Via Timothy Noah, this alumnus chatter from the Yale Daily News:
- Though [John] Bolton supported the Vietnam War, he declined to enter combat duty, instead enlisting in the National Guard and attending law school after his 1970 graduation. “I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy,” Bolton wrote of his decision in the 25th reunion book. “I considered the war in Vietnam already lost.”
Now I don’t believe that anyone – even a bloodthirsty cretin – owes his life to the state. But Bolton’s got some ‘splaining to do. First off, John Bolton (b. 1948) was enlistment age in 1966. Did he think the war was “already lost” in ’66? If so, then far from being a hawk, he was in the vanguard of the doves. When did young Bolton have this epiphany? After Dien Bien Phu?
Second, the National Guard route seems out of character for a man of such legendary testicular girth. If he thought the war was already lost, why didn’t he stand up on the bar, fire his pistol in the air to get everybody’s attention, and say so – you know, like tough guys do? I’m not saying he had to become some kinda antiwar pinko or nothin’. He coulda just said, “Well, fellas, this here war in Viet NAM is a helluva good thing, and we’ve killed a bunch of reds and little gooks who woulda grown up to be reds, and if it were up to ME, Hanoi – hell, Moscow‘d be glowin’ by now, but them damned lily-livered queers in Washington ain’t gonna let us, so… Might as well end this thing ‘fore any more of our boys come back D.O.A. or missin’ extremities.”
Seems to me that’s what a real tough guy would’ve done. But I’ll yield to the judgment of other tough guys.