President Trump’s comments Wednesday about his lack of service in the Vietnam War are among the most offensive remarks imaginable, especially in comparison with the service of a guy I know who served in a particularly honorable, perhaps even heroic, way.
Here’s what Trump said, to excuse his almost certainly bogus use of “bone spurs” in his feet to be adjudged physically unable to serve: “I thought it was a terrible war. I thought it was very far away, and at that time nobody ever heard of the country. So many people dying, what is happening over there? So I was never a fan.”
So, because he was not a fan, he thought it was okay to avoid the draft that ensnared others far less privileged than he, by claiming bone spurs that made such an impression on him that now he can’t remember which foot was affected.
Well, the guy I know, one who went on to great professional accomplishment, is almost exactly Trump’s age. He graduated college at the same time as Trump. He, too, thought it was a terrible war. More than that, he was deeply pacifist. His father was a Quaker, and he deeply believed killing is wrong. He could have made a strong case to avoid the combat zone altogether as an official, legitimate “conscientious objector.” That’s what his father urged him to do, quite strongly.
That’s not what he did, though. My friend (who asked not to be named here) didn’t think it fair that others his age — “kids I knew,” he said — should be required to risk their lives for their country while he remained stateside. Therefore, when it looked likely that he would be drafted, he registered not for full conscientious-objector status, but for 1-A-O status. This made him available for duty in the war zone, but without carrying arms. Instead, he would serve in the infantry, in the front lines, as a medic, after undergoing full boot camp (minus the weapons part) and medical training.
If my friend wouldn’t kill others, still he could risk his life saving others.
Sure enough, my friend was sent into combat. Under fire, he pulled wounded and dying colleagues from the battlefields. He saved as many lives as he could. Others didn’t make it, including one from Trump’s own native Queens, N.Y.
My friend, too, was wounded under fire, with several injuries, including a head wound. He could have been killed. His bunkmate was killed. And, 50 years later, my friend suffers severe health problems quite likely resulting from wartime exposure to Agent Orange.
Trump later joked that surviving the 1970s without contracting venereal disease was like his own private Vietnam. He infamously mocked the prisoners of war who endured the Hanoi Hilton, insinuating it was their fault for “getting captured.” Now he says his own clever draft avoidance was excusable because he “wasn’t a fan” of the war in a country he had never heard of.
So Trump braved the babes, while my friend braved the bullets. Trump saved his (father’s) money, while my friend saved lives.
Perhaps it is understandable for a Richie Rich to find ways to avoid facing enemy fire in rice patties. What is not excusable is to so blithely dismiss the service and sacrifice, as if the soldiering was unworthy, with a series of quips — but without any tributes to those who showed the combination of moral compass, courage, and patriotism that Trump himself apparently lacked.
