Mueller has cited the combat death of his Princeton lacrosse teammate David Spencer Hackett in the Vietnam War as an influence on his decision to pursue military service.[24] Of his classmate, Mueller has said, “One of the reasons I went into the Marine Corps was because we lost a very good friend, a Marine in Vietnam, who was a year ahead of me at Princeton. There were a number of us who felt we should follow his example and at least go into the service. And it flows from there.”[25] Hackett was a Marine Corps first lieutenant in the infantry and was killed in 1967 in Quảng Trị province by small arms fire.[26]
I was in 1st/2nd grade, but rode the schoolbus with high schoolers in the early 70s. Kids who had relatives drafted. Everyone hated that war but some felt a need to enlist for reasons such as those of Mueller. A good friend of mine enlisted in the Marines 20 years after his uncle was killed in Vietnam, out of a sense of honoring his memory. He is no monster.
Anyone who would volunteer for that war is a fucking monster.
I was in 1st/2nd grade, but rode the schoolbus with high schoolers in the early 70s. Kids who had relatives drafted. Everyone hated that war but some felt a need to enlist for reasons such as those of Mueller. A good friend of mine enlisted in the Marines 20 years after his uncle was killed in Vietnam, out of a sense of honoring his memory. He is no monster.
So he went to Vietnam to avenge another monster who was killed for being an invader?
We’d be better off as a society if every single person who volunteered for Vietnam never came back.