Draft Status 1-Y

“To the ashes of the dead glory comes too late.”
Martial – “Epigrams, A.D. 86

What do we love more, war, or money?
Maybe we love war more because it’s so profitable.
Do we then love money because it breeds war?
Can there be money without war?

Barak Obama says “we cannot bend the world to our will.”
Hillary Clinton says that if Iran attacked Israel she would “totally obliterate” Iran.

What are we up against?

“BAGHDAD – The last words of a suicide bomber in Mosul were a rallying cry for Muslims to join the fight against Americans. Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, 29, described his detention as ‘torture’ carried out by infidels. He was in Guantanamo for three years from 2002 to 2005.” (Alissa J. Rubin, NYT 6/9/08

GO OBAMA!!!

What follows was written in 1999. The event it concerns occurred in 1969. (Excerpts)

My draft board was in Milwaukee. Thank God for Wisconsin: for cheese, beer, lumberjacks, and men with moxie—in short, for the Packers. There’s truth in Jerry Lee Lewis’ cautionary honky-tonk “what made Milwaukee famous made a loser out of me.”

ABOUT BEING DRAFTED:

Wouldn’t I have been truer to my non-violent ethic by fleeing to Canada or seeking conscientious objector status? Understand dear reader, my courageous crusade to persuade the draft board of my moral inadequacy had nothing to do with my delight in reprobation, or fear of death. No, for me, an abiding belief in the pacifist conviction that killing is wrong justified deceitful civil disobedience by any means necessary.
So how did I get out?

On finding out I had to report, I sought advice from my friends who were classified unacceptable for military duty. Phil, of course, was one of my coaches on this. The trick was to speak with the psychologist, plead homosexuality, and petition for an exemption. Some, like Phil, were so successful at this they were classified 4-F; this meant you were unavailable to fight even in the event of a terrorist fleet attacking the ore docks. After listening to the success stories of my pals, I thought about how I might lie truthfully.

“Lie truthfully,” you say? Looking back, I never thought of it then as truthful lying. But that’s what good stories are, right? Artful lies. At least according to Kuhli. Who is Kuhli? Kuhli is a drummer who told me to think about how I might draw on my own experience as a way of convincing the draft board that I was unfit for military service. But to what past perversions? Why was I too queer to fight?

It’s funny how one assumes their circumstances reflect a universal mode of human experience. For instance, I assumed our homoerotic propensity to play doctor; weird cigar smoking uncle who encouraged masturbatory gaming on the part of we cousins; and bizarre neighborhood brothers who performed tricks with their pet dog, Skippy, were just a normal part of growing up. So I told the shrink. I had only to add that it would be a blemish on the family military tradition; my biological father was a Master Sergeant and my stepfather a Colonel in the Air Force. And that this, more than an unwillingness to serve, informed my desire for a deferrment.

Maybe it was bad these things happened; but the good news is, it was easy for me to be truthful about why I wasn’t the right stuff for the military.

Of course I had to submit to an exhaustive physical that determined, yes, I could see lightning and hear thunder; but at the end of the day, the sergeant bade me farewell with a rueful “get outta here faggot.” Here was a man I truly wanted to kiss.