Donald Trump's Military Cowardice Goes Beyond His 5 Draft
Deferrals

He continuously disrespects those who actually served.

Do Better is an op-ed column by writer Lincoln Anthony Blades
that debunks fallacies regarding the politics of race,
culture, and society � because if we all knew better, we'd do
better. Do Better is an op-ed column by writer Lincoln Anthony Blades that
debunks fallacies regarding the politics of race, culture, and society -
because if we all knew better, we'd do better.

When I look at President Donald Trump, I see a pot-bellied, 71-year-old
man with a doughy frame. But in 1968, when he was a 22-year-old University
of Pennsylvania graduate, Trump was a tall, fit athlete who played
football, tennis, and golf. His age and clean medical history qualified
Trump as a perfect candidate for the draft to serve in the United States
Army and fight in the Vietnam War, but he avoided combat after receiving a
1-Y medical deferment, which he has said was due to "bone spurs in his
heels." More than half a million American men were stationed in Vietnam by
the end of that year, which was the bloodiest 12 months of the conflict.
On the day of Trump's graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, 40
Americans were killed in Vietnam, according to The New York Times.
The son of Fred Trump, a wealthy New York real estate developer, Donald
Trump did what many other wealthy young men were allowed to do: He dodged
the draft. Between 1964 and 1972, a few months before the draft ended, he
received five deferments - in addition to his "bone spurs" claim, the
other four were based on his educational status. He received two
deferments while he attended Fordham University from 1964 to 1966, and two
more after transferring to the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania.
As a draft dodger, Trump never knew the horrors of war, but in 1997, he
laughed when telling radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually
transmitted diseases was like his "personal Vietnam." "It is a dangerous
world out there. It's scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era,"
Trump said to Stern, discussing his sex life. "I feel like a great and
very brave soldier."
Today, Trump struggles to recall the most basic facts about the medical
condition that was the basis for his final deferment. He doesn't remember
the name of the doctor who provided him with the note of proof and has
repeatedly failed to provide a copy of it to The New York Times. He's also
forgotten which of his heels had the spurs, now just claiming it was both.
(During the 2016 presidential election, the affliction wasn't noted by Dr.
Harold Bornstein, a physician who performed a physical on Trump and found
that he had "no significant medical problems." in his medical history)
Unlike the 2,709,918 soldiers who fought in Vietnam, Trump never served.
He wasn't injured like the 304,000 Americans who fought in the war, or
among the more than 58,000 killed in combat. Despite this inexperience, he
is now in charge of the U.S. armed forces, the Army, the Navy, the Air
Force, the Coast Guard, and the Marine Corps as commander-in-chief. As
president, he is tasked with dictating to all military generals and
admirals which battles should be fought, where they should be fought, and
who gets to fight in them on behalf of the United States.
He is certainly not the first American leader to receive draft deferments.
Former vice president Joe Biden received five student deferments, former
VP Dick Cheney received five deferments, and former president Bill Clinton
received deferments and even penned a letter to an ROTC officer thanking
him for "saving me from the draft." (It should also be noted that before
Clinton's administration, LGBTQ servicemen and women were banned from
serving. In his time, the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy began,
which forced them to conceal their identities or risk being discharged,
effectively condoning discrimination.) This column will afford these men
no absolution for their decisions, but what makes Trump's behavior obscene
is that despite having never served, he has fashioned himself as the
arbiter of military courage.
It was Trump who, as a presidential candidate in July 2015, dissed Senator
John McCain, a former prisoner of war for roughly five and a half years
during Vietnam, by stating, "I like people who weren't captured." He
publicly disrespected Khizr Muazzam Khan and Ghazala Khan, the gold-star
Pakistani-American parents of Army captain Humayun Khan, who was killed in
combat in 2004 and posthumously awarded a Purple Heart for his bravery.
Not only did Trump attack an immigrant family who made a sacrifice for
their adopted nation, but he even compared their loss to the "sacrifices"
he made while becoming a real estate tycoon. To insult the family of Khan,
who died at war at 27 - just two years older than Trump was when he
received his 4-F classification, permanently disqualifying him from
military service - by comparing it to his own business ventures is a claim
only made equatable in the mind of a man with little recognition of his
own internalized cowardice.
Now the president, the five-time draft dodger, is weakening the military
to satisfy his own bigotry.