The Republicans: Greetings, You Have Been Selected

Greetings, You Have Been Selected For Americans now over 33, the draft was a painful rite of passage

"Try to imagine what it was like to be a college senior in early 1969," says Jack Wheeler, 43, a Viet Nam veteran and chairman of Washington's Center for the Study of the Viet Nam Generation. "Winter, ice and a dreadful uncertainty gnawing at you." At that time, less than a year after the Tet offensive, Americans were shocked by the stories and televised images of an increasingly bloody and, to many, pointless war in Southeast Asia. In university dorms and dining halls around the country, students endlessly discussed their overarching obsession: the draft and how to avoid it. "The stress...

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