Word: draft
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...member of the armed forces of the U.S. and a veteran of Viet Nam, I support President Carter's pardon of the Viet Nam era draft evaders. I urge Mr. Carter to act swiftly to resolve the status of those ex-servicemen with less-than-honorable discharges and those who, as a matter of conscience, deserted...
Under the terms of the pardon only 20,000 draft resisters are covered. Carter has indicated that he will review the cases of the more than 100,000 deserters and others with less than honorable discharges on an individual basis, and that he will follow a similar procedure in the cases of those demonstrators convicted of destroying selective service files or protesting violently against...
...their horror at the senseless destruction they witnessed. Moreover, while the majority of those eligible for pardons are middle-class whites, a disproportionately large number of deserters are members of disadvantaged minority groups. Many of these people simply lacked the information or financial means to evade the draft. Any government action to heal the scars caused by Vietnam surely must include these men. It should also cover those who participated in non-violent acts such as the destruction of selective service files in an attempt to stop American involvement...
...just this refusal to address the moral issues involved in the tragedy of Vietnam that makes the Carter pardon unacceptable. An unconditional, universal amnesty for all Vietnam-era draft resisters is the only acceptable solution. By failing to admit that the government's Vietnam policy was horribly wrong and that those who opposed that immoral policy in the only way they could were right, the pardon fails to serve the needs of those who were the victims and in many ways the greatest heroes of that time...
...taunt the local establishment this week is Dr. Benjamin Spock, revolutionary anti-war activist and author of the equally revolutionary all-time bestselling "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care." Spock, who spent his Thoreauvian night in jail for counseling youths on how to avoid the draft, will also speak at Morse Auditorium, on Sunday Feb. 13 at 11 a.m. His topic, which sticks out like a sore thumb in these staid '70's, will be "The Need for Radical Political Action...