1968 - Impasse

On January 30, 1968, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army launched a coordinated offensive across South Vietnam, attacking cities and military bases to try and ferment an uprising against the U.S.-backed government. A majority of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was on leave because of the Tet holiday, and allied troops were caught off guard. Fierce fighting raged throughout the spring of 1968, especially in Saigon, Hue, and around the U.S. military base at Khe Sanh. Communist forces were driven out of the cities back into the countryside by the fall, but the "failure" of their offensive proved to be a major blow to the U.S. strategy in Vietnam.

The Tet Offensive proved that previous U.S. assertions about forcing the Viet Cong to do battle on their terms and winning the war were false. Even though the Viet Cong suffered heavy losses, the offensive proved that they were still capable of attacking U.S. and South Vietnamese forces anywhere in South Vietnam, and the U.S. could merely respond to where the Viet Cong chose to attack. The destruction of Vietnamese cities, brutality of the fighting, and dislocation of civilians was shown on live television in the United States, and further turned public opinion against the war.

Public burnings of draft cards were conducted at anti-war protests (of the estimated 25,000 men who did so, only forty-six were ever indicted), and the number of attacks against draft boards to disrupt the operations of the draft accelerated. Many young men took the more extreme step of fleeing the country to avoid the draft. 

On February 16, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson suspended all graduate student deferments except for those men in critical occupations, and/or who were in their second or later years of graduate school on October 1, 1967. 

1. Delinquents who have attained the age of nineteen years in the order of their dates of birth with the oldest being selected first.
2. Volunteers who have not attained the age of twenty-six years and in the sequence in which they have volunteered for induction.
3. Nonvolunteers who who have attained the age of nineteen years and have not attained the age of twenty-six years and who (A) do not have a wife with whom they maintain a bona fide family relationship in their homes in the order of their dates of birth, with the oldest being selected first; or (B) have a wife with whom they married after August 26, 1965, and with whom they maintain a bona fide family relationship in their homes in the order of their dates of birth with the oldest being selected first.
4. Nonvolunteers who have attained the age of nineteen years and have not attained the age of twenty-six years and who have a wife whom they married on or before August 26, 1965, and with whom they maintain a bona fide family relationship in their homes, in the order of their dates of birth, with the oldest being selected first.
5. Nonvolunteers who have attained the age of twenty-six years in the order of their dates of birth, with the youngest being selected first.
6. Nonvolunteers who have attained the age of eighteen years and six months and who have not attained the age of nineteen years in the order of their dates of birth, with the oldest being selected first.