It was the first time a lottery system had been used to select men for military service since The reason for the lottery of was to address perceived inequities in the draft system as it existed previously, and to add more military personnel towards the Vietnam War. Ho Chi Minh , another Vietnamese leader who was communist and sought immediate independence for the entirety of Vietnam, saw this as an opportunity to strike knowing that Bao Dai had little support from the general population as he was widely regarded as a Japanese-installed puppet and successfully took over Hanoi and most of northern Vietnam.
Emperor Bao Dai, still in power in the southern half of the country, set up the State of Vietnam, with support from the returning French colonial rulers, with Saigon as its capital. Ho Chi Minh based his political structure and government on other communist states such as the Soviet Union, while Emperor Bao Dai wanted a Vietnam that was modelled after the West, like the United States, [1] with a democratic government. Afterwards, at the Geneva Conference , Vietnam was split along the 17th Parallel north, and it was intended that a nationwide reunification election be held in to determine which side would take over all of Vietnam.
He was opposed to reconciliation with the North and against the elections of Eisenhower started supporting the South Vietnamese who were also against the communist north. Conflicts between communist sympathizers began occurring in the South.
Draft lottery () - Wikipedia
At the time, the U. In , the John F. Kennedy administration started working under the "Domino Theory," which stated that if South Vietnam was to fall to the North, then other places in southeast Asia were to become vulnerable to communism as well. This caused President Kennedy to begin sending additional American soldiers to Vietnam. By , there were around 9, personnel in Vietnam. In , South Vietnamese generals organized a coup that resulted in the death of Diem. Johnson increased the number of U. In August , two U.
Johnson condemned North Vietnam, and Congress passed a motion which gave him more authority over military decisions. By the end of , President Johnson had sent 82, troops to Vietnam, and his military advisors wanted another , Due to the heavy demand for military personnel, the United States increased the number of men the draft provided each month.
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In the s anti-war movements started to occur in the U. College students were entitled to a deferment 2-S status but were subject to the draft if they dropped out or graduated. The war was costing the U. Martin Luther King Jr. The 15th of November marked the largest anti-war protest in the history of the United States. It featured many anti-war political speakers and popular singers of the time. Many people at the time saw Richard Nixon as a liar; when he took office, he claimed that he would begin to withdraw American troops from Vietnam.
After ten months of being in office, the president had yet to start withdrawals, and U. Later, President Nixon claimed to have been watching sports as the anti-war demonstration took place outside the White House. After much debate within the Nixon administration and Congress, Congress decided that a gradual transition to an all-volunteer force was affordable, feasible, and would enhance the nation's security.
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On November 26, , Congress abolished a provision in the Military Selective Service Act of which prevented the president from modifying the selection procedure " The days of the year including February 29 were printed on slips of paper. These pieces of paper were then each placed in opaque plastic capsules, which were then mixed in a shoebox and then dumped into a deep glass jar.
Capsules were drawn from the jar one at a time and opened. The first number drawn was September 14 , so all registrants with that birthday were assigned lottery number 1. The second number drawn corresponded to April 24, and so forth. All men of draft age born January 1, to December 31, who shared a birth date would be called to serve at once. The first birthdates drawn were later called to serve in the order they were drawn; the last of these was September Also on December 1, , a second lottery, identical in process to the first, was held with the 26 letters of the alphabet.
The first letter drawn was "J", which was assigned number 1.
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The second letter was "G", and so on, until all 26 letters were assigned numbers. Among men with the same birthdate, the order of induction was determined by the ranks of the first letters of their last, first, and middle names. People soon noticed that the lottery numbers were not distributed uniformly over the months of the year. In particular, November and December births, or numbers to , were assigned mainly to lower draft order numbers representing earlier calls to serve. This led to complaints that the lottery was not truly random as the legislation required.
An analysis of the procedure suggested that mixing the capsules in the shoe box did not randomize them sufficiently before placing them into the jar "The capsules were put in a box month by month, January through December, and subsequent mixing efforts were insufficient to overcome this sequencing".
Had the days been evenly distributed, 14 days in December would have been expected to remain uncalled. A war truly essential to national security should spare no one from duty except those hobbled by serious medical or psychiatric problems. But, even if our Vietnam engagement was militarily justified, it was socially and culturally disastrous to make it optional for millions of able-bodied youths. Although President Trump has not suggested bringing back the draft, some defense experts and even a few politicians have done so.
The nation most to fear is North Korea, which has threatened to reach US cities with its missiles. Although that was achieved in Korea, it might have been another story had President Harry Truman undercut morale by allowing indefinitely extended deferments. For all our great and wonderful diversity, America is — or should be — one country. A no-exceptions Vietnam-era draft would have avoided, or diminished, the class-and-race divide that haunts us today.
Conscription in the United States
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