The Ming Report

A QUESTION OF CHARACTER

September 13, 2004 - When I reached my 18th birthday in 1956 I and every American young man faced an eight year military obligation to be available for service in the armed services until my 26th birthday. We were required to register with the Selective Service System at 18 and were subject to the draft until we were 26. I was enrolled and attending classes at the University of Illinois and I applied for a 2-S student deferment which delayed me being drafted so long as I was a full time student. Taking a student deferment meant that I remained subject to the draft for another 10 years, until my 36th birthday. In August 1958 I married and dropped out of college and my student deferment disappeared. I was classified 1-A. It was the depth of the Cold War and we maintained a large standing army. I lived in a college town and the Champaign County quota was almost completely filled by enlistment, many of students who had flunked out of the University. Very few of my high school classmates received an induction notice. My eldest daughter was born in January of 1960 and I was reclassified 1-Y (deferred father). By the time the US was drafting fathers I was never called.

Enlistment in the active duty armed services obligated you to an active duty tour that varied in duration depending on the service branch followed by inactive reserve duty. My younger brother Bill, lost in his freshman year at the U of I, enlisted in the Air Force. He spent four years stationed at Biloxi, Mississippi and Blytheville, Arkansas. He was discharged after his reserve obligation was satisfied in 1966. Our younger brother John enlisted in the Army and went to Vietnam at the same time as John Kerry and came home with a Bronze Star with the V device.

Enlistment in National Guard meant a 6 month basic training tour followed by 7 ½ years of bi-weekly drills and two weeks annual summer camp training. When military manpower needs ramped up with the Vietnam War the sons of privilege and the sons of plumbers chose to avoid the war by joining the National Guard, doing their six months training and going to the armory for their weekend duty. J. Danforth Quayle, later Vice President of the United States, was among them He was a son of privilege. My two cousins were too. They were the sons of a plumber. Neither President Johnson nor President Nixon had the political will for a widespread mobilization of the National Guard for service in Vietnam. Guard units swelled as an “honorable” way to avoid the risks of combat.

No one of my generation thinks National Guard service to be dishonorable. Nor do we see the acceptance of student deferments as less than patriotic. That is why the draft dodger accusation that Bill Clinton gained no traction and that Dan Quayle gamed the system in an Indiana National Guard unit fell on deaf ears. But the case of George W. Bush is different. The issue is not that he chose to avoid Vietnam by joining the Texas Air Guard. The issue is that having made the commitment to serve and be trained as a pilot he dodged keeping it that commitment. Having given his word to his country he did not keep it. Having used the National Guard, as so many others did, he let the country down. That is why his minimal military record has become a persistent issue throughout his political career.

It is not a question of cowardice but rather a question of commitment. Having pledged his word does he have the character to keep it? That is the question that had haunted George Bush through every campaign and one that he and his handlers are so anxious to avoid that they accuse his opponents of having fabricated his record and exaggerated their own. Neither John McCain nor John Kerry has any need to exaggerate his service. Their service is recorded in the scars on their bodies and in their souls. They have nothing at all to hide. George W. Bush does. It is a question of character.