The remarks on conscientious objection in the Freedom House statement do not clarify a complicated, difficult subject. Indeed, I think they reduce an important complexity to a polemical simplicity.

One of the “fantasies” which Freedom House objects to — and which it attributes by implication to the anti-war movement on the issue of Vietnam — is the notion “that military service in this country's armed forces is an option exercisable solely at the discretion of the individual.”