Abstract
The ‘draft dodger’ label has dogged politicians and other public figures in the United States since the 1970s. Former presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump have all had to explain, repeatedly, why they did not serve their country in Vietnam, as patriotic men of their generation were supposed to have done.
Amy Rutenberg's Rough Draft encourages us to rethink that label by placing these men's responses to the draft in historical context. Rutenberg argues that efforts in the 1950s by Congress, the Justice Department, and the Selective Service to ‘channel’ manpower not into the military but into higher education, certain occupations, fatherhood, and other endeavours branded as patriotic and integral to national defence led to an environment in the 1960s in which large numbers of men openly sought ways to avoid the draft—and felt little or no shame about doing so.
In other words, many so-called ‘draft dodgers’ were doing exactly what the system was designed for them to do. Between 1948 and 1965, the primary purpose of the draft was not to swell the ranks of the army to fight wars abroad. Rather, the Selective Service was a tool, operated by Congress and the Justice Department, to establish extensive defence operations at home. The system worked more to channel young men into education and occupations than to get them into the army. Moreover, by granting deferments for men with dependents to support, it encouraged them to marry and have children. The draft, Rutenberg argues, was a nationwide effort at social engineering.
That effort, of course, was infused with assumptions about race, class, and gender. Educational deferments were often unattainable for lower-class registrants. Dependency deferments were predicated on the image of a male breadwinner. And men of colour were less likely to seek deferments at all, at least early in the Vietnam War, not only because they were often unaware of their availability, but also because military service was more highly prized in their communities.
Men of colour, especially African Americans, were also targeted specifically by programmes like Project 100,000. Introduced by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1966, the project aimed to ‘salvage’ and ‘rehabilitate’ men who did not meet mental or medical standards for military service. Touted as a complement to President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, it provided enhanced training designed not just to make participants eligible for the military, but also to prepare them for ‘productive roles in society’ after the war (p. 149). Instead, it led to a military that was disproportionately Black and poor, higher casualty rates for Black men, and a decreased need for white, middle-class draftees.
As the Vietnam War progressed, both it and the draft grew increasingly unpopular, and more and more men sought alternatives to military service. Draft counselling grew more prevalent on white college campuses and in middle-class communities. Such efforts, Rutenberg points out, were themselves a result of the Selective Service's program of manpower channelling because counsellors helped their clients take advantage of the myriad legal, legitimate ways to avoid the draft. By the late 1960s, a few draft counsellors also appeared in minority communities. There, their anti-draft stance took on a more militant tone, as they urged Black men to resist participating in a racist military and an immoral war.
By the late 1960s, then, military service was no longer as highly valued a way to display one's patriotism as it had been during the Second World War, especially for white middle-class men. Thus they openly and without guilt resisted the draft—by taking advantage of manpower channelling even more than by protesting, marching, and sitting in.
This is a smart, well researched, well written book that sheds new light on the old ‘draft dodger’ stereotype and exposes how the Cold War motivations for channelling in the 1950s eventually backfired on Congress, the Selective Service, and the military by the early 1970s.