Why the “Draft Dodgers” are the real Heroes of Vietnam!!!
VIET NAM – 1966: Wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (C) being led past stricken comrade after fierce firefight for control of Hill 484 south of the DMZ. (Photo by Larry Burrows/Time Magazine/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
By Dave Bourne
My Uncle was shot in Vietnam in the arm pit. It got him sent home. Growing up you could tell he was someone that had been in the military. He was into all of the military Atari games (for those who remember Atari). And did things you would think a former military man would do. Like camping and being an outdoorsmen, collecting military gear and just his general attitude. Don’t get me wrong he was a friendly guy always making jokes. But there was just something different about him. My father luckily missed the draft as his number was never called. I don’t know if my uncle was different before the war as that was before I was born. But I assume in some ways he was. There were many people that were drafted into a civil war in Vietnam between North and South which the US had no business being involved in. But of course the US government exploited the spread of communism and how first it would be Vietnam then another country then the next until they are fell like dominos until there were now democracies left. Of course as we know now that was all bull s**t. And all the US government did was destroy families and get people killed and injured some with permanent life altering injuries. Not to mention the alleged experiments done on soldiers and exposure to Agent Orange.
The real heroes of Vietnam were the average Americans that refused to fight in the war. They stood up to a unnecessary and ridiculous war by refusing to murder people that they had never meant, never did anything to them and had no reason to be killed by people that had nothing to do with a civil war thousands of miles away. Some fled the US, tried to hide out or went to Canada. Finally years after the war ended Former President Jimmy Carter pardoned all “draft dodgers”. But not after all of the negative effects it had on their lives especially for the ones that went to prison. They were hero’s that refused to murder under the orders of the US government for reasons beyond “keeping the world safe for democracy”. While its own government covered up and murdered a president not many years earlier, most likely to get into the war in the first place. Things like helping to create billion dollar companies that made weapons to fight the war, maintain unless agencies and the military industrial complex, while creating one of the worst mistakes in recent American history taking the dollar off the gold standard to afford a meaningless war. So who are the real heroes’ to you? To me the ones that stand up to power, and their beliefs are always heroes.