How To Beat The Draft Board/Closing

Closing

There are no guarantees. But there are a number of things you can do to increase your odds of getting past the board. Know your local board and how they tend to vote, if you can. If it's not too late, prepare in advance by laying the groundwork for a future claim(s) or living where there is a friendly board. Pick your claim(s) well, and prepare, prepare, prepare. Prep yourself and your witnesses alike. If your claim is denied, move up the chain; you just need one board to grant you one of your claimed statuses. Make sure that you meet the requirements of your claim, that you come across as sincere, and all of your documents are signed. Don't give them any excuse to turn you down, because a number of boards are loaded with people eager to send everyone off to war. Then again, some boards are loaded with people who are just the opposite. In the end, by knowing what your options are and preparing, you're in better shape than most people who appear before the boards.

The point of making this distinction between resisters and dodgers is not, however, to pass judgment on either. Instead, it is to make clear that during the Vietnam War, the Johnson and Nixon administrations dishonored a generation of men by making them decide between 1) fighting in a war regarded by many as immoral and illegal, 2) going to prison, or 3) evading both the war and prison. To this day, those choices haunt many of that generation and, I would argue, contribute significantly to the cynicism so many Americans have come to share about the faithfulness of their government.

—"Confronting the War Machine", Michael S. Foley