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Current Events » in reply to Clinton sent a letter to his draft board saying he "loathed the military"

according to this he never said that
Greg — (archived)

<When Tom replied, he brought the analysts right out of their seats, reciting the highlighted groaner: BROKAW: Well I think it was some of that, but an awful lot of that generation was sympathetic to him as well because they came to not believe in Vietnam and many of the positions he had taken...So I think there was a well-defined knot of that generation that could never accept him because, not just of the way he got out of the draft, but because he used that phrase, “I loathed the military.” He seemed to be emblematic of the slickness of the Baby Boomer generation... The analysts fell back in their swivel chairs, shaking their heads, as Brokaw moved on with his musings. But we’ll ask you, the reader, to be the judge of who has been slick on this score. Clinton, of course, never used the phrase that Brokaw now attributed to him. But a concerted spin-effort, carried on through the years, had persuaded millions of folks that he had, so that even the natty--not nattering--Brokaw was convinced it was what Bill had said. In December 1969, Clinton had written Colonel Eugene Holmes of the University of Arkansas ROTC, to thank him “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 ever have been.” The polite tone of that opening remark characterized Clinton’s letter throughout, and when he had finished discussing the “anguish” he’d experienced in trying to decide how to deal with the draft, he wrote this passage (his closing paragraph), summarizing why he had written: CLINTON: And that is where I am right 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 this too in the hope that my telling this one story will help you 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... It isn’t exactly “Off the pig”--and it does not say, “I loathe the military.” It says, with a persistent tone of regret, that many fine people, in 1968, had come to loathe the military. Making that statement, in 1968, was like saying the sky is blue and the grass is green; only a fool could have disputed the accuracy of what young Clinton was saying. The tone throughout is extremely respectful of the service that Colonel Holmes and others had provided; and Clinton stresses that those to whom he refers still do “love their country.”

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