Word: draft
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...only is it a bit unfair to single out Quayle for taking refuge in the National Guard, but ; the belated embrace of combat chic, which now stretches from movie screens to comic books, seems a disturbingly one-sided way to redress the inequities of the Viet Nam-era draft. Away from the heat of political campaigns, many Americans acknowledge that the Viet Nam War was fraught with moral ambiguity and that honor could be found in either serving one's country or protesting what one believed was its march toward folly. Says Sociologist Jerold Starr, the editor of a widely...
...Selective Service began sweeping more and more men into the military (283,586 in 1969), many complained, justifiably, that the selection system was still unfair. In response, a draft lottery was introduced for 1970: a number from 1 to 366 was randomly assigned to each day of the year (including Feb. 29), and men were picked for military service based on their birthdays. Quayle, born on Feb. 4, was given 210; men with numbers as high as 215 were drafted...
...even under the new, more equitable rules, says Korb, "anybody with a grain of sense could have beaten the draft." Some college students deliberately flunked their Army examinations. Others depicted themselves as conscientious objectors or fought the Selective Service System in the courts. An estimated 40,000 eligible males fled the U.S., most of them emigrating to Canada...
...just before Quayle enlisted, the Army National Guard had a waiting list of 100,000. In 1970 National Guard Association President James Cantwell estimated that as many as 90% of all Guard members had joined to avoid the draft. When the draft was abolished in 1972, Guard membership began to drop off, falling from 411,000 in 1974 to an all-time low of 347,000 in 1979. The size of the Guard has climbed steadily in the 1980s, reaching 458,000 last year...
Feelings about the draft continued to run high after it was abolished. As a freshman Congressman in 1977, Quayle voted to cut off funds for President Jimmy Carter's proposed program to grant amnesty to Viet Nam draft dodgers. Yet Wheeler speculates that Quayle, like others his age, may suffer from a vague sense of shame. "Most men who did not go to Viet Nam feel a twinge of guilt," says Wheeler, adding, "It's unnecessary emotional freight." Wheeler believes Quayle should speak out about the fears and conflicted feelings that so many young men experienced during the war. Such...