The War Resisters League, founded in 1923, believes war to be the ultimate crime against humanity. We advocate nonviolent resistance for creating a democratic society free of war, racism and human exploitation. For us, nonviolence means action without hatred, revolution without guns, justice without prisons.

The League is deeply concerned with amnesty not only because thousands of our members have been imprisoned for their opposition to war. As one of the organizations advocating resistance and non-cooperation with the military, we feel a moral responsibility for the men in exile and prison.

The League played a leading role in organizing the mass demonstrations against the Vietnamese war as an affirmation of our conviction that the human choice is one world-all 31⁄2 billions of us-or none. Similarly, our commitment to amnesty is not only out of concern for those whom it would affect, but also for the healing and reconciliation it would bring to the American community.

Many of you were part of the active opposition to the Vietnam War. Will you join us in this campaign for amnesty? Your actions helped silence the guns. Your actions now can help to open our borders for the exile, the prison door for the resister, and the American community to a reconciliation which would encourage the possibilities for a decent society.

The War Resisters League is affiliated with the
War Resisters' International

and the

International Confederation for Disarmament and Peace

25M-June 1973

AMNESTY - WHY? FOR WHOM?

The Vietnam war was the longest in our history-and one of the most bitter we ever fought, leaving us as a people more deeply divided than any conflict since our own Civil War more than a century ago. 55,000 Americans died in Vietnam, hundreds of thousands were wounded-many crippled for life-and more than two hundred billion dollars spent. For the Vietnamese the cost was even greater: more than a million dead, wounded beyond count, several millions made refugees, hundreds of towns and cities destroyed.

The war was controversial but now we find that the peace is controversial also. For there was another cost of war: the men who resisted the draft, deserted from the military, went underground, or fled the country into exile. President Nixon has repeatedly referred to these men as being only "a few hundred" misfits and malcontents who refused to serve their country in time of war. The figures are actually far higher. One estimate was given in the New York Times, January 30, 1973:

10,000 draft resisters, military deserters-in civil or military prison, on probation, or awaiting

60,000 to 100,000 draft resisters, military deserters in exile (largely in Canada).

388,000 Vietnam Veterans with less than honorable

discharges.

This is a total of over a half million men actively involved in some form of resistance to the Vietnam war. The President has said these men will never be given an amnesty. Vice President Agnew has spoken about them with particular bitterness, implying they are traitors. Thus far every public opinion poll shows support for the President's position.

Draft Evaders: Who Are They?

Only about 7% of the men eligible for the draft were ever called to active duty. During the ten years of war we were a nation of draft evaders. Parents kept their children in college and safe from the draft. People got into the National Guard, leaving them exempt from service in Vietnam. There were draft counseling centers in every city and on most campuses. We are not blaming these men. The War Resisters League did everything in its power to keep men out of service by any legal means at hand: job exemptions, medical problems, conscientious objection, etc. In a society where the rich have tax accountants to help them evade paying as much income tax as possible, one can hardly blame young men from seeking every legal means to avoid serving in a war which most Americans opposed.

The point is simply that these men did evade the draft. They didn't burn draft cards or take part in peace demonstrations. They found legal ways of avoiding military service.

31-658 O - 74-45

Draft Resisters: Who Are They?

Starting in 1965 a growing number of young men came to feel very deeply that the war in Vietnam was wrong. Some of the men were deeply religious pacifists but many of the men had never thought much about war, never doubted they would serve their country when called-until they began to read reports of the war in Vietnam, how it started, the way our government was fighting it.

These men eventually formed "The Resistance," a loose organization of several thousand men of draft age. Almost every one of these men could have gotten exemptions from the draft, as college students, on medical grounds, etc. But they came to believe it was wrong for them to be exempt while others--the poor who could not afford college-were being drafted. One by one-then by the hundreds and by the thousands, these men burned their draft cards, refused to register for the draft, refused induction when called. They could have lived out the war safely, but instead they made their resistance open and were jailed. They evaded nothing -they resisted publicly and paid a heavy price in prison terms. Their lives and careers were disrupted, in many cases marriages broken or family ties disturbed.

And Who Were the Deserters?

I know a young man who lived in New York City and was referred to me by a friend back in 1967. He was a deserter who had been living underground with false I.D. He asked my advice and I told him he could go to Canada, or spend his life as a fugitive, always listening for a knock on the door, or he could return and serve out his term in the army. I said it was a hard choice but we would do all we could to get him a lawyer and get him discharged as a pacifist if he returned to base. Six months later he came by my apartment. He had taken my advice and returned but he couldn't take the conditions in the brig. The guards were ordered to shoot to kill any man trying to escape and if they did kill a man they got a special leave as bonus. The conditions were too brutal -my friend took a risk and escaped. Where he is now I don't know. He is one deserter, a quiet fellow who wanted to be an artist.

There was another young man I put up one night because he had emotional problems and couldn't take the strain. He was a temporary AWOL. He just needed a place to stay one night to think things through. In the morning he went back to his base. The most interesting deserter I met was a clean cut kid who had served a tour of duty in Vietnam. He had gone over as a gung-ho conservative, had enlisted for the chance to kill Communists. When I met him in New York he didn't ask for charity from anyone but got a carpentry job, saved enough money for a ticket to Canada, and came by the night he was leaving for a final talk. I asked him why he had deserted. He said that when he went into the army he was a Goldwater conservative, but after he had done his tour of duty he knew we were wrong, that Americans had no business being in Vietnam, and he had no business being in the army carrying out orders.

He couldn't get released as a pacifist, because there were wars he would fight in. He couldn't face five or ten years at hard labor in a brig, so he was off for Canada and the building of a new life. I think he probably made it-I certainly hope so. One of the surprising things we discovered in the peace movement was that the deserters were often men who had enlisted, had believed in the war, and deserted when they found out the facts. Some of these men whom Nixon has denounced were wounded in combat and have Purple Hearts. Some have medals for heroism in combat. But now they are underground in this country or in Canada or Sweden because they came to believe the war was wrong.

Who Are the Exiles?

Some of the men in exile are military deserters but most of them are draft resisters who, given a choice between a possible five year prison term for refusing induction, or military service in a war they deeply felt wrong, chose exile. Most of these men are in Canada. Many of them are becoming Canadian citizens and have no desire to return to the U.S. Many brought their wives with them, or married Canadians, finished schools, learned trades: they have made new lives for themselves.

Many others, however, want very much to return to this country. Their friends and families are here; they remember the fog in San Francisco or the sound of midnight subways in Manhattan. They remember the golden wheat in Kansas or the autumn forests of Maine. They want to come home. And here we have some paradoxes. There are men in Canada who are exiles but did serve in combat in Vietnam who would be arrested the moment they crossed the border. And yet, just across the border on the American side, are men who legally evaded the draft by staying in college and Nixon and Agnew say nothing about them.

There is another paradox about the exiles. With the exception of the American Indians, who were here when the rest of us arrived, and the blacks, who were brought here against their will, all of us came to this country as exiles. This land was built by exiles. The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock to practice their religion freely, without the constant arrests they had faced in England. Many French, Germans, Italians, Swedes, Poles, Russians, etc., fled to this country to escape the long periods of conscription imposed by the nations of Europe. (Several of my own German ancestors came for that reason.) Einstein came here because Germany had no room for Jews.

It is terribly painful for Americans to realize that perhaps a hundred thousand of our youth have left this country. We are hurt and, instead of asking what is wrong with us, we insist something is wrong with them. Isn't it time to realize that the brutality of the Vietnam war drove some very fine young men-some of the bravest hearts and best minds of our generation-into exile? Some of these men will never want to return, but shouldn't we open the borders of our nation to those who do?