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Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance during the Vietnam War. By Michael S. Foley. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xviii, 449 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8078-2767-3. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-5436-0.)
Opposition to the war in Vietnam from within the United States military system was striking in energy and commitment. Draftees challenged conscription at potentially high personal cost: vigorous prosecution, years of imprisonment or exile, heavy fines. Their resistance, combined with G.I. and veteran activism, formed the antiwar backbone after 1968 and forced the government to abandon conscription in favor of an all-volunteer army. The upheaval of this movement drove the coffin of conscription so deep that its future excavation is doubtful.
There have been many accounts of draft and military resistance since Alice Lynd's We Won't Go in 1968. Most of the books have been, like Lynd's, personal accounts of individuals caught up in the military system. One...