For The Ones Who Chose Canada.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Dec 00 - 06:48 PM

Write the damn play, Spaw, please? It's important and not just for the Pulitzer I am sure you'd get!

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 27 Dec 00 - 08:07 PM

Write it, yes.

But there's another set of voices without which the story is less than half complete. The voices of the people of Vietnam, those on both sides and those stuck in the middle, those who stayed and those who went into exile. Because they were the main victims of it all.

And their's is a different story, and they'd need to tell it. Maybe having empty chairs reserved for them would be the only way to do it. But whatever, they should never be set aside on the margin, as if they were just bit players in a primarily American tragedy.

(Yes, I know Liam, there were Irish on both sides in both Civil Wars. As there have been in too many wars.)

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: catspaw49
Date: 28 Dec 00 - 12:31 AM

I understand your point Mac, but they are two different stories. And as you say, only they can tell theirs.

Spaw

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Dec 00 - 06:10 AM

Different but inseparable. Here in Harlow we've probably got more Vietnamese than we have Americans, and we weren't even in the war.

Separate stories, but you couldn't tell the story of the West without recognising that the Native Americans were at the centre of it all, even if their voices aren't heard.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 Dec 00 - 10:34 AM

Spaw - My absolute congratulations to you. You are a remarkable man. I now understand why you're troubled about the ones who left the USA, because you had the guts to actually go to jail to make your point about that war. I think either leaving or staying was a valid way to protest, and everybody had to decide for themselves about that, but I have profound admiration for what you did. And your play is a very, very good idea. Little Hawk salutes you.

A general comment: I don't think that any government anywhere EVER has the right to draft its citizens. If people are not willing to fight of their own free will, then the war is not worth fighting (for them) and they have a perfect right not to go. That's the way it was, BTW, among North American Indians...those who thought it was a good idea to fight did. Those who didn't went deer hunting or something instead. Each man decided for himself. All their fighters were volunteers. That's when it really was "the land of the free and the home of the brave".

Governments are supposed to serve the people, not OWN them. When a government owns its people they are slaves.

- LH

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: annamill
Date: 28 Dec 00 - 11:06 AM

I love Mudcat!

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 12:19 AM

Peter T's guitar lesson stretched into several hours tonight as we discussed this whole question. I'd forgotten that he'd spent quite a bit of time living in the States .

But for the ultimate thread creep.....he gave me one of the best Christmas presents i've received in many a moon. A CD of a HOUSE CONCERT Leadbelly gave in Minnesota in 1948!

Rick

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Sorcha
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 12:59 AM

Oh. Thank you Rick, for de fusing this one......and Pat...ah hell, never mind, I'll PM.

I'll be damned---an intelligent discussion without personal acriomy......Welcome Back, MudCat.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 10:40 AM

As Rick said, we talked about this in true Mudcat form last night. I was a teenage Canadian on an Air Force base in a small Missouri town in the late 60's, and I watched all this happening from my safe perch, watched my friends just beginning to sign up or agonise, and we argued it out, about when the arguing hit the Middle West. And some went, including my best friend, who got himself killed, the stupid bastard (I am coming around to forgiving him for getting himself killed). And then I came back to Canada, and about the first people I met were the early draft dodgers, and I met lots over the next few years, and all I can think about now is how young and ignorant everyone was, and (as Rick says) how little everyone had to go on to make such terrifying choices for their lives. I remember being impressed by the gravity of their situation, and thinking that all of those caught up in the decision-making process were being pushed into being grownups. In some ways, reflecting on the history of the subsequent 30 plus years, we can see that the image of the late 60s is completely misleading -- all that childlike flowerpower stuff. If adulthood is the result of making serious decisions and living with them, then they were adults, and their masters, children. In fact, they were the last adults we have seen since. America has returned into being the usual pack of careless juvenile delinquents (check out the outgoing and incoming administrations).

I think it is also important to say (as a Canadian) that for Americans to give up living in America was a terrible thing to have to do. America is a dream, everyone is inoculated with it early on, and to turn your back on it requires immense courage and heartache. My experience with draft dodgers was that (except for a druggie or two) they were haunted by their own supposed betrayal of their deepest dream, and could only live with it by saying that their country had betrayed them first. That may have been a cheap argument, but the sentiment betrayed their terrible sense of loss. For many Americans, being exiled is at least as bad as being locked in a jail. I don't trivialize being locked in a jail.

yours, PeterT.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 11:09 AM

Peter, once in a great while I hit upon something that fits the situation. Its rare I know, but it does happen. We were all just kids. The checkerboard analogy fits.

......from previous posts:

Realizations came at different times and in different ways to different people, and suddenly, we were no longer kids. We were forced to become adults and not always thinking ones. No matter where you stood, you were still a pawn in someone's game and the damned thing was, you were still trying to figure out the squares on the board. And what was the problem with those damn squares anyway? They were supposed to be black or white weren't they? They used to be! Now, somehow they had all changed to various and varying shades of gray. We moved about as best we could and by the best lights we could muster.

NO decision was easy.

Spaw

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 11:39 AM

I am a 41 year old Canadian. Although I was aware of the Vietnam war and the Draft Dodgers I was really too young to know any personally.

We had a fairly young American Counsellor when I was in High School. It was rumoured that he was a Draft Dodger (he probably was) and there was much whispering behind his back.

We also had a Basketball coach who had defected from the U.S.S.R., had played for many years on their National team and was thought of as a hero for leaving all he had behind to come to Canada.

I don't see a lot of difference in their choices.

I'm also curious. When Carter granted Amnesty, how many people actually returned to the U.S. as opposed to making Canada their home?

I'm also damn glad to have been born in a country that still offers people the choice of a new life.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 11:43 AM

Funny that the metaphor for some is chess, and for others it was dominos (rigid slabs falling eventually on Topeka). Would make a nice moment in the play that YOU ARE GOING TO WRITE OVER THE NEXT YEAR!! (I tend to go for the croquet match in Alice when things get weird myself, however).....yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Amergin
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 12:23 PM

Hey, Spaw, I have an idea for your play (write it goddamnit!!!!). Do some research on stories of the dodgers who went up north and tell their stories through letters....

Amergin

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: Uncle Jaque
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 09:23 PM

Interesting, deep, and reflective thread indeed.

I couldn't wait to sign up and get on with it in '67, considering the formidable VC Foe an acceptable alternative to another year of confrontation with Mrs. Herrmann, the Algebra Teacher, and her Husband "Pete", the Principal.

The "Cause" was, as I recall, somewhat secondary; my young and ignorant heart had just been broken for about the 6th time by the same girl, and the passage of an AK round through it didn't seem all that bad by comparison. As luck would have it, orders for DaNang were changed shortly before departure to Kimpo, Korea. Although things were decidedly tense there, too, the ordnance was not being exchanged quite as actively, and I returned intact. As it always seems to go, far better men than I who had so much more to live for.... did not.

Having gotten into the belly of the dragon and associated with a lot of the fellows who had seen the elephant much more intimately than I in Country (and had the scars to prove it), I came away with a considerably more tolerant attitude toward those who excersized alternative options when the "call" came. There were prices to be paid no matter where we turned - even, I opine, by those who exploited wealth or priviledge to escape the wrath of Mars.

I'm glad that Pres. Carter extended amnesty to those who split, and I hope that their family and pals were able to forgive them, if there were any hard feelings. I hope they forgave themselves. Had I known in '67 what I knew in '70, I'm not sure but what I might have done things differently.

I rather admire the Quaker way; In WWI a number of them appantly worked out a deal with the Military so that they could be considered "Conciencious Objectors" and not forced to bear arms or fight, but were issued distinctive gray uniforms and served as Medics and Nurses. They did so with courage and distinction, many making the "supreme sacrifice" along with the combattants. One of the local "Friends" centers in Durham, ME, was used as an "underground railroad station" for escaping unwilling Draftees, and the Elder I spoke with related bundling some of the terrified, confused young men up in his VW bug at 3:00 in the Maine Winter Mornings to smuggle them North to a freedom which the "Land of the Free" seemed so anxious to deprive them of for no other reason that they could not shed the blood of a fellow human being with whom they had no quarrel.

The Libertarians mention in their litterature (which, by the way condemns the practice of the draft) that "Slaves generally make poor Warriors". Makes sense to me, Mates.

Subject: RE: For The Ones Who Chose Canada.
From: catspaw49
Date: 29 Dec 00 - 10:01 PM

Unc mentions "knowing in '67 what he knew in '70" and Little John also mentions the marine Vietnam vet...........In starting this thread, Rick suggested the importance of the "last person" someone talked with. All this to bring this thread back around a bit to that point.

The returning vets who became active in the resistance were a special lot. Again, not all of their stories were the same, and I believe the motivation for coming out against the war differed from person to person. For some, I know, it was a kind of self therapy to get past what they had experienced. Others perhaps had a more political bent, but the bottom line is that they were generally held in high esteem for obvious reasons. When a guy with several medals says, "This war is horseshit, don't go," you do tend to listen.

I can't say that any one person influenced me more, but over a period of time it became obvious that what I once believed was flawed and that someone was lying. McGrath brings up the Vietnamese people and I reached the point where I began to wonder how much a great threat they were. We were told they were, but again, the gray shades began to take over. Its hard not to remember Muhammed Ali's line, "I ain't got nothin' against them Congs."

What I am trying to say is that more than one person, it was a case of where I was and when. In another place or maybe with a few months difference, I might have decided to go, or to apply for CO, or to go to Canada, or whatever. Like other things in our lives, a special set of circumstances falls into an order and we act upon it. Looking back now, I recall that one of the drawbacks to going to college where I did was the lack of an ROTC program. A few years later, I'm in jail for refusing to serve. We may be who we are, but that "who" is affected by fates we don't control in some cases. One thing is sure.......We were all there and most did what they believed in, but we were kids. Some of us never got any older, but most got wiser and 30 plus years later we all have a strange bond that exists because of having to make those choices and not in spite of the choices we made.

Spaw