In 1969, the first year of the re-instituted draft. I was 21, subject to the new Selective Service lottery. My birthday, April 11, came up number 14, prime eligibility. My draft board was in Houston, where it was common practice to give first offenders like small-time drug dealers facing long prison sentences the option of enlisting in lieu of jail time, so the board easily met its quota. But even though I received a deferment as a conscientious objector (see the following application) and had a job with the University of Texas that qualified for alternative service, I was ordered to report to the state mental hospital in Harlingen as an orderly. I sought counseling from the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that referred me to a sympathetic psychiatrist who signed off on a medical deferment based on the fact that I was married with a new baby and would have gone batshit crazy without our family and support system in Austin.

In those days many young men moved to Canada to avoid the draft. One friend developed a heroin addiction and got a 4-F medical deferment after showing off his needle tracks at the pre-induction physical, then got cold turkey clean and never backslid. Another friend helped a buddy of his by getting blind drunk with him and blowing off the second toe of his left foot with a shotgun. I had other friends who either died in combat or came back with post-traumatic stress disorder, and a couple who were solidly indoctrinated into the gung-ho “My country, right or wrong” mentality that has fueled the military for generations.

“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.”
– Jose Narosky

“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

– Hermann Goering, Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander
at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.  He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

– Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.  The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government.  We recognize the imperative need for this development.  Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.  Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. “

-Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, European Allied Commander, WWII 

U.S President, 1953-1960, Farewell Speech to the Nation, January 17, 1961

“War is a crime which involves all other crimes.”

– Henry Brougham

“The war against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

– George Orwell

“God Bless our Troops.”

– Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump