From: ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba)
Subject: THE WHOLE LETTER (was: Re: Clinton's anti-Vietnam efforts)
Originator: ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba)
Keywords: some people have short memories
Reply-To: ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba)
Organization: Group 101, MIT Lincoln Lab.
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 92 15:05:50 GMT


In article <1992Sep9.045938.11277@eagle.lerc.nasa.gov>, mulac@daystrom.lerc.nasa.gov (Richard Mulac) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep8.171807.9359@ll.mit.edu>, ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba) writes...
|> >>   For the record, and a bit of care in such records is often lacking in
|> >>posts seen here, here's a relevant piece from Clinton's 1969 letter to
|> >>Col. Holmes:
|> >> 
|> >>[A very revealing and informative letter deleted]
|> 
|> In article <1992Sep8.222025.5725@ctr.columbia.edu> a74k110@phobos.ucc.umass.edu writes:
|> >Thanks for posting that letter.  I'm a Clinton supporter anyway, but it
|> >was nice reading this letter because it reveals the extent of Clinton's
|> >character, at a time when the Republican wackos are having a field
|> >day with the draft issue.   You know it always amazes me that people 
|> >come up with opinions of other people without knowing the complete story.
|> 
|>   It's Clinton's fault if the public doesn't have his whole story
|> concerning the draft.  For the last week the major networks were prepared
|> to throw his responses at the top of the news, but all he could do is
|> answer with "I have no comments to make on that subject".
|> 

  "The letter" has been posted several times, and is available (along with
a ton of speeches and position papers and other campaign info) via
anonymous FTP on world.std.com in /obi/USElection/President/Clinton/, and
some other places as well.  Just for you, here's the whole shebang:

---------------------- cut here -----------------------------------
Text of Clinton's Letter to ROTC Director
 Here is the text of the letter that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton wrote to Col.
Eugene Holmes, director of the ROTC program at the University of Arkansas, on
Dec. 3, 1969:


        I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let
     you hear from me at least once a month, and from now on you will,
     but I have had to have some time to think about this first letter.
     Almost daily since my return to England I have thought about
     writing, about what I want to and ought to say.
        First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the
     draft, but for being so kind and decent ot me last summer, when I
     was as low as I have ever been. One thing which made the bond we
     struck in good faith somewhat palatable to me was my high regard
     for you personally. In retrospect, it seems that the admiration
     might not have been mutual had you known a little more about me,
     about my political beliefs and activities. At least you might have
     thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.
        Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked for two years in a
     very minor position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I
      did it for the experience and the salary but also for the
     opportunity, however small, of working every day against a war I
     opposed and despised with a depth of feeling I had reserved solely
     for racism in America before Vietnam. I did not take the matter
     lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time when not
     many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did.
        I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of
     the national organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend
     of mine. After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to
     work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to
     England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations Oct. 15
     and Nov. 16.
        Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not
     begin to consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar at
     Georgetown I wrote a paper on the legal arguments for and against
     allowing, within the Selective Service System, the classification
     of selective conscientious objection, for those opposed to
     participation in a particular war, not simply to ``participation in
     war in any form.''
        From my work I came to believe that the draft system itself in
     illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary
     democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill
      and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be
     wrong, a war which, in any case, does not involve immediately the
     peace and freedom of the nation.
        The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the
     people collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight, if the
     nation was to survive, for the lives of their countrymen and their
     way of life. Vietnam is no such case. Nor was Korea an example
     where, in my opinion, certain military action was justified but the
     draft was not, for the reasons stated above.

        Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great
     sympathy with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe
     die for their country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular
     government) right or wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are
     conscientious objectors. I wrote a letter of recommendation for one
     of them to his Mississippi draft board, a letter which I am more
     proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last year. One of my
     roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under indictment and
     may never be able to go home again. He is one of the bravest, best
     men I know. His country needs men like him more than they know.
     That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.
        The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent
     decisions were the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept
      the draft in spite of my beliefs for one reason: to maintain my
     political viability within the system. For years I have worked to
     prepare myself for a political life characterized by both practical
     political ability and concern for rapid social progress. It is a
     life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do not think our
     system of government is by definition corrupt, however dangerous
     and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be
     corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are
     all finished anyway.)
        When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having
     a hard time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been
     fighting against, and that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one
     way left in which I could possibly, but not positively, avoid both
     Vietnam and resistance. Going on with my education, even coming
     back to England, played no part in my decision to join ROTC. I am
     back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law School because there
     is nothing else I can do. In fact, I would like to have been able
     to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or work on
     some community action project and in the process to decide whether
     to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting
     what I have learned to use.
        But the particulars of my personal life are not nearly as
      important to me as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC
     letter of intent I began to wonder whether the compromise I had
     made with myself was not more objectionable than the draft would
     have been, because I had no interest in the ROTC program in itself
     and all I seemed to have done was to protect myself from physical
     harm. Also, I began to think I had deceived you, not by lies
     there were none  but by failing to tell you all the things I'm
     writing now. I doubt that I had the mental coherence to articulate
     them then.
        At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent
     my 1-D deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my
     self-regard and self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for
     weeks and kept going by eating compulsively and reading until
      exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on Sept. 12 I stayed up all
     night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft board, saying
     basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him for
     trying to help in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that
     I couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as
     soon as possible.
        I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every day
     until I got on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the
     letter because I didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army
     and maybe going to Vietnam would achieve anything except a feeling
     that I had punished myself and gotten what I deserved. So I came
     back to England to try to make something of this second year of my
     Rhodes scholarship.
        And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been
     good to me and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am
     writing too in the hope that my telling this one story will help
     you to understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to
     find themselves still loving their country but loathing the
     military, to which you and other good men have devoted years,
     lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many of us, it is
     no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or if it is
     clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.
         Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There
     is still a lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to
     Col. Jones for me.
        Merry Christmas.
 
        Sincerely,
        Bill Clinton
 
--------------------------------- cut here -------------------------------

-- 
Dr. Marty Ryba             |	Generation X:
Group 101 - Radars 'R Us   |
MIT Lincoln Laboratory     |  Too young to be cynical,
ryba@ll.mit.edu            |		too old to be optimistic.
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