Trump received five deferments to avoid the draft in the 1960s. Four were for college, and one was for "bone spurs" in his heels. This was clearly bogus, but Trump was not alone in buying his way out of the draft. A lot of politicians of Trump's age took advantage of their social station to avoid serving in war: Dan Quayle, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
Should avoiding the draft disqualify you from serving as president? It depends: people like Bush, Cheney and Rove were all gung-ho for the war, but weaseled their way out of Vietnam.
War is hell, the old saying goes. But some wars are "better" than others. US involvement in the two world wars was inescapable. The Korean and Persian Gulf Wars were waged to assist allies against aggressors. The Afghan war, while justified, was completely screwed up: it should have been a police action targeted specifically to destroy bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but Bush turned it into a unwinnable war against an entire country.
The Vietnam and Iraq wars were wrong from the get-go. Both were ginned up to gain political advantage. Opposition to both these wars was justified, and draft evasion during the Vietnam War for moral and political reasons was justified to "starve the beast." It is completely moral to avoid participating in the killing in an elective war of aggression like those in Vietnam and Iraq, waged to bolster the reelection chances of a sitting president.
But avoiding service in Vietnam while clamoring for other Americans to be sent off to die in the jungle was the height of hypocrisy. Dozens of Republican chickenhawks in Congress and the Bush administration (I'm looking at you, Dick Cheney) were guilty of this when they invaded Iraq on false pretenses. At the same time they demonized Democrats like John Kerry who actually served in Vietnam.
Some people think that military service should be a prerequisite to be commander in chief. These people are wrong. Some people in the military (I'm looking at you, John McCain) think of military action as the answer to every problem. McCain has called for war against more than a dozen different countries, and had he been president it's completely possible we would be at war with Russia at this moment over the former Soviet Republic of Georgia and Crimea.
What is required to serve as commander in chief, however, is the ability to understand what the consequences of your actions will be, and what the effects of those actions will be on the people who serve, their families, and the country as a whole. That requires knowledge, foresight and empathy.
Donald Trump has none of these. He has no idea what's going on the world: last week he didn't know that Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2014. He doesn't know the difference between Iran's Quds force and the Kurds in Iraq.
Trump's lack of foresight is even worse: he has said that the United States should let South Korea and Japan should go hang, and develop their own nuclear weapons. He has said that the US should stand by and do nothing if Russia invades NATO allies that don't spend enough on their military.
It's no wonder that North Korea, Russia and China are all rooting for Trump to be president.
Trump's total lack of empathy has been amply displayed time and again, most recently in his attacks on the parents of Capt. Humayun Khan. And lest we forget, his snarky demand that a crying baby be ejected from his rally.
Besides, Trump's bone spurs prevent him from being commander in chief.
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