When my father was in his early 20s he enlisted into the Army during Vietnam. He had a college degree, and the powers that be wanted him to become an officer but he declined preffering to go at it as a grunt. He was newly married, and I had just been born when he made this decision. He left shortly after and served his country for a year and was honorably discharged.
Sounds nice doesn’t it? Ok, SPIN OFF
My father had no intrest in the military whatsoever, esp with the war going on. He was contacted a lot by a recruiter who was trying to warn him that if he did not enlist he would be drafted eventualy. My father would not join, and he was drafted. On the day he got his draft notice he went to the recruiter begging him to let him enlist, because the recruiter said if he did enlist… he would not have to go to Vietnam. The recruiter, knowing his situation being newly married and having a infant son “fudged” the date of my father’s enlistment to show that he had enlisted before he was drafted. He was stationed in Germany, hating every second of it. The ONLY reason he decided not to become an officer is because he detested the military so much. Becoming an officer would have entailed him being in the military longer than what he had to.
My point to this, you can spin the hell out of this kind of thing. Which is what I think some veterans do, not to mention any names cough cough Kerry Cough Cough (and others).
A derail on the topic, but I feel like saying it anyway.
My father is against the war in a big way, I’m not, and we argue about it some times. The one argument HE can not use AT ALL is that Bush got preferential (sp?) treatment. You can’t take the moral high ground after what happened to him. My grandfather was not a senator, he was a janitor.
