With the Richard Blumenthal brouhaha today, perhaps it's worth looking back at the different responses to the draft in the sixties, something best done, maybe, through starting with a few lines from Phil Ochs' wonderful song "Draft Dodger Rag":
Oh, I'm just a typical American boy from a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd and a-keepin' old Castro down
And when it came my time to serve I knew "better dead than red"
But when I got to my old draft board, buddy, this is what I said:
CHORUS
Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen
And I always carry a purse
I got eyes like a bat, and my feet are flat, and my asthma's getting worse
Yes, think of my career, my sweetheart dear, and my poor old invalid aunt
Besides, I ain't no fool, I'm a-goin' to school
And I'm working in a dee-fense plant
That Senator Dodd, by the way, isn't the current one, but his father.
There were a number of ways to face the draft. One was to volunteer, as Al Gore did. There were plenty of people who did this, even those against the war, feeling that they couldn't in good conscience go when another would have to go in their place. A second group used the Reserves and the National Guard as a means of avoiding the chance of being sent to Vietnam. This is what George Bush did, and Richard Blumenthal (once he had used up his deferments). Others took their chances, waiting for the call to come from the draft board--or not. [I was one of these, never having been classified anything but 1-A: when the lottery came, I got lucky.] Still others tried for any deferment they could get (these are the draft dodgers Ochs sang of--and they include Dick Cheney as well as pre-Reserves Blumenthal). Another group, following an old tradition, left the country, generally for Canada. And, finally, there were the resisters, those who refused to cooperate and went to jail.
Each person had their own reasons for making the decisions they made.
Today, however, there are some who are not particularly proud of what they did. And a few of those have even taken to lying (either obliquely, like Blumenthal, or directly, like Joseph Ellis) to give the impression of a different response and/or experience than they actually had.