Word: viet
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...Guard. The managing editor of his grandfather's newspaper, Wendell Phillippi, had indeed called an old acquaintance, the Guard planning officer, on Quayle's behalf. This old-brass network clearly expedited Quayle's access to a relatively safe haven, but such transactions were common throughout the country during the Viet Nam War. Thousands of other Americans, including Senators Bill Bradley of New Jersey and Don Nickles of Oklahoma, sat out the war in the National Guard or military reserves (though they were not, like Quayle, outspoken advocates of the Viet...
Americans have never been able to respond to the misguided excesses of idealistic youth with a Gallic shrug. That is why the furor over Dan Quayle's Viet Nam record has become such a polarizing issue. Once again the nation is reminded of all the unresolved passions of the 1960s, a time of both angry and antic generational rebellion, when national leaders were reviled, patriotism was mocked, and drug taking exalted...
That, of course, was then, and this is now. Twenty years later, almost every cause that animated the '60s has been repudiated by the revisionism of the sedentary '80s. The interplay between Ronald Reagan and shifting cultural attitudes has created a new orthodoxy of patriotism and restraint: Viet Nam (a noble if tragic cause), drugs (just say no) and sex (play it safe). As the pendulum swings to the right, woe betide any baby-boom politician who spent the '60s doing anything more daring than swallowing goldfish and doing the Frug. Before the nation gives way to a new slogan...
...seeing combat. Guard members were required to undergo six months of basic training and then provide part-time service, mostly on weekends, for the rest of their six-year tour. Though the Joint Chiefs of Staff had recommended in the early 1960s that the Guard be sent to Viet Nam, Army Guard units were assigned combat duty only in 1968-69. No more than 20 of the nation's approximately 4,000 units were ever called up. "What the Guard meant," says Jack Wheeler, "was not going to Viet Nam." One exception: Company D of the 151st Infantry, Indiana National...
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...