User:Aidan.Teague/Draft lottery (1969)

Origins
The lottery of 1969 was conceived to address inequities in the draft system as existed previously, and to add more military personnel towards the Vietnam War. The United States first demonstrated interest in Vietnam in 1946 when the US supported France during the French Indo-China war. Signed in July of 1954, The Geneva Accords signified the end of this conflict with the drawing of a new border along the 17th parallel, separating the Communist North and the French-controlled South, which soon became independent following the French recognizing their sovereignty; Ngô Đình Diệm becoming the prime minister. The early 1960s saw a steady increase in US interest in Vietnam, with the US sending military advisors to Vietnam in 1961 and supporting the 1963 Diem Coup and the resulting execution of Ngô Đình Diệm. On August 2, 1964, two US ships were assaulted by two North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin, a similar event was reported to have occurred two days later but was never officially confirmed; none the less both occurrences were used to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting Present Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to allocate US military resources to the conflict in Vietnam. In 1965, with this newly granted power, President Johnson dispatched 190,000 military personnel to Vietnam, untimely, ordering approximately 400,000 the year following. This, consequently, increased the number of men being called up for the draft, jump-starting the infamous Vietnam Draft.

In the 1960s, anti-war movements started to occur in the U.S., mainly among students on college campuses and civil rights groups. By the end of the decade, the anti-war movement included many veterans who had served in Vietnam as well as a lot of middle-class parents with draft-age sons. College students were entitled to a deferment (2-S status) but were subject to the draft if they dropped out, stopped making "normal progress" in community college (i.e., started a fifth semester before transferring to a four-year college) or graduated. In 1967, the number of U.S. military personnel in Vietnam was around 500,000. The war was costing the U.S. $25 billion a year, and many of the young men drafted were being sent to a war they wanted no part of. Martin Luther King Jr. also started to support the anti-war movement, believing the war to be immoral and expressing alarm at the number of African-American soldiers that were being killed.

November 15, 1969, marked the largest anti-war protest in the history of the United States. It featured many anti-war political speakers and popular singers of the time. Many critics at the time saw Richard Nixon as a liar; when he took office, he claimed that he would begin to withdraw American troops from Vietnam. After ten months of being in office, the president had yet to start withdrawals, and U.S. citizens felt he had lied. Later, President Nixon claimed to have been watching sports as the anti-war demonstration took place outside the White House.

After much debate within the Nixon administration and Congress, Congress decided that a gradual transition to an all-volunteer force was affordable, feasible, and would enhance the nation's security. On November 26, 1969, Congress abolished a provision in the Military Selective Service Act of 1967 which prevented the president from modifying the selection procedure ("... the President in establishing the order of induction for registrants within the various age groups found qualified for induction shall not effect any change in the method of determining the relative order of induction for such registrants within such age groups as has been heretofore established ...") and President Richard Nixon issued an executive order prescribing a process of random selection.

Aftermath and Modification
The draft lottery had social and economic consequences because it generated further resistance to military service. Those who resisted were generally young, well-educated, healthy men. Reluctance to serve in Vietnam led many young men to try to join the National Guard, aware that the National Guard would be unlikely to send soldiers to Vietnam. Many men were unable to join the National Guard even though they had passed their physicals, because many state National Guards had long waiting lists to enlist. Other's chose to serve in military branches like the Navy or the Coast Guard as to avoid active combat. Still other men chose legal sanctions such as imprisonment, showing their disapproval by illegally burning their draft cards or draft letters, or simply not presenting themselves for military service. Others left the country, commonly moving to Canada.