A lot of noise lately has been made of Diaper Donnie's bone spurs, or absence thereof. I have come to think of Vietnam combat avoidance on a continuum from draft dodging on one end to draft resistance on the other. In the middle are draft avoiders, vast numbers of guys who sought roles which would not expose them to Vietnam combat. These included serving in National Guard units not likely to be called up to go to Vietnam. (See Quayle, D. and Bush, G.W.)
Most draft resisters did so due to moral objections to US involvement in Southeast Asia. US foreign policy under John Foster Dulles in the fifties and the CIA under his brother Allen Dulles ignored Vietnamese desire for independence after years of French colonial rule. When France withdrew, the US opted to replace it and take on a colonialist role. (Much of US foreign policy after WWII was a mess, but there's too much to discuss here. For example, the CIA inspiring a coup in Iran and installing the Shah. And the Korean War resulting from diplomatic failure to deal with the USSR prior to and after the Japanese surrender.) For many, becoming a colonial power did not make for a just war.
Draft resisters often tried avenues of draft avoidance before direct resistance which involved either escaping to Canada, going to jail, or going underground.
Draft avoidance included seeking conscientious objector status. Usually one seeking CO status had to show religious upbringing in a pacifist sect or environment, and that could result in serving in the military in non-combat roles such as medic, or it could mean working in a civilian hospital or other suitable job. Classification to CO status was hard to get. You could not base your request on moral objections to war alone; you had to have a pacifist upbringing or something. I knew one guy in grad school who had spent two years working in a mental hospital as a CO. He must have had a favorable draft board to obtain CO status.
Grad school was a very popular road to draft avoidance. Peace Corps was another. Interestingly, I knew several guys who joined the Peace Corps while battling their draft board for a deferment, but none of them ever wound up in the military. One of my fellow volunteers served in Peace Corps for two years in Korea and then got a job in Montreal where he lives to this day.
Then there were gays who came out of the closet and went straight (no pun intended) to a doctor who was popular in the gay community for writing letters to draft boards about a guy's unsuitability for military service.
Most people looked at draft avoidance the way we look at taxes. We have to file a tax form, but we don't have to pay any more than the law requires. There are many legal ways to avoid taxes, but fraud can get you sent to prison. Had Diaper Donnie's bone spurs letter to the draft board been exposed as fraudulent, the doctor could have been prosecuted, but Donnie could have played dumb, denied knowing what was going on, and then avoided the draft by other means. (Full disclosure. I was once diagnosed with bone spurs, but my feet quit hurting a few weeks later, and the “bone spurs” apparently went away.)
Draft dodgers were those who did not object to war generally or the Vietnam war specifically but merely wanted to save their own skin above all. But here it gets tricky. Having your wealthy father bribe a doctor to write up a lie about bone spurs is certainly cowardly absent any other motivation.
As I said, it gets tricky. The difference between draft dodging and draft avoidance depends on the mindset of the person involved. Is the person motivated by fear or by principle or a little of both? We don't know. The person himself may not know. And the motivation may change from time to time.
Some on the far right may condemn all draft avoiders as cowards, but many of them avoided the draft themselves. (See Cheney, R. or Gingrich, N.)
The prevailing view in the US at the time was that the draft was legitimate, and if you were called, you go serve your country, no questions asked. Anyone who resisted was a traitor. Certainly, when the cause was to defeat Hitler during WWII, few would argue against the draft. When the cause was “We're not sure why we're doing this, but let's just go kill a million Vietnamese and see what happens,” the draft was not legitimate.
My own view is that the Vietnam War was so morally repugnant that any means of avoiding or resisting it was justified. Dick Cheney had other priorities. If one of his priorities was not killing Vietnamese, fine. Bill Clinton spent a lot of time at Oxford. Fine. He probably got laid a lot there, too.
How much worse is Donald Trump's old man paying a doctor to phony up some bone spurs? Well, I doubt that the Donald feels guilty about it, but I'm sure he would have enjoyed shooting up a village like My Lai, so maybe it's best he didn't go. He seems to be making up for his lost opportunity by getting more than 140,000 Americans killed by a pandemic.