December 3, 1969
Dear Colonel Holmes:
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 the 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�ve 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 R.O.T.C.
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 work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to
England to organize the Americans here for demonstration 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 at 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, kill, and maybe die for 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. His country needs men like him more than they 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. R.O.T.C. 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 R.O.T.C. 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 teaching 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 R.O.T.C. 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 R.O.T.C. 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 -- 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 R.O.T.C. 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 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
While Clinton was campaigning for the presidency twenty-two years later, this letter
was released to the media and -- coming on the heels of another scandal -- almost
destroyed his election prospects. Clinton argued that he did, ultimately, put himself
into the draft. Critics countered he did so only after receiving a low lottery number that
virtually assured he would not be drafted. . . .
In re: �I didn�t see, in the end, how my going in the army would achieve anything
except a feeling that I had punished myself . . . blah . . blah . .�
Duty, Honor, Country
Dialogue, No. 6 and No. 2 . . . on honor. (not linked yet)