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Article: What I Did Was Legal, But Was It Right? I avoided the draft by taking a student deferment; what haunts me is that somebody took my place.(draft for Vietnam War)(Brief Article)(Column)
- Article from:
- Newsweek
- Article date:
- February 18, 2002
- Author:
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Byline: James Dannenberg
Funny how time and events can turn your world view upside down. Now that we are engaged in what most folks--me included--consider a "just war" in response to terrorist attacks, a war in which American men and women volunteer to put themselves in harm's way, I am reminded of the not-so-subtle moral ambiguities my generation faced during the Vietnam War.
A few years ago my young son and I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. When he asked whether I had fought in the war, I told him I had not. His question awakened a hundred hibernating arguments and rationalizations, but I felt incapable of telling him anything more, and he ...