our "foot-soldiers"

[Dan Jizzenberry]

"An estimated 250,00 avoided draft legislation and one million committed 
draft offenses, with only 25,000 indicted--according to a special study 
'Chance and Circumstance' by Lawrence M. Baskir and Wm. A. Strauss. The 
study found that the number of eligible Americans who managed through 
student and occupational deferments and other factors to avoid military 
call-up totaled fifteen million. 'It meant' says historian Arthur 
Schlesinger Jr., 'that the war in Vietnam was being fought in the main by 
the sons of poor whites and blacks whose parents did not have much influence 
in the community. The sons of the influential people were all protected 
because they were in college.' "

[...]

"Civil rights leader Martin Luther King urged that all black and white 
Americans should declare themselves conscientious objectors. 'Negroes' he 
said, 'are dying in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam. Twice as many 
negroes as whites are in combat.' Research for this history shows that 
Martin Luther King was correct. Black Americans comprised thirteen per cent 
of the troop force in Vietnam--about equal to America's black population. 
But a disproportionate number of blacks, twenty-eight per cent, had combat 
assignments. Only two per cent of the officers were black."

(Michael Maclear, "Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War", 313-4)

As I mentioned before, this view is pretty much consensus amongst most 
American historians, left or right. The left is not afraid to mention it 
though, while the right tends to ignore it. I'll also point out that Michael 
Maclear and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., while definitely liberals, were not 
Chomsky-esque lefties. You could say the same about Martin Luther King as 
well.

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