Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

by Rick Perlstein

White House tapes registered hours upon hours of strategizing to neutralize the political threat of the “alleged veterans”—the phrase White House spokesmen always used. Antiwarriors who had been warriors cut off the Silent Majority argument at the knees. These were not spoiled brats: they were the people who weren’t able to get college deferments, who couldn’t work the system to get documentation to excuse them from service (in Los Angeles, at least ten dentists would fit kids for service-disqualifying orthodontics for $1,000 to $2,000), who re-upped because their families needed the reenlistment bonus. They were unglamorous, empirical witnesses. They were also former officers, trained to fight, who had seen a lot worse in their previous job than anything any pale bureaucrat could throw at them. They had to be destroyed.