Joe HonickJoe Honick
One of President Richard Nixon’s final acts was to kill off the military draft. It was not an act of mercy but a tactic to further undermine the Vietnam war without the courage to say so. In the process, he later ushered in the conflict in Cambodia.

What does any of this mean today, as President Donald Trump roars against his estimated “millions” of illegals in America who must be swept from our shores?

Perhaps because the POTUS never had to respond to an early morning reveille or make one of those army beds with blankets pulled so tight the first sergeant could bounce a coin off, he has no idea how many so called “illegals” not only risked their lives in combat but were actually recruited to join the military.

As the invasion of Iraq progressed, George Bush and company discovered the lack of a draft made it almost impossible to get enough people to fight it. Answer: the decision was made to recruit not only ex-felons who would not ordinarily make the grade for acceptance but illegals as well!

All of these young people were rapidly inserted into the military rolls without much reaction from Congress and certainly not from the Republican Party. And those so-called “illegals” were “kind of” promised some special consideration for their willingness to sign up and to war under the American flag.

This issue has been debated for many years and is somewhat of an echo of another time, when the President of the United States “forgot” a commitment made to those who went to war. That was around the late 1920s when many veterans promised $500 bonds for fighting in WWI were screwed by President Herbert Hoover and were forced to set up a tent city in Washington, D.C. Angered that these veterans would have such chutzpah, Hoover dispatched Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur to take some troops and “clean up” the tent city. It’s said that Patton and MacArthur were restrained from actually firing on these veterans by a more concerned Eisenhower.

It was no accident that more than 30 House Republicans in 2016 voted to support President Obama’s proposal to recruit illegals.

True in detail or not, the facts remain equally shameful.

President Donald Trump has promised to rid America of many people whose families have seen their sons and daughters willingly go to war for this country and are now threatened with deportation.

Had President Trump made that commitment as a young man, perhaps he might see matters differently today.

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.