With the military playing a huge role in American politics, it makes sense to wonder which of the country’s commanders-in-chief served in its ranks.
Barack Obama joins thirteen other presidents who had not served in the US Military before beginning their time in office. However, Obama was raised in Hawaii, a state with a very strong military presence, and has discussed having thought about joining when he was younger.
Read more below about Obama’s feelings towards enlisting when he was younger and why he decided not to.
Did He Want To Enlist?
Of the United States’ 45 presidents, only a scant thirteen have not served in the military before their presidency. This includes recent presidents like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and of course, Barack Obama.
Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, which made him the first president born outside of the central landmass of the US, as well as the country’s first African American commander-in-chief.
The state of Hawaii has 11 military bases, quite a lot for a smaller state (you could fit 24 Hawaiis into one landmass the size of California). According to Obama himself: “I have friends whose parents were in the military. There are a lot of Army, military bases there.”
In fact, within the same interview, he was asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos if he had ever considered a military career. Obama replied: “You know, I actually did. I had to sign up for Selective Service [a conscription service for prospective war] when I graduated from high school.”
He also stated “I actually always thought of the military as an ennobling and, you know, honourable option.”
Vietnam Ending
Whilst Obama’s personal reasons for not serving in the military cannot be known for sure, it appears to be a matter of timing. Although growing up around a lot of military culture, Obama was born in 1961, making him far too young to have been drafted for the US’s high profile military operation at the time, the Vietnam War (1955-1975).
Unlike Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, Barack Obama was not able to serve in this conflict, and graduated in 1979, four years after the end of the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War was a historically unpopular conflict, and made the place of the military in the public consciousness shift considerably.
Even soldiers who served there had conflicting feelings towards it, like veteran Len Kirchner who thought “ we haven’t done a decent job, […] in debating and articulating what the mission was and what our goal was and what our strategy was.”
You can listen to Kirchner describe the Vietnam experience in his own words here.
Again, in that ABC interview, the 44th president stated, “[t]he Vietnam War had come to an end. We weren’t engaged in an active military conflict at that point. And so, it’s not an option that I ever decided to pursue.”
When talking about the war during an address to Vietnam, the president remarked “Like other conflicts throughout human history, we learned once more a bitter truth — that war, no matter what our intentions may be, brings suffering and tragedy.”
It is not too surprising, then, that a president who was only 13 when the last soldiers returned from Vietnam did not hurry to enlist in the army after graduation.
Despite the background of a strong military presence in Hawaii, there were no active conflicts or draft programs at the time, so Obama instead chose to pursue other career opportunities.
With No Active Drafts, He Did Not Have To Serve
In conclusion, Barack Obama did not enlist in the US Military before he served as president of the United states from 2008-2016. Although he considered it an admirable career, the country was only shortly out of the Vietnam War, and there were no active conflicts that needed him.
Watch Obama address the returning Fort Bliss soldiers at the end of Iraq combat operations.