The Italy thread

What's wrong about dodging the draft? We have a volunteer army, which makes a draft unethical.

Also, he once gave a drunken speech to college students concerning Vietnam.

"My name is William Wayne...."
 
He built up this real-life persona as a bad ass and war hero kinda guy with his movies and even started to play the part. However, he was the exact opposite of the things he portrayed.

He was good in The Cowboys, though. True Grit, too.
 
What's wrong about dodging the draft? We have a volunteer army, which makes a draft unethical.

Also, he once gave a drunken speech to college students concerning Vietnam.

"My name is William Wayne...."

Dude, we haven't always had a volunteer army. He dodged the draft in either WW2 or Korea, I can't remember. Dodging the draft in Vietnam...I'd have dodged the draft in Vietnam. But WW2? When our country truly needed us the most? Come on...

I'm just as cynical as the next guy but WW2 was the last war where we actually fought for our country.
 
Does the fact that the law may have been different at one time make something any less unethical? They US used to sterilize people they thought of as "feebleminded" because they didn't want them to have "feebleminded" children.
 
It's not a question of ethics. Yeah, I'm against any government TELLING me I have to join the military...NOW. But we didn't have smart bombs and precision strikes. This was full-onslaught warfare, in the trenches with tens of thousands of people.

Is it ethical that someone's son died in his place because he was becoming a film star?
 
It's kinda weird here with the American military. Italians are wondering why we're still here and want us all to leave, and I can't blame them. Not so much the AF, but the Army is getting out of hand.
 
That is neither ethical nor unethical. That is incidental. It's not exactly hard to find legal recourse to dodge a draft. The kid probably made a conscious decision to kill foreigners.
 
Now we're getting into semantics. I don't think either of us can say what was right or wrong because it was a different time then, with different outlooks.
 
It's kinda weird here with the American military. Italians are wondering why we're still here and want us all to leave, and I can't blame them. Not so much the AF, but the Army is getting out of hand.

And why is the US in Italy at the present time for other-than-diplomatic reasons? I know Umberto Eco kicks ass, but most soldiers are illiterate.
 
Yeah I was too, and I feel the way you do now for the most part. I'd like to see a draft passed there (in theory) just to see the upheaval of the entire US population...people would go nuts. They'd have a revolution on their hands.