Word: pardoners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...JANUARY 21, the day following his inauguration, President Jimmy Carter fulfilled one of his major campaign promises by issuing a blanket pardon to all those who had peacefully refused to register for the draft or be inducted into the armed services during the Vietnam War. By granting the pardon Carter hoped to bring America's tragic Vietnam experience to an end. Unfortunately, the pardon, while a step in the right direction, does not go nearly far enough...
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...
...failing to include deserters, and those with less than honorable discharges, the pardon discriminates against those whose opposition to the war grew out of 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...
...granting the pardon, Carter once again distinguished it from an amnesty. He noted that while an amnesty would have represented an admission that the resisters were right in opposing the war, the pardon merely eliminated the danger of prosecution, leaving the moral issue unresolved...
...subject of Viet Nam. Which was understandable enough. Said he: "Viet Nam has been the dominant factor of American life for the past 15 years. It would be a strange class that wouldn't bring up the subject." The students applauded when McGovern hailed President Carter's pardon of draft evaders, then wondered aloud whether "the men who conducted the war in Viet Nam may be the ones in need of a pardon...