<HTML>In a message dated 10/3/02 12:24:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time, dperrin@comcast.net writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Why would an "anti-war" critic care whether or not said politician did or did not serve? It personalizes what ought to be a de-personalized issue, namely, "pre-emptive" war.</BLOCKQUOTE> Some of us have trailer park Republican relatives who are perfectly okay with pre-emptive war in the abstract but do immediately grasp the colossal hypocrisy of people who have sat out previous wars casually sending other people off to die. That can but does not always overcome a peasant impulse to show patirotism by being willing to die for something and /or  lead to other questions..... <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> > The worst chickenhawks in my opinion are those who supported the > Vietnam War, but avoided the combat zone by getting a special > commission from the National Guard and the like because of family > influence, and then failed to even show up for duty, like GW Bush. > Yoshie So now the "anti-war" movement is critical of AWOL status and deferments? Would it have been better that those who did not serve in Vietnam went and joined in the slaughter? The only people I can see even remotely getting upset over this are combat vets, not peaceniks. </BLOCKQUOTE>DP Noticing and /or objecting to the class / race dynamics involved in who gets deferments, who gets to fulfill their draft obligations out of the line of fire (future Presidents and lower-middle class white farm boys vs equally or more poor brown people) might or might not have anything to do with one's perspective on the actual conflicts involved. DoreneC </HTML>