TRUMPS AUTOMATIC Registration for Military Draft

@MoveAlong alot did in our time.. i lived by fort carson . and got to know the men who came back from the vietnam war.. i was thankful i was still in high school till we pulled out.. the stories they told me.. some might have been true and some might not have been.. this type of stuff or them smuggling drugs in the body bags

@MoveAlong Exactly. In the 60's I was against the draft like most young men. But when I graduated from college, lost my deferment, and was drafted I actually changed my mind. I viewed my military experience as a post-graduate education in how to manage-up, learning how to live with a wide-range of people of varying ethnic, geographic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, team work, etc. I also saw the value veterans, even those of only two-years service as an unwilling draftee, brought to civilian life in communities. I became an advocate of universal military service such as many nation's have as a way of truly democratizing society. However, I must admit that I was drafted before the Gulf of Tonkin and Vietnam became a full-fledged military intervention. If I had been drafted 6 months later, I might be a Canadian today. And given the current regime with Trump & Hegseth at the helm, if my grandson were to ask for advice. . . .

@markinkansas
In my experience most of the really ugly stuff wasn't the norm. We just did what we were trained to do and hope to make it to next day.

@MoveAlong it was a mess.. and the men like to tell stories of how they survived.. i see you was old enough to be there.. glad you made it home.. to you was it a war or a peace keeping mission ? i have heard both

@markinkansas


To me it was never anything but a war. Whether right or wring I believed the domino effect was a real thing. I felt at the time we were keeping all of Indochina from falling to the communists. With 20-20 hindsight I can see where it was foolish to think we could achieve those goals.

Like others have said I wouldn't take anything for the experience of what I went through. But I would never do it over again.