The following is Bill Clinton's December 1969 letter to his ROTC Director,
Colonel Eugene Holmes. This text was taken verbatim from "SLICK WILLIE", by
Floyd G. Brown. Not a word has been changed.
I am sorry to be so long in writing. I know I promised to let you hear from
me at least once a month, and from now on you will, but I have had to have
some time to think about this first letter. Almost daily since my return to
England I have thought about writing, about what I want to and ought to
say.
First, I want to thank you, not just for saving me from the draft, but for
being so kind and decent to me last summer, when I was as low as I have
ever been. One thing which made the bond we struck in good faith somewhat
palatable to me was my high regard for you personally. In retrospect, it
seems that the admiration might not have been mutual had you known a little
more about me, about my political beliefs and activities. At least you
might have thought me more fit for the draft than for ROTC.
Let me try to explain. As you know, I worked for two years in a very minor
position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did it for the
experience and the salary but also for the opportunity, however small, of
working every day against a war I opposed and despised with a depth of
feeling I had reserved solely for racism in America before Vietnam. I did
not take the matter lightly but studied it carefully, and there was a time
when not many people had more information about Vietnam at hand than I did.
I have written and spoken and marched against the war. One of the national
organizers of the Vietnam Moratorium is a close friend of mine, After I
left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national
headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans
for the demonstrations Oct. 15 and Nov. 16.
Interlocked with the war is the draft issue, which I did not begin to
consider separately until early 1968. For a law seminar Georgetown I wrote
a paper on the legal arguments for and against allowing, within the
Selective Service System, the classification of selective conscientious
objection, for those opposed to participation in a particular war, not
simply to "participation in war in any form."
From my work I came to believe that the draft system itself is
illegitimate. No government really rooted in limited, parliamentary
democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and kill and die
in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong, a war
which, in any case, does not involve immediately the peace and freedom of
the nation.
The draft was justified in World War II because the life of the people
collectively was at stake. Individuals had to fight, if the nation was to
survive, for the lives of their countrymen and their way of life. Vietnam
is no such case. Nor was Korea an example where, in my opinion, certain
military action was justified but the draft was not, for the reasons stated
above.
Because of my opposition to the draft and the war, I am in great sympathy
with those who are not willing to fight, kill, and maybe die for their
country (i.e. the particular policy of a particular government) right or
wrong. Two of my friends at Oxford are conscientious objectors. I wrote a
letter of recommendation for one of them to his Mississippi draft board, a
letter which I am more proud of than anything else I wrote at Oxford last
year. One of my roommates is a draft resister who is possibly under
indictment and may never be able to go home again. He is one of the
bravest, best men I know. That he is considered a criminal is an obscenity.
The decision not to be a resister and the related subsequent decisions were
the most difficult of my life. I decided to accept the draft in spite of my
beliefs for one reason: to maintain my political viability within the
system. For years I have worked to prepare myself for a political life
characterized by both practical political ability and concern for rapid
social progress. It is a life I still feel compelled to try to lead. I do
not think our system of government is by definition corrupt, however
dangerous and inadequate it has been in recent years. (The society may be
corrupt, but that is not the same thing, and if that is true we are all
finished anyway.)
When the draft came, despite political convictions, I was having a hard
time facing the prospect of fighting a war I had been fighting against, and
that is why I contacted you. ROTC was the one way left in which I could
possibly, but not positively, avoid both Vietnam and resistance. Going on
with my education, even coming back to England, played no part in my
decision to join ROTC. I am back here, and would have been at Arkansas Law
School because there is nothing else I can do. In fact, I would like to
have been able to take a year out perhaps to teach in a small college or
work on some community action project and in the process to decide whether
to attend law school or graduate school and how to begin putting what I
have learned to use.
But the particulars of my personal life are not nearly as important to me
as the principles involved. After I signed the ROTC letter of intent I
began to wonder whether the compromise I had made with myself was not more
objectionable than the draft would have been, because I had no interest in
the ROTC program in itself and all I seemed to have done was to protect
myself from physical harm. Also, I began to think I had deceived you, not
by lies because there were none but by failing to tell you all the things
I'm writing now. I doubt that I had the mental coherence to articulate them
then.
At that time, after we had made our agreement and you had sent my 1-D
deferment to my draft board, the anguish and loss of my self-regard and
self confidence really set in. I hardly slept for weeks and kept going by
eating compulsively and reading until exhaustion brought sleep. Finally, on
Sept. 12 I stayed up all night writing a letter to the chairman of my draft
board, saying basically what is in the preceding paragraph, thanking him
for trying to help in a case where he really couldn't, and stating that I
couldn't do the ROTC after all and would he please draft me as soon as
possible.
I never mailed the letter, but I did carry it on me every day until I got
on the plane to return to England. I didn't mail the letter because I
didn't see, in the end, how my going in the army and maybe going to Vietnam
would achieve anything except a feeling that I had punished myself and
gotten what I deserved. So I came back to England to try to make something
of this second year of my Rhodes scholarship.
And that is where I am now, writing to you because you have been good to me
and have a right to know what I think and feel. I am writing too in the
hope that my telling this one story will help you to understand more
clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves still loving
their country but loathing the military, to which you and other good men
have devoted years, lifetimes, of the best service you could give. To many
of us, it is no longer clear what is service and what is disservice, or if
it is clear, the conclusion is likely to be illegal.
Forgive the length of this letter. There was much to say. There is still a
lot to be said, but it can wait. Please say hello to Col. Jones for me.
Merry Christmas.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
