The following article was my response some months ago to Mrs. Tana McGraw Shaffer's comments in the message section where she discussed the issue of Vietnam era young people's desires to not be drafted into the military. She also thanked all military personnel and those representing our country today for their service. Her inspirational words will be added here later.

Thanks for a moving tribute to Westbury and all veterans and their families Tana. Although I've come to regard your intellect as a great one, it is this aspect of your heart that presents to me as your finest quality. And, thanks for your kindnesses that you've sent privately.

You have raised an interesting issue: The use of conscription by consensually managed societies to fight wars, particularly against control-based hierarchically managed cultures. AnnMarie Lube McDonald discussed this subject, too, in her tribute to her son and in response to my reply to it. Thus, I would like to address the Draft in this space, albeit only in conclusion - opinion form. Here is a reference to a Wiki source overviewing the history of the use of conscription in the United States for addressing all primary conflicts in which it has participated. It's value to this subjective discussion from my perspective is that it objectifies the Vietnam War's context to a position within the greater one, something  I've also tried to do with the Veteran's section in this site.

My combat constituents in the beginning, that is, for me between August, 1965, and September, 1966, were all volunteers: the Marine Corps. When returning to Camp Pendleton, I became a training NCO for the reactivated and previously dubbed, because of its service during WWII, "Iwo Jima" 5th Marine Division. There, we began to receive Marines who had been drafted, and then ended up in our group after having been given some kind of option. They could have chosen the US Army, Marines, Navy (maybe) or Air Force(?). Before that, the only coerced people with whom I sat out the nights in real fighting (termed "fox" in other organizations) holes were those offered "The Little Big House" (a young person's prison) or Marine boot camp. By the way, those special guys who'd elected the Marines instead of prison and who were sitting there in the rain with us always said to a man that they'd made the wrong choice.

Without digging in to the facts, interviews, experiences and analyses, or sources that've addressed this subject not just for the United States as did the earlier referenced article, but for western civilization as a whole over the last 2500 years, here is a summary of my personal preference. I would like to fight wars in a voting society only with those who choose to be there with me. I would ask that everybody else who wanted to stay away for whatever reason to be able to do so. That would force continuous evaluation and defense of our ideals and lives in some instances to always be based on We the People, as Victor Davis Hansen (in The Father of US All) would opine is the answer in his academic treatise on the matter. Advocates of a particular war like a John Adams, Washington, Lincoln, Wilson, either of the Roosevelts, a Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush again or whomever, would be required to work very very hard at continuously explaining the cause, elucidating it, persuading those who had the particularly necessary kind of courage, for example who were of the  capacity to risk all for others, to do the job that it was the right idea. A long time ago,  Pericles invented the wheel that we don't have to reinvent today through his constant oratory style of leadership of the democratically managed Athenians during the Peloponnesian War. Franklin Roosevelt's Fireside Chats as weekly radio broadcasts provided Americans with their rendition of the same approach. The Internet circulated airline and deceased veteran story posted by Bruce Ripper, Westbury class of 1964, in the families' tribute section provides another and more current example, showing  what non combatants can do to contribute to such efforts, in this instance demonstrating clearly what it means to fight a war in this day and age against a formidable adversary and by "We the People."

The outcome would always be that we all live or die, stay free or not by however cultural standards define that idea, or grow more socialist or control oriented cerebral cells or Mecca focused synaptic potentiations than independent minded ones, based on whether or not us volunteers have it to do the job. We can donate our lives or make the guys on the opposing sides donate theirs, then suffer the consequences of our inadequacies as a population if we (us volunteers) fail. Those who want to stay on the sideline or even in the background can do so, and then they and their like thinkers can live with the outcome whichever way it presents.

For me, I've always agreed philosophically with the Man when he proclaimed:

  "He which hath no stomach to this fight,
    Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
    And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
    We would not die in that man's company
    That fears his fellowship to die with us."

Although that piece is a little  dramatic — it plays predominantly on the prospective death aspects of conflict — the principles being addressed regarding conscription is one of the reasons why that quote and the rest of the St. Crispin’s Day Speech from Shakespeare's depiction of King Henry the Vth were placed in the veterans section. And in the real Battle of Agincourt, 1415, these men faced overwhelming opposition by the French, some estimates placing the disadvantages as high as 8 to 1 against the English. So Harry used those words to rouse a group of people to a level of accelerated performance to survive and win no matter that their fates otherwise seemed sealed in doom. Nevertheless, where the struggle of battle is the issue for discussion, I come down on the side of those few words shown above and penned a few years later by that greatest of all English writers.

I think a society profoundly needs peaceful oriented people in it. In fact, I admire them greatly. They do wonderful and caring things for us that people like me either cannot or do not do. Nor especially would or do I want to see such epistemologically sensitively charactered people be made subject to the ferocities inherent in battle during war. And, the point of my and other like volunteers in a consensually managed society is to serve in a manner so that our less physically capable or psychologically inclined citizens do not have to fight as would we, unless of course they and their beloved family members and friends are otherwise finally being murdered, slaughtered or otherwise killed in their homes.as has occurred over civilization's history, and is in fact extant today in places where people are unable to collectively or organizationally defend themselves against extinction. 

But, when true pacifism collectively ebbs and instead becomes manifest as political contrivance, and then expands into active support, that is, aid for and comfort to the folks who are killing the men or women next to me during battle ordained by the majority, the constitutional — legal and moral — authority to which I have responded, then I have a less accommodating response for that constituency of activists pacifists, an oxymoron I don't truck. But that's not the subject here so I'll leave it for the Forum's controversial discussions section.

Semper fi,

Jesse Skip Collins