The government targeted disabled people from some of the poorest communities in the country, who McNamara referred to as, “the subterranean poor.”
Many of those drafted were illiterate, they had to be taught to tie their shoes, and they didn’t know things like who the president was, even as they were being sent to kill and die on his orders for an imperialist war, for reasons they could not understand.
A book called McNamera’s Folly records some stories of those recruited in the program. One thought a nickel was worth more than a dime, because it was bigger. One of them failed to attend training and was sentenced to four years of labor in prison, and the sergeant asked if anyone “wanted to join them in the stockade.” Another conscript didn’t know what the word “stockade” meant and thought it meant going home, so he said yes - he received the same sentence.
If you can believe it, this was actually sold to the public as a “progressive” program, as part of Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” The claim was that this would be a way to help the conscripts learn useful skills. in reality, a study by the DoD itself found:
Comparisons between Project 100,000 participants and their non-veteran peers showed that, in terms of employment status, educational achievement, and income, non-veterans appeared better off. Veterans were more likely to be unemployed and to have a significantly lower level of education. Income differences ranged from $5,000 [to] $7,000 in favor of non-veterans. Veterans were more likely to have been divorced.
Obviously.
I understand the program and/or participants were pejoratively referred to as “McNamera’s Morons”. They had an absolutely dismal survival rate for what I imagine are super obvious reasons. Beyond fucked up and still somehow not in the top 5 of fucked up shit our government and/or military has done to our own citizens.
This is why Forrest and Bubba went to Nam, and why Lt. Dan was not super thrilled to have them in his squad.
And don’t forget Gomer Pyle.
Art imitates life imitates art imitates…
"Each soldier was then issued an AR-15 rifle, three clips of NATO 7.62 mm rounds… "
That’s one of my favorite Onion articles and I never noticed this detail.
Can someone who knows guns explain why this is funny?
Short answer is that it’s the wrong ammo and won’t fit in the gun.
Slightly longer answer. Ar15 is 5.56 mm (sort of a .223). A 7.52 mm (.308 ish)won’t fit in the chamber, much less a magazine fit in the weapon. "Sort of’ and “ish” because of a longer explanation about chamber pressure differences
There are AR-15s that use 7.62, jokingly called “AR-47”. They’re not using 7.62 NATO though.
I’m sure there’s a .308 Winchester version of an AR-15 out there though, which is basically the same thing.
AR-10 is the .308
There was Cleveland, he was from Detroit…
Great share, thanks!
I once worked with a guy named Toledo who was from Flint, MI
His parents were just massive fans of Klinger from MASH.
see also: Conscription of people with disabilities. It’s ongoing in present-day Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Defence Ministry amended the criteria for medical exemptions, reclassifying people with tuberculosis, viral hepatitis, thyroid disease and HIV to be fit for military service
I think that’s a bit different than drafting mentally challenged people to be canon fodder
typical .ml
This is part of what Forrest Gump was about. Think Forrest and Bubba would have made it to boot in the first place?
Holy crap this is what Forrest Gump was about I never realized…
To be fair, it’s about other things, too. Like Jenny’s character’s arc had nothing to do with that part.
Well, it shows the state of the country regarding protesting the war in Vietnam, Black Panthers and such, although we don’t get to hear what he says about the war at the National Mall before he spots her running out.
Yes, it was based on ‘McNamara’s Morons’ as people said. And to be fair to the book, it does a better job of making Forrest Gump more self aware, he does in fact grasp that he’s being exploited and underpaid and under trained, used for the most deadly jobs and mocked for it.
…d-does he?
I think Poutine has been doing this since 2022 too!
I condemn these serious allegations against Poutine
Well, it does exacerbate climate change
And remember boys and girls, these are the actions of good Christian people, which tells you a lot about what Christianity is about. Just to be clear, this isn’t exceptionally bad behavior for Christians, this is pretty much the standard, I’d expect no less from them.
Fuck ALL religions, all religions are evil and all religions should be prohibited as it’s all just an excuse to be an asshole and yet appear pious. Fuck it all
Lmao. The article says nothing about religion. Do do you just like proselytizing? You should consider joining a church if you have that level of fanaticism
Maybe he’s referring to the fact that McNamara, the architect of this and all-around terrible person, was an Elder in his Presbyterian church during the time he was also conceiving and running this program. IDK, that’s the first direct connection I could find. That, and a lot of this was under Kennedy, who was famously and publicly and proudly the first Catholic president. So I agree it’s not a great look for Kennedy in terms of his Catholicism being a major part of his identity, to have allowed his SecDef to run this program on “the least among us” if you will.
You sound Christian. Try thinking around your brainwashing and you will see it’s all a tool to make you feel good about your in group to the point they can do no wrong. Same with Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, any and all of them.
They make you feel powerful via strength in numbers, following shallow rules that, to be fair, can keep you healthy (Halal and Kosher are mostly about preventing food poisoning and/or unhealthy eating habits), etc
And then they say “give all your material value to us! For the cause!” or else sky daddy is going to smite you! Or punish you for ETERNITY!
You must do what this human man said a god says to do or else the god will torture you endlessly sums up like 99% of all organized religions.
Pretty fucking sus.
Is this your first day on the left side of the interwebs? Atheists and agnostics are the norm. We’re mostly over it and not every shitty thing done is a direct religious issue.
Religion is just another control. Causes not symptoms.
This. I won’t hate on someone for their beliefs. I will not tolerate hate and intolerance though. I will judge you by your actions and inactions. Ya wanna worship TFSM, cool, wear your collander in pride. Go forth and show peace to all, I shall not infringe.
Vietnam was about oil, do not blame religion they knew what they were doing. It’s always class warfare.
promoted as a response to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s war on poverty
US war on the poor has been consistently successful.
McNamara was truly one of the most cold-blooded sociopaths in US history.
The Fog of War is a damn good documentary. I watched it in a college class about the Vietnam War, and that class absolutely radicalized me. There was zero reason for the US to be there.
It is indeed a great documentary. Ironically, McNamara happily agreed to be interviewed for it. I haven’t seen it in over 20 years, but I just remembered being absolutely repulsed at how completely unfeeling the dude was about everything.
Along with Kissinger and Nixon.
“Just need a few more million tons of bombs bro. Then the NVA will finally realize that WE’RE the good guys bro.”
– Robert McNamara (Probably)
The MAGA crowd meets the conscription criteria and they’re ready for the jungles in Venezuela.
The people of Venezuela do not deserve that.
Isn’t this just eugenics?
No because its poor people and they aren’t considered humans to anybody in the upper class.
They were mentally challenged people.
From the poorest communities. I don’t see rich disabled people on the front lines in any timeline. Almost like your income is used to discriminate in a system designed ages ago for kings and Queens but fuck me for saying we just put a new coat of paint on the old systems.
Freedumbs not free, amirite ‘muricans?
Part of me really thinks that our entry into Vietnam was partly because there wasn’t enough jobs for all the baby boomers that were coming of age, and they needed to cull the numbers a bit.
The reality is worse.
The US was almost totally focused on the Soviet threat after WW2. The US wanted France as a strong ally, so the French coerced the Americans to pick up the torch in Vietnam and help the South beat the North. Eisenhower and Kennedy gave the South ‘military advisors’ but didn’t want to fully commit. Then LBJ became President.
Johnson believed that he could win the War with a massive buildup. His plan backfired, and the US went from having a small force committed to a large force stuck in a quagmire. Johnson didn’t want to raise taxes for the War, so he printed money, which lead to inflation.
Nixon got elected as a ‘peace candidate.’ He then doubled down on LBJ’s policies of a big War paid for with paper money. Nixon knew the War was unwinnable; he planned on keeping it going until 1976 when he was out of office.
The inflationary spending was starting to hurt the US economy when the OPEC Oil Embargo hit. That made everything in the US much more expensive. It was so bad under Ford that families that used to be able to do well with one job needed Mom to get a job too.
Jimmy Carter’s man, Paul Volker, won the war on inflation, but people only saw results after Carter was out. Reagan got the credit for Volker’s plan, but Reagan had his own inflationary program ready to go.
In 1964, before the War ramped up, ‘middle class’ was one Union job supporting a family of four with enough money to send the kids to college and have some luxuries. In those days, $1 million was a vast fortune. By 1993, when George Bush Sr. was done, ‘middle class’ was two incomes to keep a household going. In 1993, $1 million was what a rich guy paid for a party.
The basic flaw of you thinking is that there was ever a “reason” the US entered that war.
There wasn’t one. There was just lots of justifications for why te US had to stay in it.
Please don’t use the “US is evil” argument to justify not knowing history.
I am not using that justification and I am well aware of the history of the US involvement in the Vietnam war.
The war transcended five presidential administration and everyone of them inherited the shit show from the last.
I know this sounds cartoonishly evil, but please consider how the unemployment rate went down drastically within this subpopulation.
Now about my newest idea ‘tunnel-sized toddlers with claymore mines’
Yeah this is the kind of shit you literally couldn’t put into a fictional movie because viewers would not buy that a first-world democracy would do that to their citizens. You’d need an intentionally over-the-top cartoonishly evil fictional entity like Vault-Tec to even approach a “Moron Corps” scenario in fiction…
It’s a modest proposal
Maybe the real problem was that there weren’t enough civilian jobs that could make use of the valuable skills they were taught, like, “how to get shoved into the line of fire while the rest of us run away.”
Just like the good old days and the coal mines.
You had me in the first half
[off topic?]
I’ll take this opportunity to tout a favorite graphic novel.
Big Man Plans.’ A slightly off kilter officer recruits a 4-F little person to be a tunnel rat in Vietnam. Then it gets kinda weird…
Didn’t they recruit little people to be aircraft mechanics in WWII? They could fit inside fuselages and wings?
I never heard that. They’d have had normal sized women and it’s more likely that they’d plan around the building than to rely on little people. Remember that the US was building thousands of planes and ships and needing extra small folks would have created a massive bottleneck.
I did a quick search and nothing came up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovitz_family
Family of ‘dwarves’ who survived the concentration camps.
Very possible it’s some crazy shit I was told as a kid. I’ll have to do some digging.
