President Jimmy Carter pardoned hundreds of thousands of men who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War. An estimated 100,000 men went abroad in the late 60's early 70's to avoid being drafted to the war. President Carter promised to give draft pardons if he was elected into office to help put the war in the past. President Carter quickly granted pardons to draft dodgers once he was elected into office in 1976. He gave pardons to those who committed ant offense between August 4th,1964 and March 28th,1973. Anyone who was convicted in that time period were given full political, civil and other rights. President Carter used an executive order to pardon the men who evaded their draft notice, he did not go through congress to make this decision. This was very controversial because 209,517 men were formally accused of dodging the draft and violating the law, so now the men coming back home were not getting into trouble. People said these men who evaded the draft are unpatriotic and they shouldn't get off without getting into trouble. This is an important subject because Tim considered evading the war and he explained in great detail his internal struggle. He didn't want to go to war but he didn't want to stay home and be looked down upon and ashamed of himself for being unpatriotic. Tim did end up going to the war so he was not apart of the pardoned men but he did highly consider evading his draft notice.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1977/01/22/president-pardons-viet-draft-evaders/dfa064a5-83fc-4efb-a904-d72b390a909e/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.264cba8ec4d2
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-carter-pardons-draft-dodgers
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/21/president-carter-pardons-draft-dodgers-jan-21-1977-346493
President Jimmy Carter granting his promise to draft dodgers January 21, 1977
It's very interesting that Carter did this. Do you think the 'draft dodgers' should have been pardoned?
ReplyDeleteI liked how you provided statistics of how many men avoided the draft by evading the country and compared this to Tim's situation in the book. I can't believe that 209,517 men were accused of violating the law before the issuing of pardons had taken place, and after the fact, people avoiding the draft were pardoned and not accused of violating the law.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that this many people actually evaded the draft, did Jimmy Carter get into anymore trouble? I like how you tied TTTC into this writing!
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