to who beats the drums for war.
John R. Bolton
US National Guard and Army Reserve service
Bolton was a supporter of the Vietnam War, but purposely avoided military service in Vietnam.[36] During the 1969 Vietnam War draft lottery, Bolton drew number 185. (Draft numbers were assigned by birth date.)[37] As a result of the Johnson and Nixon administrations' decisions to rely largely on the draft rather than on the reserve forces, joining a Guard or Reserve unit became a way to avoid service in the Vietnam War, although 42 Army Reserve units were called up with 35 of them deployed to Vietnam shortly after the Tet offensive in 1968–69.[38][39] Before graduating from Yale in 1970, Bolton enlisted in the Maryland Army National Guard rather than wait to find out if his draft number would be called.[40][41] (The highest number called to military service was 195.)[42] He saw active duty for 18 weeks of training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, from July to November 1970.[41] After serving in the National Guard for four years, he served in the United States Army Reserve until the end of his enlistment two years later.[5]
He wrote in his Yale 25th reunion book: "I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy. I considered the war in Vietnam already lost."[36] In a 2007 interview, Bolton explained his comment in the reunion book saying his decision to avoid service in Vietnam was because "by the time I was about to graduate in 1970, it was clear to me that opponents of the Vietnam War had made it certain we could not prevail, and that I had no great interest in going there to have Teddy Kennedy give it back to the people I might die to take it away from."[43][44][45]
When Trump was in college from 1964 to 1968, he obtained four student draft deferments.[15][16] In 1966, he was deemed fit for military service based upon a medical examination and in July 1968, a local draft board briefly classified him as eligible to serve. In October 1968, he was given a medical deferment that he later attributed to spurs in the heels of both feet, which resulted in a 1-Y classification: "Unqualified for duty except in the case of a national emergency."[17] In the December 1969 draft lottery, Trump's birthday, June 14, received a high number that would have given him a low probability to be called to military service even without the 1-Y.[17][18][19] In 1972, he was reclassified as 4-F, which permanently disqualified him from service.[18][20]
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