Let Those Hillbillies Go Get Shot

...To imply that Harris spoke that way because he was insecure about his masculinity would be absurd: would that all men could transform their sense of masculinity from aggression into this kind of winsome, half-laughing at yourself, self-testing...

...not taking those risks yourself, even your protest is somehow unpersuasive...

...Darwinian Selection The 1966 deferment test, an inroad on the undergraduate sanctuary, resurrected at least a glimmer of the overall inequity issue...

...And the enemy confronted there was so fearsome and oppressive that even during the build-up: as well as afterwards, we demanded in all seriousness that they give us amnesty and "drop charges...

...But the suspension of disbelief was fragile, for, as it happens, an ambulatory youth in an army jacket with a bandaged pate suggests a soldier, leading one to remember that outside the theater of the campus people were facing real and terrible wounds, not bumps on the head...

...The antipathy soon took on a life of its own, influencing even the moderate, and making it possible years later for hard-hats to beat ~p peace demonstrators when they themselves believed we should get out of Vietnam...

...The more radical young, meanwhile, reaffirmed their identity by picking up Viet Cong flags and turning their cause from anti-war to pro-North Vietnam, further separating themselves from those who had died by North Vietnamese bullets...

...But whatever arguments could be made for militancy, they were powerfully reinforced by a need for it...

...Out of them I've found a truth that is stronger without weapons than with...

...Every time you sought to pit yourself against the wrongdoers, you were likely to find feather pillows instead of your own cutting edge...

...It was only when I had to face the possibility of being drafted and began talking the problem out that I became aware of the unfairness," comments one who faced the draft in 1968...

...The only way to ride a motorcycle was in your T-shirt, with a pair of big dark glasses...

...For whatever reasons, very few people I know, or know of, have ended up inducted, suggesting that some hidden mechanism has continued to protect the advantaged...

...A fairly active movement grew to stick together and thwart the measure...

...But the shock effect of the measure must have been that bright students had to face their less advantaged friends and realize that the difference in their ability might possibly mean the difference between life and death, prison or freedom...

...Actually, though there are no statistics, it's my strong impression that the abolition of that deferment changed things very little...

...Obscured, though always lurking, was the fact that it was "their boys" who were over there to be for or against, who were coming back, more and more often in coffins, while the anti-war forces decried the cause in which those sacrifices had been made from the sanctuary afforded by grossly inequitable draft laws...

...This is one of the most rousing calls to nonviolence I have ever come across...

...And yet the way we select our soldiers to fight such wars could scarcely be more unfair than it is today...

...The draft presented the same problem...

...The lottery, though by no means eliminating all the options available to the well-off, is clearly a step towards fairness...

...The outcry was immediate...

...Also, after the graduate deferment was abolished, everybody felt threatened...

...A fundamental part of the style was riding motorcycles," they write, and then, quoting David Harris: "I have a conception of what you do in emergencies that's gained from motorcycles...

...And not only might those angry hecklers on the sidelines be their brothers and sisters, parents and wives, but the failure of the movement to attract their support-the great middle of the population from which the army was drawing its manpower-had everything to do with its ineffectuality...

...The army test itself, which one took if one's rank was borderline, or if one wanted to challenge a low rank, became a focal point for protest, and a rash of sit-ins at induction centers where the tests were given broke out across the country...

...A couple of times in demonstrations I was really scared, and then you come out of it and there was the good old Washington Monument...

...The irony of being protected by the system you were fighting against was one of the constantly disconcerting conditions of the left-wing struggle in the sixties...

...another (and related) tender spot is touched by suggesting a connection between the violence of the young left and the rejection of what has become a traditional rite of passage in this country-going to war...

...Those who escape, by and large, are those with the means to continue their education until they reach the 'safe' age of 26...

...The same specter hung over the accusation of professors by students that when they flunked students they helped man the war effort, or the outrage of those who said that when Columbia expelled Mark Rudd they might as well have sent him to the front lines in Southeast Asia...

...And that threat caused every young man who professed to be against the war to ponder what he would do if he were inducted...

...Plaque by Plaque The terrible irony of all this is that the militancy which made it absolutely impossible for the movement to attract mass support was, in part, a reaction to not going to war...

...Yet the people making those sacrifices tended to support the war...

...Even the rhetoric of the nonviolent Resistance is shot through with reactions against those tremors: "Be a Man, Don't Go...

...The incidents, however, provide a perfect image: certainly those who left sit-ins for tests, and even those who merely heard about the incidents, must have suffered at least a mild case of that confused paralysis that sets in where earnest desire to end the war meets the inequity of the draft...

...Yet the issue runs through the decade of activism, a mocking grimace, an elusive but crucial factor in the wrestling match with the angel of conscience, and possibly a clue to why that match ended in disheartened exhaustion...

...This reaction, in turn, was generated for many in the anti-war effort because they were protected by inequitable draft laws and other less explicit forms of privilege...

...Wearing a black arm band with the number of dead printed on it, for instance, was in a way taking unfair advantage of dead men, because, were they able to speak, they might well condemn your peace effort...

...Anyone wrestling with the prospect of induction will wonder how big a part fear plays in his desire not to go...

...We had all gone through experiences on motorcycles when we knew we came close to dying...

...Some in the sanctuary faced this...

...Words may seem trivial, but the lack of them in this instance signifies a huge, uncharted territory, a mine field ever interposing itself between those in power and the stopping of the war...

...Yet, at the time, that almost inevitable conclusion was largely avoided, a disembodied specter hovering over the deferment test protests as it hung over the whole anti-war movement...

...It seems reasonable that worn nerves are sensitive to the abrasive of criticism when the once-new activism finds itself washed up, fading, and defeated on the shores of the seventies...

...Perhaps it's asking too much of the limited energies of the peace movement to say that it should have put pressure on the government to make the draft just-in effect to draft its own-rather than devoting all its force to simply stopping the war...

...Partly the feeling was the sick helplessness most women experience when faced with military deaths...

...Now, with the lottery, the draft is more and more fair, calls have precipitously dropped as the fight has shifted to the air and American ground troops leave...

...The effort was to link conscience to political action, but the safety catches made it difficult to gauge the depth of one's convictions...

...An indication of the insensitivity to this hidden horror of the war is the attitude, prevalent now among radicals, that the lottery is a perpetration of the war-makers...

...As a result, many of the demonstrators who had been blocking the doorways got up and went in to take the test...

...Egalitarian Imprisonment Another area in which the issue was kept alive was in The Resistance, a group which sought to end the war through resistance to the draft, and which began to grow as general opposition to the war escalated and students no longer could be sure of escaping the "endless catacombs...

...Fear of getting killed or maimed is a sign of health, but the courage to take such risks has become in this culture the mark of a man...

...Those who continued to sit in probably could afford to because their high rank made it unnecessary to take the test...

...In the process of any serious discussion, the question of those who were going, and why, would almost inevitably come up...

...James, I noticed something new on the familiar platform...

...To some, at least, the "riots" were a great success, for it made "them" show their true colors in a "confrontation...

...And indeed, if one believes that sometimes wars do have to be fought, then you hope, for the sake of your self-esteem if nothing else, that under such circumstances you would pick up your share of the burden...

...Until it was made clear they were not in the running, girls pledged to purposely do badly in order to give their male colleagues a better chance...

...This was not a stand which would appeal to a draftable young man against the war...

...jeopardy of those feelings because I was also protected from the reality by class: those boys probably died because they didn't have the options of going to college, retaining lawyers and doctors, or facilely expressing their conscientious objection...

...most evaded or distorted it...

...The St...

...There is no defense on a motorcycle...

...So deciding not to go to a war, no matter how watertight your objection, will tend to set off tremors in the area of self-esteem...

...Then the train came and took me to New York-to Columbia University - to intelligent discussions of foreign policy, passionately antiwar friends, rallies in Sheeps Meadow, marches on the UN...

...far fewer are spurred by personal threat because most know right away that their chance of going is remote...

...Yet, to the extent that the men in the two administrations which have overseen this disaster were motivated by humane considerations, that anguish was, and still is, the barrier which arises every time withdrawal is contemplated: how can you tell the people to whom the coffins have been delivered that those sacrifices were for nothing...

...The morning after the Columbia bust, another great success, those with bandages around their heads were heroes sporting their red badges of courage...

...The lottery probably has defused some fervor because it eliminates suspense...

...The test favors utilitarian skills, said others...

...Seniors applying to graduate school had to make the top quarter of the class or take an army test...

...Charging and being charged by cops may have been cathartic, but it involved a rather mild form of courage...

...The gasp of horror was at what clearly had been a tragic mistake brought on by nervous, confused youth with bullets in their guns, meeting their frustrated, confused peers...

...The test selected out of the undergraduate pool the less-academically successful students, threatening, at one point, to take the bottom half of the freshman class, bottom third of the sophomores, and bottom fourth of the juniors...

...But it cannot be coincidence that a group which bent its resources towards resisting a war, the traditional proving ground of manhood, should develop a style so emphatically uncowardly and masculine...

...Whatever else you might say about them, it was clear that the Viet Cong and the Panthers really meant what they said, and further, were willing to put it into action, a clarity and internal freedom which was by no means easy for the middle-class concerned person to achieve...

...But if at the very least we had merely recognized the atrocity of sending the less well-off to die, then we would also have seen the importance of facing the needs of those whose friends and relatives had given their lives...

...When real death came at Kent State, whatever illusion had existed was utterly stripped away...

...Jail was chosen primarily as the most effective protest, based on the idea that the nation would become unbearably disturbed to see a lot of "nice young men" imprisoned for their beliefs (more disturbed than by a lot of others coming home in coffins...

...Yet, with startling uniformity, radicals I spoke to about the relation of the unjust draft to the failure of the anti-war movement, retaliated with the statement that the lottery has defused the movement, as though, by implication, a more unjust draft had been in favor of the movement...

...Girls Say Yes to Men Who Say No...

...On inspection, it turned out to be a small brick memorial to the Vietnam war dead...

...Another issue raised was that students from poor backgrounds tend to be less well prepared for the challenge of the classroom and hence would be discriminated against...

...And the war went on...

...Asking themselves "what more can we do," they concluded, not illogically, that "more" meant something more shocking, more than just symbolic, more risky-to convince the warmakers of their seriousness...

...That speech still has to be written...

...that if the distinction between better and worse students is unjust, surely the distinction between students and non-students is an outrage...

...Set on that course, the monster only got bigger as frustration drove the movement into more desperate postures, while more and more sealed boxes were silently flown back to central points from which they were quietly shipped to less-than-posh sections of cities and towns in the countryside, where little war memorials were being embellished plaque by plaque...

...Mendel Rivers, for instance, was Kennedy's counterpart in the House of Representatives, vowing to stop those loopholes through which "buzzards and vermin" were escaping...

...Let Those Hillbillies Go Get Shot Suzannah Lessard Some years back, waiting for the Long Island Railroad to pull into my hometown of St...

...Professors refused to submit class rank, or gave uniform grades...

...Not suffering that anguish themselves, they were cut off from the huge numbers who did, and therefore imagined that the best way to get out was to admit it was a mistake and withdraw...

...After the graduate deferment was abolished, there were still lots of safety catches, but the small, hard chance existed that they would all fail...

...It's a small town, but I'd gone away for high school, so I didn't recognize any of the names-a few could have been people I'd known in grammar school, but as their surnames were Kelley and Jones, I couldn't be sure...

...The recommended way of resisting was to give up whatever class-related deferment you might have, thus precipitating induction, and then refuse induction, be prosecuted, and go to jail...

...James memorial, however, put me in double Adapted from an article in the April, 1972, issue of The Washington Monthly...

...The Privileged Sanctuary The fatal class rift had yawned as soon as students and liberals began to decry the war as "immoral...

...In those all-night bull sessions, formal symposiums, and internal mullings which accompanied that mass pondering, many shifting perspectives were probed-the problem of sorting out plain fear from ethical objection, the efficacy of going to jail, the consequences of going to Canada, the willingness to do either...

...While the hope that they might actually hurt the army's supply of manpower quickly died, jail was the measure which allowed you, hypothetically, to face the guy who filled the quota in your stead because he, too, could choose it...

...But there's significance in which nerves are sore, and perhaps some clues as to why we find ourselves beached...

...Nevertheless, though the deed is done and part of history now, it still remains a roadblock on the route to withdrawal...

...Perhaps one reason was that many who spoke out against the inequity did so while still believing in the war...

...After it was all over you could go back to your nice home...

...more blacks will fail, said Adam Clayton Powell...

...But the obvious way to object was to refuse to take the test, a measure which, if your-rank was low, entailed losing your 2-S status for sure...

...Darwinian selection, said still others...

...A veteran of the civil rights movement says, "You always knew that you had a home-free base...

...Coming up against that barrier, the mind recoils and seeks other routes-escalation, going in for victory, or even half-hearted, wasteful continuation seem more acceptable...

...Everybody who did go was chickenshit...

...I think my decision for nonviolence was to be a Gary Cooper who didn't need guns . . . . I think of all these things as strengths and out of them brewed up the style that makes sense to me...

...While actual violence was employed by only a very small faction of the movement, there was throughout, at least among the young, and especially among the men who faced possible induction, the pervasive sense of testing oneself, which lends itself very neatly to the classical endeavor of "proving your manhood...

...But even inside that age group, awareness was generally very low, and as the gray zone expanded to include older and more conventional people, nothing much was heard from them on the subject...

...No one thought "this is what it's all about...

...When you did escape, you just felt lucky, not especially inclined to examine the ethical validity of the manner in which you escaped, particularly if it was legal...

...When all is said and done, the gruesome truth that the less advantaged were sent to die in this war will surely rank high among the depravities spawned by the venture...

...We never would wear any of that...

...Yet of all the areas in which people tried to confront the government, the draft was the least manufactured...

...Most draftable people, quite understandably, held the attitude toward the draft which prevailed in the ghetto-you try to beat it-and were otherwise fairly fatalistic about it...

...It became obvious that it was pointless to say you 'won't go' if you weren't being asked to," wrote a member of The Resistance...

...Those who belonged to The Resistance, or who wrestled with the same awareness, seeking to reconcile not going to Vietnam with their abhorrence of an unfair draft, and the public figures like Yale President Kingman Brewster and Senator Edward Kennedy, who tackled the problem as a separate issue, never linked up...

...Blatantly contradictory as their behavior was, it's hard to get outraged at those who left sit-ins designed to discourage people fr6m taking the test in order to take the test themselves, because the consequences of not doing so would have been so drastic, and because so few had really thought out their feelings about the system of selection...

...We all knew that we could be killed...

...Then all the professors and columnists and editorialists and people in government who wanted to end the war might have been struggling with that barrier, metaphysically speaking, they could all have helped the President write that speech in which he announced withdrawal to the public who had suffered most from the war, helped him search for the words with which to bestow a Congressional Medal of Honor on bereft parents after he had made the announcement...

...This fact, especially reveals the hypocrisy of a society which meets the problems of structural inequality by exposing the educated and better-off to the draft to fight a war which is waged at the direct expense of the poverty programs and the burden of which is borne by the poor through inflation and an inequitable tax structure...

...The indignation of those beaten up became tinged with the self-pity of spoiled children, because what some suffered there was nothing compared to what others suffered in the jungles of Indochina, or, for that matter, to what black people all over the country suffer daily, and also because it had, in a way, been sought out...

...In The Resistance, by Michael Ferber and Staughton Lynd, the authors stress the gutsy macho style which the group cultivated...

...To say that the institution of an impartial lottery is counterproductive to the war effort and therefore to be condemned, makes as much sense as the following elliptical remarks, written after the graduate deferment had been abolished, by Dorian Fliegel, then an Amherst student, in The Nation: The poor, who are now disproportionately unable to meet these standards, will now become the outstanding exempt group...

...It's easy now to say that militancy failed abysmally as a tactic, and that the greatest effect the tactic had was to isolate the movement from the general public...

...They're against our boys," came back the angry retort, and thus the pejoratives began to fly between the more extreme representatives of both sides: traitors-pigs, cowards-facists, faggotswar criminals...

...Protected because of your sex, all you can do is endure...

...The question of who had been taking Rudd's place and why he was there instead of Rudd, never quite got asked...

...Cathartic Courage The militancy of the protests escalated along with the war, so that the images of cops beating kids were always superimposed on the immeasurably more violent images from Vietnam...

...Students will try to take easy courses and apply to lesser colleges, said some...

...Elsewhere they quote him again: "The nonviolence came as a function of a vision of adventurous, hell-bent, wild-west manhood...

...One doesn't have to think very far to see that if the ranking was "Darwinian" and "discriminatory," the whole 2-S deferment was much more grossly so...

...Rectangular steel plaques with names engraved on them had been affixed in one-and-a-half columns...

...At the very least, the tone would have been critically different...

...Bringing up the inequity of the draft often produces pique...

...At the time, people were confronted with the fact that mild strategies had little effect...

...The sense of being protected at the expense of others is a nasty feeling...

...I used to do things like get on my motorcycle and ride as hard as I could ride, taking every corner as fast as I could go until I nearly dropped it...

...possible, even, for one college student to remark to another, as overheard by a friend, "Let those West Virginian hillbillies go get shot, they won't take me," without registering the implication of his words...

...Lots and lots of people striving for peace, especially the older people, many of whom were in positions of power or positions from which they could command an audience, did not embrace militancy (phlegmaticism might be a more appropriate word) nor adopt a locked posture of antipathy towards the hawkish population, Yet because most of them never seriously faced the inequity of the draft (it was, after all, their children who were protected), they never really wrestled with the problems of how we could get out of the war and not horribly violate those whose kin had died in it...

...What that implies about the motivations of antiwar crusaders aside, it seems highly likely to me that if a lottery had been in effect in 1965, and consequently far more sons of the rich and the intelligentsia were being inducted, profound and urgent opposition to the war would have developed far faster from those groups...

...but also because it was an alternative open to anybody, rich and educated, or not...

...Or this sudden declaration in the course of a recent, fairly low-keyed discussion: "Put it this way...

...In the gang I ran with in junior high school, carrying a weapon was considered 'chickenshit.') I am for salty, rugged, virile nonviolence...

...We all had friends killed on motorcycles...

...Biting the Bullet It's worth noting that with a few exceptions, whatever pro test did exist originated among those who were protected by the draft laws...

...While the scene at Chicago in '68 was horrifying, the minute one stepped back from it to look at the larger picture, it looked more like a brawl than a battle...

...The same hypothetical confrontation would be considerably more difficult if you had to say to him that you had gotten out by hiring a lawyer which he couldn't afford, or by pleading C. O., which he, less trained in verbal skills, could not hope to do successfully...

...The editorial page of Life stated in 1965, "The frustrating vital half-war in Vietnam makes the need for a well-trained, efficient U. S. military establishment more obvious than ever...

...Nowadays, there are all of these laws, you have to wear helmets, jackets...

...And so, the next time, you pushed yourself further...

...After teasing death for a while you came to feel immune to it...

...In my experience, veterans of the political wars of the sixties respond in a very negative, almost hurt way to this probe, suspecting immediately that you are looking for such motives in order to discredit the seriousness of intention and the authenticity of the anger behind the activism...

...And that inequity was the cause, at the very beginning, of the original split between the antiwar crusaders and the general population over, essentially, whether one was for or against "their boys...

...There was always this feeling that I have to live up to the cutting edge, the Viet Cong and the Panthers," said a young man recently...

...In those discussions and marches one sensed frustration, yet there was always the feeling of pitching one's energy, however frail, into a corporate effort to stop the war...

...Only crackpots saw it as a bona fide life-and-death battle, in which at last "they" were fighting back...

...Nor would the privileged have been as likely to cut themselves off from the general population, for they would have sensed the need the peace movement never faced up to-the need for getting out of the war, yet dealing at the same time with the anguish of those whose sons, brothers, husbands, and lovers had died in it...

...Reading those names for the first time, and then again and again, standing on that same platform and reading new ones, the columns growing plaque by plaque, that sense of straight forward corporate effort would cave in...