped the Vietnam War was the inability of the United States to win that war -- the fact that it was suffering defeats on the battleground, and the body-bag factor. Sometimes when I'm arguing with hard-core fundamentalists, Islamic ones, I [ask] what threatened the Pentagon more: a few idiots throwing bombs on it, a building which can be repaired within two weeks? Well, I think that did not threaten anyone. It's just an act of stupidity, foolishness, politically. Compare that to the seventies when you had a quarter of a million GIs who had fought in the war -- veterans on their crutches, with their medals, marching outside the Pentagon and chanting that they wanted the Vietnamese to win. What affects them more? Obviously, the latter, because that shows that the core of that state apparatus is infected with ideas which challenge the empire. Ultimately, that has got to be the route.

I've been reading about this lately, that when the United States occupied the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century, a group of intellectuals led by Mark Twain, and Henry James, and William James, and Thomas Dewy, and the cream of the American intelligentsia, organized the Anti-Imperialist League. There was a massive gathering in Chicago in 1898 or '99, and within a year and a half, it had a quarter of a million members. So, that's necessary for educational purposes.

What is necessary for what you are asking is a political party, because if these movements, whether it's the Anti-Imperialist League or anything like it, are not reflected on the level of politics, then they will be ineffective, in my opinion. What is very noticeable is that this giant antiwar movement which erupted before the war in Iraq, which is unprecedented in world history, wasn't reflected on the level of politics. The anti- Vietnam War movement was. I remember vividly the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under William Fulbright putting pressure to get the truth, and a whole wave of politicians, Democratic politicians, challenging the official view. Since 9/11, it's been the silence of the lambs. They've given up, the Democrats, you feel. And sooner or later, if they can't do it, something will have to emerge in this country which does reflect the view of a sizable section of the people. Unless that happens, I think we're doomed. We have to find ways of doing that.

Excerpt

[richlk]

Fascinating stuff! I couldn’t stop reading.
Thanks! (...I think. Yet another source for vivid nightmares.)

[Fedora]

I just noticed that due to a formatting problem, a paragraph got snipped out from my original. The bolded paragraph below should be included after the first paragraph below:

Tracing the origin of Fulbright’s antiwar views reveals an intriguing ancestry for Clinton’s views. Fulbright had not initially opposed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was originally viewed as a measured, flexible alternative to full-scale escalation in Vietnam. But after a major increase in US ground deployment in summer 1965, and after Fulbright’s relationship with President Johnson became strained over Dominican Republic policy that September, he began questioning Johnson’s Vietnam policy.

At this point Fulbright began researching Asia intensely. He read a number of books about the Far East over a trip to Australia that December. He came back complaining about the history of British imperialism in China and declaring there would be hearings on Vietnam. He opened hearings the next month. He subsequently began sending his assistants James G. Lowenstein and Richard M. Moose to Southeast Asia for regular fact-finding missions that formed the basis of periodic Senate reports. (In 1969 Fulbright, Lowenstein, Moose, and Fulbright’s assistants Carl Marcy and Norvill Jones would begin advising former Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg on how to go about leaking the Pentagon Papers, a set of classified military documents on the Kennedy-Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy.)

[Fedora]

Ping to correction in #33.

Thanks for the Ali stuff.

[Calpernia]

Thanks, I’ll get it updated on my contact lists.

[nw_arizona_granny]

You are welcome.

You are both wonderful, for keeping the information alive.

Calpernia, is the thread you listed, the one that has the relative and information, on the special camp that Clinton attended in
the C. country?

I am not up to reading all 300 posts, to find it.

[justiceseeker93]

I have to confess to being momentarily duped by your post number 8.

At first I was stunned by "Clinton's" admission that the KGB paid his way through law school.

Then I saw that it was a transcript of Saturday Night Live.

Still, good satire has an element of truth to it, as they say.

[Fedora]

Sorry for any inconvenience! One typo always seems to creep in somehow. . .

[Fedora]

Someone else who read it told me they thought it was real at first, too, LOL! :-)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!