Submitted by Raymond Takashi Swenson, Jan 9, 2008 20:13

I am a Mormon who served 20 years in the Air Force, retiring at the rank of Lt. Colonel. My son served as a combat nurse in the Army Reserve, and my son-in-law served six years at Space Command.

Mormons serve in the armed forces in large numbers. The largest ROTC program in the nation is at Brigham Young University. For years, many Mormons were appointed to the Air Force Academy and the Naval Academy, resigned to serve two year missions for the Church, and were successfully reappointed. The commanders noted that the Mormon cadets were more mature and better leaders, and decided that they wanted Mormons who had gone through the mission experience to be in their cadet corps, so they created policies that allow any cadet to take one or two years off to perform public service, such as the Peace Corps, without having to resign their appointments. Last year the cadet commanders at both the Air Force and Naval Academies were Mormons who had served as missionaries under that policy.

Mormons have served in every war since the Church was organized, including the Mormon Battalion that marched from Council Bluffs Iowa all the way to San Diego to help occupy and secure the Southwest. Today, the Army's main intelligence translator units are all part of the Utah National Guard, taking advantage of the language skills of Utahns (mostly Mormons). They currently have members serving on active duty all over the world.

Before the all-volunteer force came into being, the Selective Service had deferments for many reasons, the most popular one for college students. A much less used deferment was for religious ministers and divinity students. Selective Service was concerned about the number of young Mormon men serving as missionaries and thus qualifying for the ministerial deferment. It was a silly concern, since for every Mormon who left on a mission, there was another one coming home who was available for the draft. Eventually Selective Service figured that out, and the Church was allowed to end the practice of limiting the number of new missionaries to two per congregation per year.

IN my own case, I had a student deferment before leaving on my mission in early 1969. Toward the end of that year, the draft lottery was initiated, along with gradual termination of the student deferment. MY number in the lottery was 16 (sixteen), guaranteeing I would be drafted. Mitt Romney's number was in the 300s, guaranteeing he would NOT be drafted. This difference was simply an accident of our birthdays. If I had not been assigned a low number, I would have been happy to skip military service and pursue graduate school for a PhD in mathematics. As soon as I finished my mission, I was ordered to report for a draft physical. Since I could not get a student deferment, the only way to finish my BA degree was to join the ROTC, which I did. I then ended up attending law school on a military scholarship, and made a career in the JAG Corps.

By the time I graduated in 1973, the Vietnam War had wound down to the point where almost all my ROTC classmates were told not to report for active duty. In particular, the Air Force did not send any ROTC graduates to pilot training, since they had graduates from the Academy and a surplus of pilots returning from Vietnam. (This is the reason George W. Bush was allowed to drop Air National Guard service a year early; he was not needed, especially as Nixon abandoned the air defense mission in a decision to leave the US vulnerable to nuyclear bomber attack, relying on retaliation by ICBMs.)

I am frankly disgusted by journalists, most of whom have never served in the armed forces, criticizing political candidates over their lack of service in Vietnam. Most of the people who went to Vietnam were either draftees who had no choice in the matter, or career military members who went there as part of their career progression. On the other hand, there were entire segments of the armed forces that never got near Vietnam, including the entire nuclear missile forces, and the nuclear submarine fleet. Being in Vietnam was not a mark of character or bravery for draftees, and there were plenty of military men and women of character and honor who never got there. Every job in the armed forces is essential to serve some mission, and all who serve are at risk of being killed or injured in the line of duty, if for no other reason than that weapon systems tend to be hazardous and tempermental (like the supersonic jet and nuclear rocket that was flown by George W. Bush). As 9/11 showed, those in the Pentagon are not exempt. Plenty of good people have not devoted several years of their lives to military service. There is nothing wrong with deciding NOT to serve, which is the meaning of an "all volunteer" military. You don't have to devote several years of your life to the armed forces in order to earn the right to vote or run for office, just as you don't have to do that to earn the right to be a newspaper or TV reporter.

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