20. Kids of the Privileged vs Everybody Else’s Kids
The way the draft system was set up back then, college students got deferments. Ending student deferments would furnish enough bodies to meet the military’s manpower shortage, but college students were predominately the kids of the middle and upper classes. That is, the people whose opinion counted the most with Congress and the media. Without their support, or at least acquiescence, American involvement in Vietnam could not continue.
Such support or acquiescence would not last long if their kids’ student deferments were canceled, and they were drafted and sent to fight and die in a far-off country most Americans could not place on a map. Mobilizing reservists could also furnish enough bodies, but it posed a similar dilemma: the reserves and National Guard were overwhelmingly filled with the children of the well-off and connected, and sending them to Vietnam would produce a fierce backlash.