From: eyc@acpub.duke.edu (EMIL CHUCK)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Cowards???
Date: 27 Jan 93 23:58:30 GMT
Followup-To: alt.politics.clinton
Organization: Duke University; Durham, N.C.

lafave@ial4.jsc.nasa.gov (Dr. Norman J. LaFave) writes:
-In article <1993Jan26.234628.12099@irscscm.UUCP> Susan Butler,
-sbutler@irscscm.UUCP writes:
=> 	The Vietnam Memorial Wall is full of names of people who
=> 	were not COWARDS--and now we have one for our president.
=Cut me a break! Just because a person felt that the war was wrong,
=and didn't participate, does not necessarily make them a coward. It
=could mean that they had strong convictions
=which would not let them participate in
=good conscience. It is also a sign of courage when you stand up
=for your convictions no matter the cost to your reputation.

I beg to differ with the person you support. First, his words...

"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.)"
	Bill Clinton's letter to Col. Holmes Dec 03 69

	First off, there was no cost for him or his reputation. His
motivation was to maintain his political viability. There was no risk
for his life, and he signed a letter of intent in contradiction to his
own feelings for the situation. I assume if he felt so passionately for
his cause that he would not have compromised his convictions just to
"maintain political viability."

	Remember this was not a dilemma that came upon him immediately.
Earlier in the letter, Clinton himself states that he 

"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."

among other activities in which he was involved that demonstrated (sorry
about the pun) his disapproval for American policy in Vietnam. He
concludes that "From my work I came to believe that the draft system
itself is illegitimate" at least for this circumstance. Clinton's
conscientious stance in this letter, however, says, he went ahead and
made himself eligible for the draft (to become a broken record) to
"maintain his political viability."

I wish I could see the courage you said Clinton had here. The courage he
had was strictly based on personal motivation, the courage that he
lacked in "facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting
against". The courage he had when "I hardly slept for weeks and kept
going by eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought
sleep." The courage that he had when "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." A
letter which "I never mailed ... but I did carry it on me every day
until I got on the plane to return to England." The courage he had when
he realized, "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."
-- 
Emil Thomas Chuck	eyc@acpub.duke.edu	BSE in BME in 1993
"You just can't promise something like that just to get elected if you
 know there's a good chance that circumstances may overtake you."
	- Bill Clinton, East Lansing MI debate, Mon Oct 19 1992