Biden Says Vietnam Motivated Him To Stop Wars… 60 Years After Avoiding The Draft: How Joe Used FIVE Student Suspensions Then Teenage Asthma Trouble To Avoid Joining The Millions Of Americans Who Served

Joe Biden stated that he hopes his legacy is that he reduced the chances of war and said he was motivated to do so “because of Vietnam”.

Biden, 81, was first elected to the US Senate in 1972 at the age of 29, when the Vietnam War was raging and hundreds of thousands of Americans were being drafted into the military.

He himself never served in the conflict, but instead received five student suspensions and then a suspension on medical grounds.

The disqualification was due to having suffered from asthma as a teenager, even though he was a student athlete.

Asked about his legacy during an interview with Univision on Wednesday, the president said: ‘Well, I hope the legacy is that I kept my word that – I said the reason I ran for office was to help the lives of ordinary people and reduce the prospect of war and…because of Vietnam.’

President Joe Biden at age 25. Biden attended the University of Delaware as an undergraduate and then Syracuse for law school. He received five suspensions of student suspensions and one medical exemption

Biden as newly elected Democratic senator in Delaware in December 1972

He continued: ‘The secret you have to ask yourself is what are you willing to lose? You figure out what you’re willing to lose, you have an idea of ​​what to do. And so I hope my legacy is that I was honest, straightforward and did what I said.’

Biden’s comments about the Vietnam War reignited scrutiny of his own decisions and attitudes at the time.

Democrats have often criticized Donald Trump for not serving in Vietnam, but neither did Biden.

In 1972, he ran for the Senate on a platform of opposing President Richard Nixon’s escalation of the war, saying the United States should have left Vietnam years earlier.

Biden had already received five student suspensions, first as an undergraduate at the University of Delaware, and later as a law student at Syracuse University, where he graduated in 1968.

A month after undergoing a physical in April 1968, Biden then received a ‘1-Y’ classification, meaning he was available for duty only in the event of a national emergency.

In 2008, Obama campaign officials released Biden’s Selective Service registration to the Associated Press as a then-vice presidential candidate.

A spokesman for Obama said at the time that the exemption was ‘due to asthma as a teenager’.

This was despite the fact that he stated in his own book that he was a star athlete in high school and college and often mentioned his time as a lifeguard in the summer.

Biden’s Selective Service System registration card from 1961. After receiving a draft card, Biden received five student deferments and a medical exemption to avoid serving in Vietnam

While he opposed the war during his first Senate campaign, he was also not one of those who participated in protests against the Vietnam War.

Biden once said at a press conference as people marched and carried banners that he was in Washington voting against the war and before that he was in law school and married.

‘I’m not a carpenter… I was out of sync with when the war movement was at its height, when I was in Syracuse, I was married. I went to law school. I wore sport coats. I wasn’t part of it, Biden said in 1987.

Donald Trump at the New York Military Academy in 1964. He received five deferments and a medical exemption during the Vietnam War

Former President Donald Trump, who was born in 1946, also did not serve in the Vietnam War, unlike many members of his generation.

The former president received four deferments while an undergraduate at Fordham and then the University of Pennsylvania.

After graduation in 1968, he received a medical exemption. The cause was bone spurs in the heels.

That gave him the same ‘1-Y’ rating as Biden.

Trump told a newspaper in 2016 that the bone spurs were “temporary” and “minor.” He also said he couldn’t remember when he stopped being bothered by them.

Former President Bill Clinton also came of age during the Vietnam War, but also did not serve.

He also received educational deferments and then was allowed to join the ROTC at the University of Arkansas Law School.

It allowed him to go to Oxford University and he did not serve in ROTC.

President George W. Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, enlisted in the Texas Air National Guard, and did not go to Vietnam.