AN ORDINARY AMERICAN

Back in the 1960s I received a draft notice. It included an offer to enlist as an officer in the medical corps because I have a medical degree. Therefore, like all physicians who received that letter, I enlisted. I served as an army doctor for 2 years, one year overseas in South Korea and the rest of the time at Fort Sheridan in Illinois. I am not a hero. I served because that is what an ordinary American does. There was a rumor that the government was considering sending our division from Korea to Vietnam, but it did not happen because South Korea sent one of their divisions to Vietnam instead in order to keep us in Korea. I don't know if that rumor was true or not, but if we had been actually transferred over to Vietnam, I would have gone, not with relish but rather because that is what one does.
Some of the army doctors I met in Korea were not Americans. They were foreign doctors who had been doing residency training at hospitals in America and because of the war in Vietnam were drafted into the army. Their choice was to serve 2 years in the US military before completing their residency training or go back to their home countries. They valued their American medical training enough to serve in the US military in order to complete that training. That is what they had to do. 
Some Americans who opposed the war went into exile in Canada to avoid the draft. They felt compelled by conscience to do that.  One could argue about the correctness of their decision, but they paid for it with years of separation from their country. They did what they thought they had to do.
Then there is Donald Trump, a rich man's son, who avoided the draft because of supposed bone spurs in his feet which magically disappeared after the war ended. It was urgent for Trump to go immediately into his father's business to learn its questionable business practices. One wonders if Trump money was not a factor in influencing the revelation of those "bone spurs." 
Many of my fellow Americans who were drafted in those days and ended up in the Vietnam War went home in body bags. Draft Dodger Donald is now President of the United States.