Letters to the Editor
ondelette
Published Letters: 1984 Editor's Choice: 19
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The draft wasn't equal then, and it didn't get us out very fast
[Read the article: The antiwar GIs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]saintzak says:
Bring back the draft and you'll see the rampant militarism fade mighty fast.
I don't know. I didn't get drafted for Vietnam, didn't serve in the military. My lottery was in '72, and there were no student deferments (2S) that year. They still found ways to get around fairness, some draft boards in the 'burbs went up to 60, some in the inner city went up to 120. I knew I was out because I was 198. I helped my roommate collect his evidence for a CO, the guy downstairs almost killed himself on shots after "winning the lottery" with a 1. Parents who were all gung-ho about the war called their kids to congratulate them on not having to fight.
I don't recall that my views on the war were really that influenced by the draft. They were influenced by reading the news, hearing the body counts, and seeing the pictures. Even more, they were influenced by listening to the news of U.S. soldiers pinned down and dying in seiges while Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho argued about what shape the negotiating table should be and whose delegation should walk into the room first. By the time it got to my year, we were going to be getting out anyway, somebody from my year might very well have been the last person to die for a mistake.
As far as I could recall, the only thing I felt about the draft was that I didn't want to be drafted. Even though it was actually us young people, including us college kids, who had campaigned to get rid of the 2S deferment because it wasn't fair.
We had a draft from World War II through 1973. ALL of the Vietnam War (and the Korean War for that matter) happened when we had a draft. It didn't stop the war, it went on longer than any war in U.S. history. It did mean that a lot more troops went, and probably that a lot more troops died. Today, it would mean President Bush would have the troops he needed for adding Syria and Iran to his plate, before it meant jack about stopping the war or changing attitudes.
Be careful what you wish for.
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A Male point of view on abortion
[Read the article: A case for parental notification]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If a parent made a decision, based on parental notification that the child would have the baby, she'd be required by law to make adult decisions about it from the moment it was born, and in California would become an emancipated minor immediately: She would be regarded by the state as an adult, regardless of her age or maturity.
Beyond that, emotionally, Adrienne So's piece is very strange. That's what I kept saying to myself after I read it. It took me a while to put my finger on it. I know about the discrepancy between the matter of fact handling of abortions and the soul wrenching grief that happens other times.
I had a girlfriend once that got pregnant just after we had broken up. It's possible it was someone else, but most likely I was the father (do you still call it father if the baby never happened?). Every logical argument pointed to abortion, and that is what transpired. My ex-girlfriend was able to deal with it as a matter of fact, hard but necessary part of life. For some reason, I was not. I was inconsolable. I ranted. Friends of mine told me that I didn't smile or laugh for months, I wrote music about a lost period of time in my life, when I didn't quite know what had gone on -- even while I did in fact live my life out every day, study, go to school, go to work and all that.
I remember feeling like I should have gotten a choice. After all, if she had decided to keep the child, I would have been in for 20 years of support, after all, I was the father, equally responsible for the pregnancy and the lack of birth control, after all...
I had a million arguments as I went through my stages of grief, not even knowing why it hit me so hard.
In the end it can't be that way. A man can't have a codified role in the decision to terminate a pregnancy, some men would abuse that role, and what do you do with a 1-1 vote? In the end, there are facts. The facts are that the man will feel pain, the facts are that the man will feel helpless, the facts are that it can't happen any other way.
This is also, in the end, what Adrienne So needs to learn. Parents can't have a codified role in a decision to terminate a pregnancy for the same reason that the father of the child cannot. And notification that seems so benign to her could result in someone being beaten, even in someone dying in a bad family. So parents, like fathers, must just deal with the fact that they can't always be involved in every decision that affects them.
Because they have to respect the rights of someone else.