Newsgroups: bit.listserv.words-l
Date:         Tue, 6 Oct 1992 17:41:37 EST
From:         Entropy Warrior <AUSBROOK@UCS.INDIANA.EDU>
Subject:      Clinton's Draft Letter (semi-long) . . . for inquiring minds

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


This 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 to 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 is
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 articuate
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


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