Milt Caniff on depicting the military in Steve Canyon

SABA: I must say that 10 years ago, you and I would have probably been on very different sides of the war.
CANIFF: Not necessarily, and this is a funny thing. It's come up quite frequently. Let me put it this way: the people who were fighting the war in Vietnam were not there of their own choosing. They were there because they were drafted. They didn't enlist for "Down with Hitler" and "Down with Hirohito," which would cause a lot of guys to enlist. Almost without exception, they were there because they were drafted. Once a guy is drafted and he's stuck in a place, that's where my relationship with him begins. I never got into the reasons for him being there. It's just the fact that he was there, that's all. Then he became my way of mirroring what was going on, and what a miserable job it was being there. But not why he was there. I didn't like that war any more than you liked that war. But because I was showing these GIs doing their thing, it sounded as if I were a hawk. I didn't feel that way about it at all.