First, he fails to justify treating draft resistance as a movement at all. The World War I draft resisters were separated by half a century from the previous chapter about the abolitionists. These kinds of unanswered questions multiply when he comes to Vietnam draft resistance. During his discussion of the Vietnam period, he simply recounts events and gives statistics on the impressive numbers of draft resisters during the late '60s and early '70s, without going into the motivations and reasons for this sudden surge in civil disobedience. All this proves to me is that the Vietnam War was very unpopular.
Unilateral disarmament is placed on the agenda.
More importantly, he failed to show that the large numbers of draft resisters had any more than a peripheral connection to the goals and views of such a movement. He also overstates the political significance of draft resistance. As a manifestation of popular displeasure with the Vietnam War, draft resistance certainly played a large part in the end of conscription in 1972, as Kohn demonstrates quite well. In summary, this book is marred by extremely shallow analysis, over-generalization, and romanticizing of the draft resisters. Kohn was undoubtedly hampered by a lack of evidence, but that is not an license to base conclusions on wishful thinking.