From: ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba)
Subject: Clinton's anti-Vietnam efforts
Originator: ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba)
Keywords: READ the record before you pontificate!!!!
Reply-To: ryba@ll.mit.edu (Marty Ryba)
Organization: Group 101, MIT Lincoln Lab.
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 17:18:07 GMT


In article <7SEP92.16220722@vax.clarku.edu>, htilney@vax.clarku.edu writes:
|> 
|> In a previous article, mulac@daystrom.lerc.nasa.gov (Richard Mulac) wrote:
|> >>> If all these things are true, wouldn't such a
|> >>> man have thrown himself into the forefront of the anti-war movement and
|> >>> demonstrated what a great leader he was?
|> 
|> What are the facts regarding Clinton's involvement with the anti-war 
|> movement? Is it certain that he didn't partake in it to any degree?

   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:

        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.

As we see, he did partake in anti-war activities, within his self-imposed
limit of not completely cutting himself off from the political mainstream.
-- 
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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