A lottery you didn't want to win

In 1969, one question dominated young men's conversations at high school and college campuses: Who would get drafted?

The involuntary draft had been around, in one form or another, since the Revolutionary War. The Selective Service System had started in the 1940s to induct young men into the military, but by the time Richard Nixon was inaugurated president in January 1969 many were skeptical about the Vietnam War and angry about the idea of serving.

"From the moment he came into the office, Nixon recognized that the existence of the draft had made campuses across the country centers of protest," said Hofstra University professor Carolyn Eisenberg, who is writing a book about Nixon's foreign policy.

During the campaign, Nixon had promised to stop the draft. A commission headed by former Defense secretary Thomas Gates Jr. met during 1969, and the following year it reached the surprise conclusion that an all-volunteer army would be as potent as one based on conscription. Still, the draft continued until 1973, using a lottery system that chose draftees by random picks of birth dates. More than half the 3.5 million Americans who served in the Vietnam theater between 1964 and 1975 were drafted.

Even today, many of the draftees and their loved ones question the fairness of the system that often seemed to favor the wealthy and the politically connected. Most of those who served were working class or middle class.

Christine Doukas remembers being at Lindenhurst High School and watching 18-year-olds get their draft notices - including a fun-loving boy named Jeff, who became her husband. "These boys were young, their testosterone was flying," she said. "After the war was over, everybody forgot about them."

Jeff, she recalled, "went to war as asked and came out of the war a different person, an alcoholic and drug addict." He died at age 42 of causes she describes as "complications from Agent Orange and hard living."

When Doukas reads about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she wonders something. "Would we be fighting two wars now if our sons and daughters were being drafted and all the families had to share the burden?" She answered her own question: "No."