The jokes about the first ship of Trump’s planned new class of naval vessels being called the USS Bone Spurs abound. Herr Trump, who some thought would apply restraint to US foreign policy, is going to name a class of US Navy ships after him (New York Times, December 22, 2025). Readers will recall that Trump, who now celebrates and uses militarism instead of diplomacy in almost every case, used a diagnosis of bone spurs to get out of the military draft during the Vietnam War. Seeing Trump salute and use the military as mentioned above would be almost laughable if it weren’t for the damage and killing taking place across the globe.

Representative Alexander Pirnie (R-NY) drawing the first draft number – Public Domain

The jokes about the first ship of Trump’s planned new class of naval vessels being called the USS Bone Spurs abound. Herr Trump, who some thought would apply restraint to US foreign policy, is going to name a class of US Navy ships after him (New York Times, December 22, 2025). Readers will recall that Trump, who now celebrates and uses militarism instead of diplomacy in almost every case, used a diagnosis of bone spurs to get out of the military draft during the Vietnam War. Seeing Trump salute and use the military as mentioned above would be almost laughable if it weren’t for the damage and killing taking place across the globe. When Trump isn’t using direct and clandestine military action, he’s achieving the same goals with US armaments as in Gaza and Ukraine. It’s the old game of empire that he’s at. On Christmas Day, Trump attacked Nigeria.

Again, nothing laughable, but scrutiny of his record with the US military draft during the Vietnam War demands attention. Many during that war believed that any way out of the military was a positive action during the horrific quagmire of Vietnam, really also in Cambodia, where a genocide ultimately took place, and Laos, which was bombed into oblivion from the air. I don’t believe in the principle that any way out from the military draft was necessarily the best route to take all of those decades ago. I look to the tradition and philosophy of Gandhi’s civil disobedience to inform resistance. The civil rights movement and anti-war movement in the US both had at its center civil disobedience. In the US, civil disobedience has its roots in Thoreau’s resistance to the Mexican-American War.

David Harris, the late war resister and journalist, in Our War: What We Did in Vietnam and What It Did to Us (1996), highlighted Bill Clinton’s manipulation of the system during the Vietnam War to seek an easy exit. Our War is still well worth reading. Harris’s discussion of Bill Clinton’s draft history is telling. Recall the so-called chicken hawks in the administration of George W. Bush who waged war after war including regime change.

During the Vietnam War, I knew people who used all manner of techniques to avoid being drafted into the military. Ways out included everything from a hand rash that I knew was a completely fabricated issue of my best friend whose father was a MD. A pre-induction evaluation by a psychiatrist was an almost certain way out of the draft. There seemed to be a rash of serious mental illness diagnoses during the Vietnam era that were quickly cured by careerism following the war. I knew classmates who took lots of drugs before their induction physical and a Marine Corps officer who came back from Vietnam with parts of his legs gone. I also knew other college friends who went to Vietnam. Many thousands would leave for Canada. Gerald Ford’s amnesty was grossly vindictive. Jimmy Carter’s was much more humane and reasonable. My discharge from the military has the word “honorable”.

By 1969, the Selective Service implemented a draft lottery. Up until its end (the draft) in 1973, young men were drafted according to their date of birth. The latter did not affect the atrocities carried out in Southeast Asia by all of those involved. To think of war as sanitized is insane.

Readers may recall the false claims in 2003 against presidential candidate John Kerry’s military record in what was called “swiftboating.” The far right has much different standards when it comes to Donald Trump. Despite Kerry’s anti-war stand during the Vietnam War, he supported the Iraq War in 2004.

By the end of the war in 1975, millions would die in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, somewhere between 3-5 million, and about 58,000 Americans would also die. All of these decades later, Vietnam recedes from memory, but it is of interest to those who know the history. Donald Trump took a particular course of action to remove himself from danger during that war, as did millions of others in the US. To see Donald Trump now championing militarism, well out of harm’s way, is exponentially hypocritical.

A $901 billion war chest for the next fiscal year makes arms profits and continued wars a given. The US showed fault lines as far back as Vietnam and Reaganism. The acceleration of the decline of the empire is obvious in overextension and through wars and rumors of wars. The government acting at the behest of the power elite shows its penchant for bread and circuses. For many there is not enough bread to go around. Jeffrey Epstein and his coterie in and out of power are symptoms of this extreme sickness and debauchery. Militarism grabs anything it wants almost anywhere with Venezuela a prime example of its overextension. Useless so-called defense spending in unnecessary implements of war is another example of empire’s demise.

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