From: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com (Richard Wojcik,snake)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Clinton's Letter of 12/3/69
Date: 9 Oct 92 20:33:05 GMT
Reply-To: rwojcik@atc.boeing.com
Organization: Research & Technology


Thanks to Elisabeth for printing the famous letter.  I had never seen it before,
and it left a totally different impression on my from what I had expected.  I
had expected a mocking, angry tone, which so characterized the feelings of 
protesters at that time.  Instead, we see a person torn by guilt over the fear
that he may have misrepresented himself to others.  He wrote the letter out of
personal honesty.  So much for the "trust" issue.  I had also heard that the
person he wrote the letter to never held any bitterness towards him and that
the person who released the letter was his daughter, a very partisan Republican.
Is this true?  

>Text of Clinton's Letter to ROTC Director.  Provided by the 
>Clinton for President Campaign.

>   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.

This is a relevant paragraph in the present "tempest in a teapot" stirred up
by our President himself, no less.  Nothing here says that he was a major
organizer of any demonstration.  At best, he took a leading role in organizing
just the American students at Oxford, not the whole demonstration.  I also 
read that a friend recalls Clinton organizing a small demonstration during the
Moratorium in Washington D.C.  Apparently, he did it as an alternative to the
"March on Death," fearing that there were too many left-wing radicals associated
with that activity.  I, in fact, was one of the marchers, and I never met any 
of the "trotskyites" that Clinton apparently feared.  I had met a trotskyite
at the Lincoln Memorial earlier.  She was in her 90's.  ;-)  Interesting old
lady.  Lots of buttons and spunk.

>   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...

This paragraph contains the famous "loathing for the military" that got
General Schwarzkopf so grumpy.  As anyone can see, it is full of mixed
feelings--love of country and hatred of an unjust war.  His "loathing of
the military" was no more than a loathing of the war that the military
threatened to engage him in at the time.  Someone, who quite legitimately
IMO, felt himself betrayed by an institution that forced him to choose between
loyalty and morality.

I am now far less disgusted with the Republican campaign committee, which spews
out the distortions, than with the media for pretending that there is some
substance to Clinton's so-called "evasions."  As far as I can tell, Clinton
has been nothing but honest and forthright in this matter.  The press has a
duty not to repeat pretense and innuendo as if it were fact.

-----
Disclaimer:  Opinions expressed above are not those of my employer.

    Rick Wojcik   (rwojcik@atc.boeing.com)   Seattle, WA
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc