From: lis@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Elisabeth Riba)
Subject: Clinton's Letter of 12/3/69
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 12:43:45 GMT



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


-- 
--------------->Elisabeth Anne Riba * lis@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu<---------------
"I want to be Robin to Bush's Batman."  Dan Quayle
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