2021-02-23 Empathy In A Time Of War

One of the United States’ most decorated Vietnam War veterans said in a 1989 interview that he respected people who protested the war in the 1960's. Including those who chose to go to jail. Because they “at least tried to help America within the system.”

But the “guys who went to Canada, I don’t respect them at all”, he said. “They didn’t help the system. They didn’t change the system…The folks who ran away to Canada didn’t do anything for the United States of America. Didn’t do anything for the brothers or the sisters. They didn’t highlight an issue. And as far as I’m concerned they’re gutless.”

No, it’s their guts they were worried about losing.

It’s brave to go to war when you believe you’re defending the lives of others. It’s brave to go to prison in protest of something you believe is unjust. But isn’t it also brave to flee from a system when it gives you a choice between either participating in an unnecessary war or going to prison?

It turns out that the draft dodgers did the right thing. The war was not only a disaster, it was unjust, and so were the imprisonments of those who refused to participate (even McNamara later recognized that the war was wrong).

Empathy is warranted for all victims of the war — the people of Southeast Asia, the draft dodgers, and also the U.S. troops who went to Vietnam. Most of the troops were very young and thought they were doing the right thing. Close to sixty-thousand of them never made it back. And many of those who did, weren’t the same, physically or mentally. Making matters worse, they returned to find out that employers didn’t want to hire them and that the public was generally against them — sometimes calling them “baby killers.”

If anyone should empathize with and even applaud the draft dodgers, you’d think it would be the vets.