By Joel Thurtell
Why do I think the lack of military conscription — a draft — ensures that today there is no upheaval against George W. Bush’s war in Iraq as powerful as the one that forced the United States to get out of Vietnam?
We have a volunteer Army today. And a volunteer Navy, Air Force and Marines. While it is tragic when one of our service men or women is killed in action, we can say, Well, that person wanted to serve in the military. Maybe more importantly, the demographics of voluntarism tend to center on families that view military service as a solemn duty, or who see the military as a path to a better life. That would exclude many in the middle and upper classes who view military service as a brake on careers and a good way to prematurely end one’s life.
My two high school classmates who were killed in Vietnam were not planning on joining the Army and going to war. They dropped out of college and lost their student deferments. The loss of those two friends was devastating not only to their families, but to their extended network of friends. It made every one of us think, What the hell is going on? Why are we fighting this war? What did Vietnam do to us? Domino theory — bullshit!
I’m not talking about people in, say, Grand Rapids or Lansing or Detroit. No doubt about it, poor kids in the cities, high school dropouts, even high school graduates, those guys were getting nailed by the draft in high numbers. But I’m talking about conservative, Republican, Jerry Ford-loving Lowell, Michigan. Suddenly, they’re having to think about what Vietnam means not to the Vietnamese being shot at and bombed or the Cambodians being bombed into the stone age, but to their own friends and family members. Once student deferments were removed and the lottery installed, the draft was a great equalizer.
My best buddy from high school grew up on a dairy farm outside Lowell. He was a hawk on the Vietnam war most of the way through college. We had some pretty loud arguments. He was dating a fellow student at Michigan State and her brother was drafted, sent to Vietnam and killed. Suddenly, my friend was a dove. The war had been an abstraction to him. It was easy to get all geeked up with patriotic fervor and talk about killing Commies when you had nothing to lose. But suddenly discover that someone close to you has been killed in a stupid war and the thinking hat goes one.
As I say, these awakenings were happening in conservative, you might even say right-wing Lowell. Our congressman, Jerry Ford, was a hawk. “Why are we pulling our air power punch?” Ford said in high dudgeon against President Lyndon Johnson’s — to Ford — lackluster pursuit of the war.
In Lowell, people were waking up. My parents were Republicans all the time I was growing up. I remember my dad railing against Harry Truman when as president he removed the revered General Douglas MacArthur as commander in Korea. My dad was an Air Force pilot in World War II. Oh, did we have arguments. For dad in the early and mid-sixties, it was “My country right or wrong.”
“Dad,” I’d say, “This is not World War II. We are not fighting fascism. These are not Nazis in Vietnam. They are people who want to run their country themselves. Remember the American Revolution? We are like England was then. We are trying to impose a corrupt government on them, not democracy, and they are telling us very powerfully to get screwed. Our national security is not at stake. This is a colonial war, and I am not willing to give my life for it.”
One day when I thought my dad was going to argue with me, he said, “You’re right. This war is stupid.”
Soon, he and mom were writing impassioned anti-war letter to Jerry Ford. Our congressman didn’t seem to be changing because of their letters, but at the same time, I’m sure he paid attention. The House Minority Leader knew me. I’d worked in his Capitol office for three months in 1965. And he knew my parents.
People in Lowell had to digest those deaths of two of its young men. There were seventy six of us in the Lowell High School Class of 1963, including Thomas (Tex) Ford and Lloyd Slack. Both were well known. They had played football — were GOOD football players. That was and is a big deal in Lowell. To give you an idea how big football is in Lowell, its teams were state champions in 2002, 2004, and 2009. USA Today ranked Lowell’s football team number one in the nation in 2009. Friday night football games were then and still are huge in Lowell. The loss of those two guys was a blow. The guys in the MOOSE, the guys in the VFW, even the American Legion, had to take note.
After August 28, 1968, the good people of Lowell had to take in another bit of news. The Honor Roll student who was president of the student council and recipient of the American Legion post’s trophy for outstanding citizenship had been arrested in Chicago during the infamous Democratic Convention.
Anyone with a television set knew what happened in Chicago. It was dubbed a “police riot” by media, many of whose reporters and camera people were beaten up by Chicago cops. But in Lowell, the events in the Windy City took on another reality. Once again, a local person was involved. He was in Chicago to protest the war, peacefully. Had gotten beaten up and arrested while not even protesting anything. While sitting in a stopped car waiting for traffic and a cordon of cops to clear on Michigan Avenue, in front of the Chicago Art Institute.
So now, people are wondering, how could it be that this son of Lowell, student council president, darling of the American Legion, intern to Jerry Ford, got knocked around by cops defending the war and the system that makes the war possible?
That’s the way people were being provoked to think, to actually ANALYZE, what was going on. People they knew were being killed or knocked around by a system that seemed powerful and unchangeable. Elected officials like Lyndon Johnson and Jerry Ford were unswerving as they kept up the pace of war. Tricky Dick Nixon was elected claiming he has a “secret pullout plan” and instead bombs Cambodia. Things were bad under Johnson. Under Nixon with his crooked attorney general, John Mitchell, and his crooked vice president who was forced to resign, Spiro Agnew, there seems no way to change things. What was a lowly, seemingly powerless individual to do?
More and more people were turning out for protest demonstrations. Voting didn’t seem to be working, but televized photos of people mobilizing could send a message another way.
Without the draft, the core issue — the war in far-off Vietnam — would not have been real. It took the deaths of people who were not committed to “freedom” in Vietnam, the deaths of ordinary Americans with ordinary relatives and friends, to connect the dots for people at home. Gradually, and then with the election of Richard Nixon and the intensification of the war and bombing, opposition built up.
But in August, 1974, Nixon, embroiled in the scandal dubbed “Watergate,” resigned and his appointed vice president, Gerald Ford of Grand Rapids and my old boss, suddenly was President.
Ironically, Jerry Ford, the man who claimed we were pulling our “air power punch,” took the country out of Vietnam on April 30, 1975.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
