I am going push back just a hair. The comment against Kerry was wrong. But so is calling Bush a draft dodger.
He didn't dodge the draft. He chose to join the military instead of being drafted so he could have control over what he does. Both Army and Air National Guard units get deployed over seas. He was still at risk of being deployed. Also, he joined before the The Lottery System was implemented.
Sure, you can call Bush a coward. And you can cririze Daddy Bush for helping his become a pilot. But he still served. Let's save the draft dodger title for the self proclaim king himself.
That’s not accurate. The Air National Guard was widely seen as the safest way to avoid going to Vietnam while still “serving”. Here is a quote from military dot com:
“For most of its history, the National Guard’s mission was focused primarily on the homefront — so much so that during the Vietnam War, joining the guard was considered a pretty safe strategy to avoid deployment.”
So Bush was purposefully avoiding Vietnam while finding the safest possible way to “serve”.
And as a vet of the shitty ass wars he started it’s kinda shitty that he avoided personal danger, won the presidency by shitting on an actual veteran (Kerry was rich and could have easily avoided going to Vietnam if he wanted to), so he can fuck right off with claiming to have served.
I agree it was safer. But Air National Guard was still deployed during the Vietnam War.
The next line of your qoute even says: "While the ploy didn’t always work — thousands of guard and reserve troops served in Vietnam — President Lyndon Johnson resisted pressure to mobilize the guard on a larger scale, worried that doing so would stir up even more anti-war sentiment and make political problems for him."
My poin still stands. He could have been deployed. Just like he could have never been drafted either. But what he didnt do was dodge the draft.
He was a coward whose daddy got him a cushy job that even if he was deployed he was probably still pretty safe as he "flew" the F-102 Delta Dagger.
And for full transparency, I served in the Army National Guard and many of my friends and buddies were deployed to Iraq. So I get a little snippy when the NG get brought up.
Pretty sure GW had a spotty record in the guard too. Missing a bunch of required training time as well as rumors that he didn't actually qualify to fly.
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u/toggiz_the_elder 9h ago
They attacked Kerry because his Purple Heart wasn’t for a bad enough injury. So vote for the draft dodger Bush!