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Vietnam War draft
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Vietnam War draft
The United States ran a draft, a system of conscription, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the peacetime years before the Vietnam War. It was administered by the Selective Service System. In the second half of 1965, with American troops pouring into Vietnam, there was a substantial expansion of the US armed forces, and this required a dramatic increase in the number of men drafted each month.
US involvement in Vietnam began in 1946 with support for France during the French Indo-China war. The Geneva Accords of July 1954 brought an end to the conflict, with a new border drawn along the 17th parallel separating the Communist North and the French-controlled South. South Vietnam subsequently gained independence from France and Ngô Đình Diệm became prime minister. U.S. interest in Vietnam increased through the early 1960s, with the U.S. sending military advisors to Vietnam in 1961 and supporting the 1963 Diem Coup and the resulting execution of Ngô Đình Diệm. On August 2, 1964, a U.S. Navy destroyer was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. A similar attack on two U.S. destroyers was reported on the night of August 4, but that report was incorrect. Both incidents were used to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to allocate U.S. military resources to the conflict in Vietnam. Johnson deployed 190,000 military personnel to Vietnam in 1965 and approximately 400,000 the following year. These deployments increased the demand for US military personnel, and led ultimately to the first Vietnam draft.
Anti-war movements emerged in the U.S. throughout the 1960s, many amongst college students and civil rights groups. By the end of the decade, the anti-war movement included many veterans who had served in Vietnam as well as middle-class parents with draft-age sons. College students were entitled to a deferment (2-S status) but were subject to the draft if they dropped out, stopped making "normal progress" in community college (i.e., started a fifth semester before transferring to a four-year college) or graduated. By 1967, the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam was around 500,000. The war was costing the U.S. $25 billion a year, and many of the young men drafted were being sent to fight in a war which they opposed. Martin Luther King Jr. also started to support the anti-war movement, believing the war to be immoral and expressing alarm at the number of African-American soldiers that were being killed.
November 15, 1969, was marked by the largest anti-war protest in the history of the United States, featuring many anti-war political speakers and popular singers of the time. Many critics at the time saw President Richard Nixon as a liar: on taking office Nixon pledged to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, but after ten months no withdrawals had taken place[citation needed]. Later, Nixon claimed to have been watching sports as the anti-war demonstration took place outside the White House.
There were complaints that the process by which the system chose which young men were to be drafted was biased against the poor and the uneducated. The government decided in 1969 to reduce this bias by introducing a random element into the selection process. A lottery based on birth dates was conducted by the Selective Service System on December 1, 1969, to determine the order of conscription for men born between January 1, 1944, and December 31, 1950.
After much debate within the Nixon administration and Congress, the latter decided that a gradual transition to an all-volunteer force was affordable, feasible, and would enhance the nation's security. On November 26, 1969, Congress abolished a provision in the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 which prevented the president from modifying the selection procedure ("... the President in establishing the order of induction for registrants within the various age groups found qualified for induction shall not effect any change in the method of determining the relative order of induction for such registrants within such age groups as has been heretofore established ..."), and Nixon issued an executive order prescribing a process of random selection.
In principle, the function of the first draft was to select dates within a calendar year at random, with men whose birthdays matched those dates being drafted according to the sequence the dates were selected. The 366 days of the year (including February 29) were printed on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque plastic capsules, which were then mixed in a shoebox and then placed into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time and opened.
The first date drawn was September 14; all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number 1. The next numbers drawn corresponded to April 24, December 30, February 14, October 18, and so forth. The last number drawn corresponded to June 8. All men of draft age (born January 1, 1944, to December 31, 1950) who shared a birthday would be called to serve at once. The first 195 birthdays drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn; the last of these was September 24.
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Vietnam War draft
The United States ran a draft, a system of conscription, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, the peacetime years before the Vietnam War. It was administered by the Selective Service System. In the second half of 1965, with American troops pouring into Vietnam, there was a substantial expansion of the US armed forces, and this required a dramatic increase in the number of men drafted each month.
US involvement in Vietnam began in 1946 with support for France during the French Indo-China war. The Geneva Accords of July 1954 brought an end to the conflict, with a new border drawn along the 17th parallel separating the Communist North and the French-controlled South. South Vietnam subsequently gained independence from France and Ngô Đình Diệm became prime minister. U.S. interest in Vietnam increased through the early 1960s, with the U.S. sending military advisors to Vietnam in 1961 and supporting the 1963 Diem Coup and the resulting execution of Ngô Đình Diệm. On August 2, 1964, a U.S. Navy destroyer was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. A similar attack on two U.S. destroyers was reported on the night of August 4, but that report was incorrect. Both incidents were used to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to allocate U.S. military resources to the conflict in Vietnam. Johnson deployed 190,000 military personnel to Vietnam in 1965 and approximately 400,000 the following year. These deployments increased the demand for US military personnel, and led ultimately to the first Vietnam draft.
Anti-war movements emerged in the U.S. throughout the 1960s, many amongst college students and civil rights groups. By the end of the decade, the anti-war movement included many veterans who had served in Vietnam as well as middle-class parents with draft-age sons. College students were entitled to a deferment (2-S status) but were subject to the draft if they dropped out, stopped making "normal progress" in community college (i.e., started a fifth semester before transferring to a four-year college) or graduated. By 1967, the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam was around 500,000. The war was costing the U.S. $25 billion a year, and many of the young men drafted were being sent to fight in a war which they opposed. Martin Luther King Jr. also started to support the anti-war movement, believing the war to be immoral and expressing alarm at the number of African-American soldiers that were being killed.
November 15, 1969, was marked by the largest anti-war protest in the history of the United States, featuring many anti-war political speakers and popular singers of the time. Many critics at the time saw President Richard Nixon as a liar: on taking office Nixon pledged to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, but after ten months no withdrawals had taken place[citation needed]. Later, Nixon claimed to have been watching sports as the anti-war demonstration took place outside the White House.
There were complaints that the process by which the system chose which young men were to be drafted was biased against the poor and the uneducated. The government decided in 1969 to reduce this bias by introducing a random element into the selection process. A lottery based on birth dates was conducted by the Selective Service System on December 1, 1969, to determine the order of conscription for men born between January 1, 1944, and December 31, 1950.
After much debate within the Nixon administration and Congress, the latter decided that a gradual transition to an all-volunteer force was affordable, feasible, and would enhance the nation's security. On November 26, 1969, Congress abolished a provision in the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 which prevented the president from modifying the selection procedure ("... the President in establishing the order of induction for registrants within the various age groups found qualified for induction shall not effect any change in the method of determining the relative order of induction for such registrants within such age groups as has been heretofore established ..."), and Nixon issued an executive order prescribing a process of random selection.
In principle, the function of the first draft was to select dates within a calendar year at random, with men whose birthdays matched those dates being drafted according to the sequence the dates were selected. The 366 days of the year (including February 29) were printed on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque plastic capsules, which were then mixed in a shoebox and then placed into a deep glass jar. Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time and opened.
The first date drawn was September 14; all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number 1. The next numbers drawn corresponded to April 24, December 30, February 14, October 18, and so forth. The last number drawn corresponded to June 8. All men of draft age (born January 1, 1944, to December 31, 1950) who shared a birthday would be called to serve at once. The first 195 birthdays drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn; the last of these was September 24.
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