Word: drafting
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...many of us, it was a time of wild mood swings in which the dream-like unreality of a Harvard in near chaos was periodically trumped by the anxious reality of a draft lottery, if not a draft notice. The fey Brattle Street bohemian culture that greeted us in 1967--cool was defined as seeing "Casablanca" repeatedly during reading period--was superseded by the apocalyptic visions of "2001" and "Let It Bleed...
...opposition to the war was real. The bombs and napalm were real. College students protesting, just like us, were shot to death at Kent State and Jackson State. The draft was real. (Remember the lottery, the chilling numbers, the saved and the damned? I wonder if there's a man in our class who doesn't remember his lottery number today.) The anger, the passion were real...
...couldn't help wondering whether I should have been able to predict some movement toward flexibility in Baghdad when I noticed an Associated Press item last March that began, "Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has ordered an end to the practice of cutting off the ears of army deserters and draft dodgers...
Will the classy literary ghost and the newly homeless ex-Senator stay together? Will Helprin, who avoided the draft in the Vietnam War (he apologized in a Journal column), hurl shame, through his boss, the wounded old soldier, at Clinton's draft dodging? (Helprin apparently did serve a year in the Israeli armed forces, but explaining this to a Chamber of Commerce audience in Keokuk, Iowa, could be complicated.) Dole's people seem to like the idea of more Helprin speeches. Which could leave the Democrats, searching nervously for something to worry about in this ominously optimistic season, a little...
...find Russian-style democracy, one must seek it not in the political system but in the new openness of Russian society. It can be glimpsed in the marches against the war in Chechnya by mothers of draft-age men, in the anti-Kremlin diatribes printed by tabloids that leave an unpleasant ink smudge on the fingers. There are less appetizing signs as well in the thuggish youths wearing gym suits who hawk alcohol and cigarettes in sheet-metal kiosks, keeping one step ahead of the law, and in the smug young bankers who make million-dollar deals in currency exchange...