You don’t know if you have rights unless you can use them
©Scott Sines
The continual derogatory references to Muhammad Ali as a draft dodger are getting under my skin. It’s true he would not take the induction oath and go into the service.
It’s also true that he didn’t try to duck military service by joining the reserves, leaving the country, or using the pink underwear trick. He was willing to go to jail and sacrifice the three best years of his career to stand on his religious beliefs. Call me crazy but I think that’s about as American as you can get.
At the time, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson could have called up the reserves and been more selective about the selective service. The reserves had already taken the oath and they have a good long history of going to war.
But Kennedy and Johnson didn’t make the call because they wanted to project a limited U.S. involvement to the American public. During the Viet Nam war they were called up mostly for emergency cases such as the Tet Offensive and the capture of the USS Pueblo in ’68. Besides there were skads of young baby boomers to draft.
Anyone who lived through those years knew that joining the reserves was a way out of the draft and it came with full GI benefits. The unpopularity of the War and the violence of the protests against it led President Nixon to end the draft in 1973.
Today military reservists make up about 40 percent of the U.S. forces fighting in Iraq and public debate is growing over the military’s current reliance on the reserves. Some experts call it a ‘back-door’ draft.
The reserves history of providing a necessary backup in times of trouble is long and laudatory except for the Viet Nam years. So tell me who deserves the label ‘draft dodger’? A man who stood on his faith and principles or the guys who were looking for an exit ramp from combat? Let’s just call Ali what he was a patriot.
