I stopped by the
Musical Offering Café in Berkeley last week to have one of their great Caesar
salads, and who did I run into? My favorite teacher.
His name is Jan Vetter, and he's
the professor at UC Berkeley's law school – which we old-timers stubbornly
persist in calling Boalt Hall – who gave me the lowest grade I ever got
(thoroughly justified, of course).
It was in his Labor Law course. The
grade was so low, he was obligated to write an explanation. And this is what he
wrote:
"Mr. Snapp demonstrates a
remarkable command of legal rules and principles. Unfortunately, they are not
rules and principles that are recognized by any jurisdiction of which I am
aware."
Oops! Busted!
Professor Vetter was the smartest
professor on the faculty, and that's saying a lot because law school professors
are really, really smart.
He was also the nicest. And, as you
can see above, the funniest. Those of us in the know made it a point to sit in
the front row to catch the witty asides he muttered under his breath.
It's also because of him that I
wasn't thrown out of school. During the Vietnam War I was hauled before the UC
Berkeley Executive Committee for violating the University's time, place and
manner regulations at a stop-the-draft demonstration.
Translation: I was in the lobby of
Sproul Hall during a sit-in, leading the crowd in singing "Yellow
Submarine."
But they didn't throw me out,
thanks to Professor Vetter's expert lawyering.
Afterward, I thanked him for
getting me off the hook.
"You're welcome," he
said, "but I think you're on the wrong track about abolishing the draft. I
understand what you're doing: You're using the draft as a club to beat the war
over the head with. But I don't think you've thought through the long-term implications."
That was almost 50 years ago. And
I've long since come to the conclusion that Professor Vetter was right, and I
was wrong.
Look what has happened since the
draft was abolished. Far from making war less likely, we've had decade after
decade of almost non-stop fighting.
And the burden has been borne by
only one percent of the population. For the other 99 percent, it's been business
as usual. The pain never touches them, so why should they care?
It's not only unfair; it's
undemocratic. One advantage of a draft is that it throws young people from all
races, regions and regions together. And they have to learn to work together or
they'll all get killed. That tends to broaden the mind.
And the greater the mobility
between the civilian world and the military, the more each side is likely to
understand the other, which is one of the reasons why we've never had a
military coup in this country.
Finally, as my college classmate Karl Marlantes, who wrote an
award-winning novel called "Matternorn," about his experiences as a
Marine lieutenant in Vietnam, pointed out at our last reunion, the last 20
years of non-stop war have been brought to us by presidents with no military
experience who constantly defer to the top brass.
"We need people in the White
House who have served in uniform," he said, "if only because they
know enough to say '(bleep) you' to the generals."
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