Well, no where does that statement imply he was hiding from service. Given his age I'm confident he was in college until at least '69 and would have had a student deferment. He then joined the National Guard.
Henry Kissinger was certainly non-military and never served in any military forces. Best damned National Security Adviser we ever had.
I actually agree with him on the war. Certainly by '68 it was clear we were exiting that conflict and America's heart was not in it. What was Nixon's slogan in '68? I believe it was "Peace with Honor". I'm no Bolton booster or apologist, but it would be nice if we could stick to facts and not conjecture.
Some observers believe the Vietnam War was close to being won in 1972. The Viet Cong were defeated. The rural countryside was nearly 100% pacified. Guerilla war was no more. You could drive a jeep from Saigon to Danang without a weapon and be safe. North Vietnamese Army launched an all out invasion, the Easter Offensive, of South Vietnam in April of that year and were decisively defeated. During that offensive, the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) stood and fought. US air power, with new laser guided "smart" bomb technology, ruled the skies and wiped out hundreds of Soviet-built tanks. Later that year, Nixon's much-maligned Christmas Bombings saw fleets of B-52s unleashed on the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi & the primary port city of Haiphong for the first time, with devastating effectiveness. More damage was caused to North Vietnamese war infrastructure in 10 days than was done in the previous eight years combined. By the time of the armistice in January of 1973, America's POWs were being returned in reasonably good health, with North Vietnam not wanting to release a couple thousand starving, beaten scarecrows having improved treatment of these prisoners in recent years. By 1973 the South Vietnamese has a million men under arms, as a result of Nixon's successful Vietnamization program (which should have begun in 1962, not 1969). The South Vietnamese had the fifth largest air force on earth.
Inside South Vietnam, there was no Jeffersonian democracy, but newspapers and radio stations in Saigon and the major cities could publish openly criticize the government or the army or the Americans. You could hardly say the same for North Vietnam. Movie theaters operated. Businesses functioned. Taxes were paid. Saigon had a working stock exchange. Privately owned cars and motorcycles created traffic jams. Politically, South Vietnam came a very long way over the previous decade. Reasonably free and fair elections took place, in a new country with no tradition of democracy. The days of a president winning 99% of the vote or disgruntled generals taking power through coups were over. Sure, corruption wasn't completely wiped out, but it was kept to a manageable level.
After a decade of intense US involvement in South Vietnam, the country was a paradise compared to Iraq a decade after the 2003 US invasion. All thanks to General Creighton Abrams, who took over from General William Westmoreland and performed miracles while the US was steadily withdrawing its troops, and President Richard Nixon, who was steadfast in his leadership.
All this makes it so much more of a damn shame that the entire thing collapsed in 1975. Lots of blame so spread around. The 1973 oil embargo and dramatic price increases hit South Vietnam hard, and North Vietnam (100% subsidized by the Soviet Union) not at all. The global economic recession of 1973-1974 followed. The rapid decline of both economic and military aid from the US, whose population was exhausted of the entire Vietnam experience. Sure, the democrats held the majority in Congress in 1974-1975, but nobody was protesting very much (including President Gerald Ford) when they dramatically decreased aid to the South Vietnamese.
Had the peace of 1973 been more like that on the Korean peninsula after 1953, South Vietnam may have survived.