What Does It Mean To Call McCain A ‘War Hero’ Candidate?
McCain is running as one, but those who oppose dishonorable wars are also heroes.
“624787.” In his first national campaign ad for president, John McCain is shown reciting his rank and serial number as he lies in a Vietnamese hospital bed as a prisoner of war. The ad describes him as “a real hero.”
Let’s be clear; Senator McCain is running for president as a war hero who plans to win the campaign based on character and honor. On the surface, it seems churlish to critique the idea of a war hero. And criticizing a tribute to courageous and self-sacrificing soldiers would be disrespectful.
But inextricably tied to the idea of the war hero for president is a discussion that goes beyond individual soldiers or prisoners of war, such as McCain, to the wars they fight and what their role in the war says about their moral merits as national leaders. This turns out to be surprisingly problematic.
We need to distinguish the war hero from the war. Fixed ideas about war heroes get into what we call “morality wars,” crucial struggles about which values should prevail, who should be admired and for what qualities.
When we call McCain a war hero, we engage in moral discourse about the Vietnam War and now Iraq. We also give McCain - currently the country’s most celebrated war hero - the ultimate political weapon: power by virtue of heroism and the ability to discredit opponents as weak or unpatriotic.
The public has treated McCain’s record in Vietnam and his status as a war hero as something unchangeable. But placing his sacrifice beyond the pale of criticism also implicitly places the cause he served beyond the pale, and that hushes important dialogue.
McCain’s heroism stems entirely from Vietnam. McCain was brave in captivity, but he and his fellow pilots dropped more bombs on Vietnam than all those dropped in World War II, leading to the conclusion that “we had to destroy Vietnam in order to save it.” But he did not acknowledge the war itself as immoral. Had he engaged in such “straight talk” about the war itself, or if we had a more enlightened concept of heroism, he might not be getting so close to becoming the next president.
This language of war heroism is used unfairly to confuse unjust wars and their architects with the honor of brave soldiers. By promoting the idea that Vietnam was an honorable war and denigrating antiwar Democrats as too weak to “stay the course,” Richard Nixon won the election in 1968. He then kept the war going for another five futile years, sustained by that myth.
Playing the war hero card has long been a political strategy to elect Republicans; legitimize imperial wars; and portray Democrats and peace activists as weak, cowardly, or traitorous. John Kerry, also a courageous soldier, was swift-boated as a traitor because he became a peace activist in Vietnam.
Republicans even did the same to Daniel Ellsberg, a real hero of the Vietnam era. Ellsberg was a war planner who turned against the war and in 1971, at great personal risk, released to The New York Times the “Pentagon Papers,” the military’s internal and damning history of the war. But as there are no peace heroes, only war heroes in the American moral discourse, President Nixon tried to indict him and many still brand him as a traitor.
Ten out of 11 presidents after the Civil War were Republicans, the majority of whom were generals who ran as war heroes. In the 20th century, Republicans continued to serve up war-hero candidates like Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, a strategy that has worked for tens of decades. And now we have John McCain.
If the Democrats are to win elections in the 21st century, the key is to finally engage in straight talk about war and war heroes.
First, they must renounce the morality of militarism.
Second, they must be clear that the architects of unjust wars are not honorable or heroic but immoral moralists, those who wage evil in the name of good.
Third, they must create a new language of heroism. Brave soldiers in just and unjust wars may be heroes, if we refer purely to personal courage and sacrifice in battle. But it is critical that we recognize that those who oppose dishonorable wars are also heroes. Surely, their courage should also qualify as a character virtue for the highest office in the land.
The peace hero - even more than the war hero - should be the ultimate moral force in the world we now inhabit.
Charles Derber and Yale Magrass are coauthors of “Morality Wars: How Empires, the Born Again, and the Politically Correct Do Evil in the Name of Good.”
2008 The Christian Science Monitor
Seems that a person is only a war hero if the Republicans agree with them.
McCain served and he suffered, so you can give him the war hero card. However, serving in the Military many decades ago does not make one a good President or a bad President.
What did McCain do after he left the Military - I think I heard somewhere that he became an arms dealer (or associated with arms dealers or something like that).
When McCain speaks - does he speak as a war hero or does he speak as someone doing the bump and grind with arms dealers? I think he speaks as the latter.
Is what is good for arms dealers also good for America?
I’m still waiting for John’s hero stories - you know, falling on grenades and singlehandedly holding off hordes of NVA so his buddies could escape the ambush, that kind of thing. All I’ve heard so far is that he crashed quite a few airplanes, dated a stripper, dropped napalm on civilians and got himself captured. Guess I need to read his biography.
I would call him a hero in terms of surviving approximately 5 years of incarceration and torture at the Hanoi Hilton,but I would like to talk to the families of the people he dropped all those bombs on in Vietnam and see if they think he is a war hero.
All very true, especially renouncing the morality of militarism. If we could accomplish that then we, as a country, would be heading in the right direction. A Department of Peace would be a great start. Staff it with military and peace heroes. Only the truth, and lots of it, can remove the brainwashing we have underdone in this country and get us back on a path that has a future.
Hoa binh
It means the same thing as a German newspaper praising the Einsatzgruppen as “heroic” in 1942.
Our country’s national religion is “Militarism” which worships, kneels and throws itself to the service of the great god known as “Money.” Mind you, the high priests celebrated and protected are the money makers. To question thier self-serving entitlements is what summons the military to put your name on a list or even pay a visit and kick down your door.
The next Middle East war: Brought to you by the guy who was tortured, but flip-flopped on the US using torture as acceptable.
Yep… really gotta respect the guy who committed war crimes thirty years ago as the authority on how to not commit MORE war crimes… when he has approved the commission of war crimes.
Hey, RichM, don’t be so hard on the Einsatzgruppen, their were only following orders.
My real point is that it is extremely hard to judge who may be acting in an illegal manner during a “war.”
At what point can one say that they have personal control and responsibility during military service?
I am a Vietnam Combat Veteran. I served with distinction, i.e. heroically. However that war was at its root a war crime. Therefore, I am a war criminal. I was duped by my society into believing that I should serve as a soldier. Am I still a war criminal or a dupe?
Vietnam has given amnesty to all Vietnam Vets. Am I still a war criminal?
I regret what I did in the destruction of that country, but does that correct the pain and damage?
McCain is the ‘Victim Becomes a Victimizer’ candidate.
I’d never expect the Dem campaign to do this, but from the left there needs to be a loud and constantly repeated message changing this to the ‘war criminal candidate.’
A lot of modern politics is repeating short, clear bumper sticker length messages to the point where they get imprinted on the populace. It doesn’t matter the truth behind the message. Just repeat the message ad-nauseum. What I picture above is as much a defensive operation as an offensive one. We know the right is going to do this sort of message repetition attaching the phrase ‘war-hero’ to McCain. We should be doing the opposite with the phrase ‘war-criminal’.
Of course, instead the left will argue itself in circles for ages on whether they should do this.
One can be both a ‘war criminal’ and a ‘dupe’. The two are not exclusive.
Its the acts that define a war-criminal. Up until it became the policy of the American and British air forces during world war ii, there was a world wide consensus that bombing civilian cities from the air was a war crime. Read the reactions to the fascists bombings of Guernica and Rotterdam and even London and this is clear. The message only became fuzzed when the US made bombing civilian areas its policy during WWII and after.
The act of dropping bombs on a civilian populace is a war crime. Bombing dikes to destroy the food supply of a civilian population is a war crime.
One can be doing this because they are following orders. But Nuremberg made if very clear that ‘following orders’ is not a valid defense. The basic rules and code of conduct of the US military still today makes a distinction between a ‘lawful’ order and an ‘unlawful’ order. Military personnel are supposed to refuse an unlawful order.
That said, one does need to give people a good deal of slack on this. The constant propaganda and psyops that the military directs at its own soldiers is designed to make them follow any order without question. And its also designed to mask and hide the illegal nature of some of these actions.
Because of this, I’d give a great deal of slack to someone who did commit crimes while following orders. But based on one condition. That is that they later realize and admit that what they were doing was wrong. If they are willing to admit to this and own up to it later, then I’m willing to give them a great deal of slack for the fact that they didn’t rebel against the crowd and the organization while they were in the military.
With McCain, we’ve never seen that. I’ve never seen him do anything but express a great deal of pride in the job he did in the military when he was flying along at high altitude and dropping bombs on a civilian population. I’ve never seen nor heard him question the morality of this.
So, I don’t have any problems calling McCain a ‘war criminal’.
BTW, Prof Howard Zinn is a fascinating person to read on this topic.
He was raised in a worker, socialist type of atmosphere. During WWII, he volunteered for the military to fight and stop fascism. He ended up serving in a bombing squadron.
One of his last missions during the war was aimed at a French town. The town was occupied by German soldiers who’d been bypassed and cut-off by the Allied victories and advances. Bombing these soldiers had little military significance, as they were just going to sit there cut-off until the war ended.
However, the US military had this new invention they wanted to test called ‘napalm’. So, they ordered Prof Zinn’s squadron to go use it on this French town.
Prof. Zinn’s writings on this might be very interesting to ‘hoytdouglas’ and others who want to think about the issues he’s raised.
Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.
What matters is that he has the support of media monopolies.
if this guy gets elected it’s all out war on Vietnam again…
As having contributed to the deaths of many innocent Vietnamese people, I certainly echo what hoytdouglas at 04-14 at 11:55 am has written. While hoytdouglas and I have lamented what we had done in Vietnam, John McCain, on the other hand, as the authors of this post point out, has never admitted that killing Vietnamese civilians [as when he attempted to bomb a light bulb factory, a civilian target, when he was shot down on his last mission] was clearly a violation of the Geneva Convention and therefore merits the definition of a war crime.
But as COMarc wisely observes, the left and especially the Democrats will twist themselves into intellectual knots in order to rationalize why McCain should not be labeled a war criminal. This is reminiscent of when so many Americans fall all over themselves, including of course the Democrats, by proclaiming that American soldiers who are participating in the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan should somehow be honored for their service. This, apparently, is a way for the presidential candidates to ingratiate themselves with the American public by demonstrating how [allegedly] patriotic they are. The word that is always used with soldiers, either living or those who have died, is the word honor. As a former English major in college, I believe that one should use words in a very careful and correct manner, that they should never be thrown around in a haphazard way.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word honor as meaning “high respect, as that shown for special merit.” Since the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, just like McCain in Vietnam, are engaging in the occupation and brutalization of the citizens of those countries, I fail to see why they, and McCain, should be honored for their military exploits. A more appropriate word to use regarding the soldiers today would be the word lament, which is defined as “expressing sorrow or regret”, that is to say, that one would lament the fact that they are, as Lt. Watada has said, being used for ill-gain.
I believe the true heroes of this country are the ones who are saying NO to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, such as those who belong to the IVAW. Their names are rarely mentioned in the corporate media but they, unlike McCain and the soldiers who are aiding in the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, have taken a stand and have said that they will no longer be a part of the war machine of the United States.
How about his Keating 5 scandal? How about is voting for the budgets that have us in a 9 trillion dollar deficit? How about his embracing John Hagee? How about his third term of Bush II being loud and clear??
Vote for Nader or McKinney or any REAL progressive!!
McCain is a hateful little traitor and two time war criminal, committing acts of mass murder in Vietnam and supporting the indefinite ongoing slaughter in Iraq. His stupid, lying stroll through what he described as a “peaceful” Iraqi market in a flack jacket with heavily armed body guards and Apache helicopters circling overhead to protect him shows how low this cancerous vermin will stoop in trying to manipulate reality for his Amerikkkan zombie fans. He had it far too easy in the Hanoi Hilton for well documented capital crimes for which he has never repented. The world would find his imperial unconsciousness as ugly and unacceptable or more so than that of the current White House squatters.
Two McCain quotes:
“I detest war.”
“Bomb, bomb Iran.”
Two side of a two headed coin. No matter which side comes up, the war party wins.
Do not confuse the “heroic” act with the “moral” act.
yes in vietnam john mccain was a war hero.
now today, john mccain is a war monger.
and that should be the emphasis of obama’s campaign.
Instead of whining about how the Republicans nominate old soldies and win elections, Democrats should stop nominating cowardly, self-serving twits like Obama and Hillary, who have nothing to recommend them except fund-raising and ambition.
If the Democrats had nominated Wes Clark or Jack Reed or Chris Dodd, for example, we wouldn’t have to listen to this silly whine from Charles Derber and Yale Magrass.
Of course McCain is a war criminal and a rank opportunist, as well as a dolt. But it would be silly for his political opponents to attack him with regard to his moral shortcomings as that almost never works.
I would think an optimal attack on McCain would focus on his incompetence as a warmonger. He graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at Annaopolis. He crashed several airplanes and then was shot down by the Vietnamese, who did not have a stellar record at knocking out planes. Then, being the weakling he was (to try to use the language of the right), he gave the Vietnamese some information about the US command structure so that he could receive better medical care.
In the last few years, he has supported the woefully unsuccessful war for oil. With all the blood and treasure spent, where is the fricken oil? How much has made it to American gastanks? And what’s up with the price going up to $4 a gallon? Americans are willing to look the other way when it comes to wanton murder, the killing of hundreds of thousands, innumerable war crimes, the disapprobation of the world, and mountains of debt for future generations, but only if they feel they have gotten something, or soon will get something, out of it.
And it does not help that he gets so easily confused trying to distinguish Shia and Sunni, Iranians and al Qaeda.
Americans have no problems with warmongers per se, but they want their warmongers to be competent and to achieve some kind of success they will have the opportunity to share in.
Erroll and Hoytdouglas are both full circle veterans who have gained wisdom from their journey. They should be respected and listened to. They are true patriots who continue to love their country and want to make us better neighbors. They have seen first hand what American foreign policy is all about and know that it’s wrong and must be changed. Welcome home brothers.
Hoa binh
He better watch out for the “Swift Boat POW’s for Truth”
Even if John McCain were a war hero in every sense of the word: would that status still qualify him automatically to be the next president? A hero, in my view, is someone who’s willing to sacrifice his or her own life to save others, so that could be a cop, fire-fighter of someone of the medical profession. Flying an aeroplane at high altitude, dropping bombs on civilian targets and returning to base for a couple of beers, is that heroic? “I was only following orders”, some Germans said after 1945, and they’d been called patriots and heroes, too.
The republican party has no ethical right of any kind calling John Mccain a “war hero.”
John Kerry was a decorated veteran that they urinated all over; and then had the audacity to wear little band-aides displaying small purple hearts-just to dig the knife in deeper.
Shame on them for their rank hypocrisy. I respect John McCain’s military service the same way they respected John Kerry’s. I’ll be stocking-up on band-aides.
Interestingly enough John McCain has lamented twice that I know of about his war crimes but unfortunately he didn’t make these lamentations part of his convictions and moral fiber and to me that makes him even less honorable.
In June of the year he was shot down his plane was hit by a misfired missle on his aircraft carrier and he barely made it to safety from his burning plane. A bomb fell off his plane and exploded and there was extensive death, injuries, and damage.Several hundred sailors were killed or injured. Several days later a distraught McCain told the N.Y. times that after seeing what bombs did to his fellow soldiers he didn’t think he could drop anymore on North Vietnam. Excellent moment to quit and join the peace movement. Instead 4 months later in October he is dropping bombs on an electric plant and gets shot down.I don’t know how many missions he had in-between but what could have been an “amazing grace” type moral epiphany seemed to have evaporated rather quickly.
In the 1990s he told 60 minutes that what he did in Vietnam in dropping bombs on civilians was a war crime. However this realization never stopped him from voting for future war crimes.
He appears to be a moral imbecile who is impervious to experience and the horrors of war
Exactly why is McCain a hero? If you get shot down and kill twenty enemy soldiers before they get you, then maybe you are a hero. If you get shot down and surrender as soon as the enemy shows up, you are not a hero . . . you’re only a prisoner. And if you sign a paper for the north vietnamese that disparages your country, then you’re a compliant and cooperative prisoner . . . like John McCain. We tend to cheapen terms by applying them to the unworthy. McCain is a “hero” because he surrendered, baseball players are “superstars” if they hit 200. We’re not the only ones to do this. In England, to become a knight, you had to do something significant (slay a dragon or kick France’s ass). Today, you get to be a knight if your album went triple platinum. We should be judicious in our use of words. McCain is no more a hero than anyone else who put up his hands and said “Don’t Hurt Me” at the first sight of the enemy.
McCain is actually a great hero. After Bush slandered his family in the 2000 primaries, McCain heroically glued his lips to Bush’s butt for the next seven years. A wonderful display of heroism and honor.
What Does It Mean To Call McCain A ‘War Hero’ Candidate?
It means you’ve guzzled from the wrong batch of Kool Aid and if the antidote isn’t administered soon, you’ll be wearing a Rush for VP t-shirt by the end of the week.
It is simply wrong to dishonor a man who spent, as part of his military service, five years in captivity, subjected to torture. One can disagree with his position on issues without resorting to childish and churlish affronts to his service and his candidacy.
Would Erroll and Hoytdouglas agree that being used in the service of a doshonorable cause forever tarnishes a badge of military honor. I’m guessing yes, but I’d like to hear their opinions.
Sure I would be drafted, I joined at the end of ‘71, and I was absolutely certain that I would never have to shoot or bomb anyone. I could have been “dead” wrong, but wasn’t. Got lucky there, and have never forgotten my stupidity.
Due to overuse and invalid use the word “hero” has very little meaning today.
McPlain has proved he can’t tell the difference between al-Quada and Altoona. Maybe he should get someone younger to explain it to him.
Engaging in the business of murdering innocent people just because their politics is not to certain peoples liking can never produce a hero, a murdering coward yes, but never a hero.
It’s a good job McCain wasn’t captured by Americans, he wouldn’t be running for president, he’d be almost certainly scarred for life through torture.
A war hero can only be such in a legitimate war.
RichM
“It means the same thing as a German newspaper praising the Einsatzgruppen as “heroic” in 1942.”
That is a thoroughly loathsome comparison to make. Like him or not (and I don’t particularly) he took his chances in combat and did indeed get shot down. The Einsatzgruppen exterminated people who had no ability to fight back and were part of a planned genocide.
The Vietnamese have the good sense to forgive and forget. They don’t believe we tried to commit genocide and thought we were worthy, if misguided foes.
You add nothing of value to the conversation.
President Grover Cleveland once famously stated that “peace is not something which is necessary to the United States.” He was not blustering or sabre rattling, but making an observation that did not please him. Towards the end of his life, General Douglas MacArthur remarked (paraphrasing) that “wars will go out of fashion when people like myself are no longer regarded as heros.” I wonder if he meant it?
Fine article! May JJ post his in reinforcement?
Title:
McCain Shot Down by Heroic Vietnamese Defenders in Shameful US War & Defeat
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_jay_jans_080321_mccain_shot_down_by_.htm
Description:
Years before Airman McCain began his 23 bombing runs, Ike had admitted Ho Chi
Minh was a hero to his countrymen and would have won an all-Vietnam election
with 80%+ had he (Ike) not blocked it. Well before McCain’s 1st bombing mission,
Rev. King Jr. had angrily condemned U.S. genocide, and Muhammad Ali had refused
to go. Was McCain taken in then, and now as well, by war propaganda? McCain, an
anti-hero or heartless dumbbell?
Article with two author comments at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_jay_jans_080321_mccain_shot_down_by_.htm
Progressives (read honest people) have to re-debunk the glorious Viet war painstakingly created by conglomerate commerical mass entertainment/news.
Did you happen to see: (Maybe would like to reprint)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=542277&in_page_id=1811
During my stays in Hanoi working with the National Symphony, I ofter biked past this lake in the photos. The American attitude toward the lovely Vietnamese is hard for me to take.
Appreciatively,
jay janson
==================================================
TITLE:
McCain Shot Down by Heroic Vietnamese Defenders in Shameful US War & Defeat
DESCRIPTION:
Years before Airman McCain began his 23 bombing runs, Ike had admitted Ho Chi Minh was a hero to his countrymen and would have won an all-Vietnam election with 80%+ had he (Ike) not blocked it. Well before McCain’s 1st bombing mission, Rev. King Jr. had angrily condemned U.S. genocide, and Muhammad Ali had refused to go. Was McCain taken in then, and now as well, by war propaganda? McCain, an anti-hero or heartless dumbbell?
TEXT:
President Eisenhower confessed that “in 1954 as many as 80% of the Vietnamese people would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, as the popular hero of their liberation”, had he (Ike) permitted the all-Vietnam elections promised in the Geneva Agreement after the defeat of the French – an agreement the U.S. had refused to sign. (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1963, p. 337)
Four Years AFTER Ike admitted this, Navy Pilot John McCain began his celebrated 23 bombing runs over Vietnam.
And weeks BEFORE Pilot John McCain made his first bombing run in Vietnam, bold headlines in newspapers all over the world had screamed, ‘KING CALLS U.S. “GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE TODAY” – condemns war in Vietnam, gives detailed history of U.S. betrayals, atrocities and murderously brutal policies.’
Senator McCain, the 2008 Candidate for President of the United States of America, is constantly portrayed in conglomerate owned entertainment/news media as a war hero, who citizens can trust with giving the right orders for national security. But what history shows is that McCain was trustworthy in blindly and unquestioningly FOLLOWING orders, orders which in effect were solely meant to prevent Ho Chi Minh, the ‘George Washington’ of his country from being elected President of Vietnam.
Did Pilot McCain read newspapers? Listen to the news on radio? Had he heard of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’ blistering “Beyond Vietnam” speech at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, which had rocked America? King had thundered,
“The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation… They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony.
For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs.
After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North…
Now they languish under our bombs and consider US, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.
So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers. What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them.”
Did McCain know that Eisenhower conceded Ho Chi Minh would have been elected, had an election been allowed. Did he know of MLK Jr.’ furious condemnation of the war. Did he know that champion Muhammad Ali had denounced the war and had had his heavyweight crown taken away and was threatened with prison? Did McCain know that Noam Chomsky of MIT, historian Howard Zinn, Philosopher Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre and other Nobel Prize laureates, intellectuals and clergy all over the world were protesting the Nazi like American military use of napalm, high altitude bombing and free fire zones.
Was young McCain perhaps aware of all this but more concerned with his military image as the son and grandson of admirals, and too focused on his own naval career to bother himself with questioning the bloody homicidal civilian circumstances of what he was taking part in. If Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Muhammad Ali were already American heroes, what does that make bomber McCain back then, an American anti-hero, a socially uneducated dumbbell, or just an average young man, one of millions, brain washed by commercial media war propaganda into believing U.S. anti-communism justified killing Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians in their very own country.
Presidential candidate McCain comes across as a sincere, if not intelligent, politician, as he speaks of his country maybe continuing its occupation of Iraq for a hundred years! Would McCain have preferred America to have gone on killing in Vietnam rather than enjoy today’s profitable commerce, even the recommending of Vietnam for World Trade Membership? Probably not. In congress he has helped restore good relations with the Vietnam communist government. Did McCain’s bombings serve any purpose? Did McCain ever try to find out how many Vietnamese were killed, maimed or orphaned by his bombs, express feeling sorry, want to apologize, help out survivors? If he did, the public remains ignorant of such regret.
McCain had a good college education, which must have included a history of colonialism, and the special brutal injustices of the French colonial subjugation of the Vietnamese. He would have known that Ho Chi Minh was decorated by the American OSS as a dedicated ally against the Japanese and Vichy French, and that Truman, against Roosevelt’s promise, had brought the French army back in US ships to fight an 9-year war against its former allies, the Vietnamese.
Senator McCain’s countenance on TV as he campaigns for the presidency is one of kindness, neighborly and respectful. Viewers notice his crippled hand and other injuries suffered when he was first rescued, pulled from the lake he had parachuted into, but then beaten by an angry mob. Everyone feels sympathy for McCain - at the same time one can figure that the bombs he dropped must have taken their human toll of innocents and one is curious to know if his plane crashed without causing further casualties. The whole story awakens sadness, but also some understanding, if one imagines how the reaction on the ground would be in New York City upon the capture of a bombing pilot - especially if the bomber happened to parachute down into one of the city’s tougher neighborhoods.
He reported having been tortured during years as a POW. No one would like to have gone through such years of imprisonment. At the same time, the bereavements of families of those slain during his bombings is more heartbreakingly permanent, final and absolute.
On “60 Minutes” in 1997, there was an uncomfortable, sorrowful and somewhat disturbing moment: (from the text transcript)
Sen. McCain: I m–made serious, serious mistakes and did things wrong when I was in prison, OK?
Mike Wallace: What did you do wrong in prison?
Sen. McCain: I wrote a confession. I was guilty of war crimes against the Vietnamese people. I intentionally bombed women and children.
Wallace: And you did it because you were being tortured…
Sen. McCain: I…
Wallace: …and you’d reached the end of the line.
Sen. McCain: Yes. But I should have gone further. I should have–I–I never believed that I would–that I would break, and I did.
But now, basking in the lime light of media hailing him a war hero, and Republican primary voters having given him an overwhelming majority, candidate McCain confidently assures American voters that he is best qualified to give the orders that will protect the country.
What most of the public might not know is that enlisted U.S. Airman McCain avidly and enthusiastically flew his many bombing missions over Vietnam, - his part of the more than twice the tonnage dropped by all sides during all of WWII in Europe and Asia, dropped on this poor small agrarian French colony - and that McCain had even complained of the restrictions on more extensive bombing. Presently, McCain again is enthusiastic over the Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia occupation wars and upbeat regarding the possibility of “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran!” as McCain jokingly sang during a campaign speech in 2007 while smilingly speaking of “sending an air mail message to Tehran.” Laughing about an air strike wherein untold Iranians would die?
Is the now elderly McCain possibly allowing his pride to cause him to be naively taken in by corporate media high jingoism and pro-war selecting and slanting of the news again? McCain has called radical Islam the greatest threat. But Al Qaida came into Iraq AFTER the U.S. bombing and invasion PRECISELY to make a show of fighting the U.S. occupation, and the roots of today’s Mid–East genocidal belligerencies go back to President Carter having secretly funded, armed and trained the fundamentalist hill tribes, attacking a modern women emancipating government in Kabul, in order to sucker the Soviets into entering Afghanistan SIX MONTHS LATER, as his advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski would later BRAG to the French Newspaper ‘Le Nouvel Observateur’ in 1998:
“Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs [”From the Shadows”], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”
As McCain promises to chase bin Laden ‘to the gates of hell’ if necessary, he surely must know that President Carter’s heartless criminally homicidal secret attack on a small friendly nation’s government using ethnic and Islamic religious fanaticism to foment civil war goes unprosecuted. This Carter/Brzezinski terror funding, as is the funding of bin Laden and Taliban by subsequent presidents, and Reagan’s backing of Saddam Hussain’s war on Iran is all over the Internet for the Googling.
As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain would have quickly learned that presidential CIA covert government crimes are above all laws, treaties, and the U.S. Constitution, and are only tolerated thanks to the acquiescent silent cover up by ‘gentleman’s agreement’ between government and corporate controlled media. Indeed it is a federal crime to compromise the secrecy of CIA illegal activity.
McCain is quite at home within the continuing enormous success of America’s ‘Big Brother’ entertainment/news pro-war propaganda - pro every and all wars, past, present and future - which depends on the gullibility and ignorance of a large mass of self-centered and self-preoccupied viewers and readers, trained by charming media news anchors and news analysts to show no interest in monitoring overseas death and destruction caused by U.S. military occupation forces.
It has taken decades for commercial media to turn a shameful ‘mistaken’ Vietnam War’ into patriotic glory for any politician who ‘served’ in it. McCain is one of the beneficiaries of mass media sanitizing what millions of Americans in the streets had protested as crimes against humanity.
McCain knows it is no longer appropriate to kill Vietnamese, Laotian, or Cambodian communists and communist sympathizing nationalists, nor their women and children collaterally - even though Vietnam has the same government that defeated America after a quarter century of war. But why? How did this come about – this cessation of targeting communists in Indochina? Answer: One day the U.S. armed forces just up and left! The very thing McCain says America cannot do in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. On the contrary, McCain says it would be a disaster to “wave the white flag.” Well, he didn’t win in Vietnam with his bombing and the U.S. and Vietnam are friends now.
When shall it become inappropriate to kill suspected terrorists and suspected terrorist sympathizers in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, nor their women and children collaterally? Can it be that top insider McCain, like most Americans, does not know that 9/11 was a blowback from Carter, Reagan and Bush I having funded ten thousand extreme Wahabbi fundamentalist schools into Afghanistan and arming and training fundamentalists to war against the Soviets, who were desperately unsuccessful in protecting a socialist government in Kabul? Does McCain not remember that the 9/11 suiciding air pirates were Saudis, not Afghans or Iraqis or Somalis or Iranians? Honestly, how many more millions dead in the Middle East will it take to secure petroleum arrangements favorable enough for U.S. corporate interests?
Could John McCain, with an approximate 50/50 chance of becoming president, ever choose to take all the facts of history into ethical account and amend his present distorted descriptions of reality, which conflict with the content of encyclopedias and documents published by the Pentagon.
Not likely.
From the sound of McCain’s militant blustering, McCain would more likely look forward to lengthening the long list of post-World War II presidents, starting with Truman, who America’s most internationally respected intellectual has said would have been hanged if the law used during the trial of Nazi war criminals at Nuremburg were to have been applied to them.
The real important question is:
Will corporate media, now more than ever in lock step with the military industrial complex heading up the corporate governance of America, with corporate executives serving on many boards at once in tight knit overlap and moving through revolving doors in and out of government positions, allow and permit without sabotage, the election of a U.S. president, who not only acknowledges the criminalities and crimes against humanity of past presidents and their secret CIA, but wishes to make the American citizenry aware of the past, unafraid, and confident about planning a fresh beginning for the most powerful nation in the history of the world?
SUGGESTION:
Challenge TV and newspapers hailing McCain as hero for having bombed innocents.
According to Dave Gibson, just last year:
In 1992, John McCain was serving on the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. Vietnamese officials began to complain that American POW/MIA activists (mostly family members of the missing men) were causing too many problems and posed a threat to lifting the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam. Incredibly, Senator and former POW McCain then went on a campaign against the POW/MIA activists and accused them of fraud. McCain once said of the families: “The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are criminals and some of the most craven, most cynical, and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.”
So, before anybody goes overboard (pardon the pun) on Johm McCain’s self-imposed war hero status, paste the following link to your web browser, read and see the real John McCain. HE proves who HE really is.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cont/node/4486
He damn sure ain’t no war hero. Decide for yourself…..
Peace, social justice, human rights. Learn more at www.carolmillercongress.com
How does dropping bombs from the sky on innocent civilians make John McCain a war hero?
JAY JANSON: Important posting. I wish it was posted in MSM for all those who like whiplash will vote for McCain thinking (appearances and PR only) that “he’s their boy.”
I was going to say something but suddenly decided not to. What’s the point? Everyone knows what’s wrong. No one is going to do anything about it. Those who rule us know that. They are safe.
Our imitative capacity and programming may be to blame.
www.dangerouscreation.com
Vince Lawrence at 04-14 at 3:56 pm
I agree. I would use as a reference point the powerful film Sir! No Sir!, when the soldier [or he could, perhaps, be a former soldier] tells others that being a clerk typist does not get one off the hook, as you are still being part of an organization that is committing war crimes [in the example that he used, being in Vietnam]. But I would like to, if I may, take issue with the last part of your statement, when you inquire whether “… a dishonorable cause forever tarnishes a badge of military honor.” This is reminiscent of a line in the classic film Twelve Angry Men, when one of the jurors says “this depends on what your definition of the word panic is.” In the example that you gave, it depends what the definition of the word honor is. As I mentioned in my comments at 12:48 pm “I fail to see why they [meaning the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan]and McCain should be honored for their military exploits.”
To me, there is nothing honorable in taking part in the bombing of innocent Vietnamese or the breaking down of doors or killing of innocent Iraqis at American checkpoints or the bombing of innocent Iraqis and Afghanis by American jets or taking part in atrocities at Haditha, Falluja, Abu Ghraib, etc. As I said in my earlier comments, I am simply baffled why Americans are so quick to laud American soldiers who have returned from invading and occupying foreign lands. It is puzzling why family members are not outraged at the government when their loved ones return to this country in coffins or end up severely burned, blinded, brain damaged, paralyzed, missing their limbs, suffering from PTSD. In all likelihood, it is because Americans love to be swept in their patriotic fervor and when that happens, their emotions inevitably overrule their brains by proclaiming, either overtly or subconsciously, that American Exceptionalism must always rule.
US airman bombing from 20 000ft. = Hero.
Local with a bomb under his shirt = insurgent / terrorist.
Guess who is a helluva lot braver…
Also, what does it say of McCain, who actually served in Viet Nam, to go forth on bended knee in service on a man who went AWOL (and drunk) in the same war?
McCain’s total amount of time in danger was 19 hours.If you’re a prisoner long enough,you get rank,go to the next pay level.Not Johnny. Went in a Lt. Commander, came out a Lt. Commander.There is a reason for that,he gave up the flight path information.The loss of aircraft whent up 40% in one month.Bombing was halted untill new plans could be figured out. Col. David Hackworth,the most decorated man in U.S. history said…”McCain’s metals just don’t add up….” Go to www.vietnamveternsagainstjohnmccain.com to understand this ‘hero’.Traitor seems closer.
By the way, there is great wisdom and life truth told in the old saying — “It takes one to know one!” If McCain is such a hero dedicated to the sacrifice and service of uplifting others’ lives — then why didn’t he immediately recognize Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero? And why did he long deny fellow hero Martin’s birth date its respectful designation as a holiday?
His claim of “being wrong” about Martin sure took long enough — and ranks with low level of Hillary’s excuse of her dishonesty and misrepresentation as being a “mispoken” mistake. Come on!
John McCain was not a war hero. Not by definition, not by record, nor by fact. He was a war participant and a war victim. Nothing more, nothing less.
This is all history.
Now for the news. Ed Shultz had the courage to say it, and to stand by his words when challenged on MSNBC.
Johnny Bomb Bomb McCain is a warmonger. He is a warmonger by definition, by record, and by fact.
Let’s all proclaim it with every mention of the warmongering elitist and corporatist.
A warmonger, according to my American Heritage Dictionary, is defined as “one who advocates or attempts to stir up war”.
John McCain is a WARMONGER.
Remember those photos of McCain embracing George Wanker Bush as if he were his grandfather who’d just given him $1,000 for his 13th birthday? That’s the real McCain - sucking up to the Dracula of big-time American politics, that egg sucking shit weasel who slimed him and his family. You call that heroic? That is monstrous cowardice, pure and simple. In this country, at this time, however, it should be good enough to make him president and continue the self-destruction of the United States.
Just type in viet nam veterns against john mccain in google, blessings to all
Mr McCain status as war hero makes no impression on me. He was a pilot who killed people with his bombs, which to me is immoral.
If he is president he will kill more people with bombs this time from the safety of the White House.
How many bombs have to be dropped in the name of ego to be enough to prove you are more powerful than someone else. This to me is about small-minded people who have an overwhelming need to control others.
Are we ready yet to evolve to a higher respect for human life that isn’t based on phony religious superiority?
When will the murder of war be recognized as the act of those unable to have any real understanding or compassion for other viewpoints?
How come when our elected get to Washington DC they all find ways to rationalize the killing of others for political purposes (Iraq, Afghanistan and soon Iran)?
Joseph Bernard
www.explorelifeblog.com
www.peace-together.com
maybe someone can help my memory. I’m recalling that on McCain’s ship in Nam, explosives were set off accidentally. It was a disastrous fireworks show and many sailors (more than a hundred, I think) were killed by the bombs and napalm that was supposed to be dropped on villages. McCain saw it all, and was quoted as being quite moved by actually witnessing what these weapons did to real people. Then he zipped up and continued flying his next missions. Have I got this story right? If so, it’s a testimony to McCain’s simpleminded obedience and to his larger cowardice and psychopathology.
Dear Common Dreams:
How about a new rule of thumb for posted articles: no more running titles or posting articles that serve as a multiplier effect for NeoCon imprinting.
He’s a nice enough fellow, I’m sure I could have some fun playing cards with him: but McCain is the Cindy McCain Lapdog show toy for the economic elites candidate.
So, Common Dreams, please look more carefully to the message you are putting out.
Dagwood
Hillside on Apr.14 at 2:52 pm discusses the topic that you have mentioned, agreeing that the incident that you described involving McCain did take place.
The Real McCain …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og2zYIZbDgo
John McCain is in fact a war criminal. He was shot down while obeying an illegal order, bombing a civilian target - a lightbulb factory.
Comparing war in Vietnam with Iraq war is a fallacy.
By dropping so many bombs and, thereby, killing 5 million Asians did not allow American war-criminals to stay there forever!
Because, Vietnamese were driven by Communist ideologies that united them to fight American war-criminals, or die. Iraqis never had any such ideology to unite them.
Moreover, Iraqis were bribed not to fight before the Pentagon started its awfully shocking bombing campaign.
In Vietnam, America could not bribe the North Vietnamese to stop fighting American war-criminals. The North Vietnamese fought American war-criminals, because they figured it was their national struggle to defeat the war-criminals.
Iraqis, on the other hand, fled their country for fear after the American war-criminals settled in.
America lost the war in Vietnam because of not using nuclear weapons of mass destruction.
America cannot lose again.
Because, if America continues its current course in Iraq, it will continue to bleed slowly; but, if America gives up Iraq now, it will lose everything.
Mr kendpotter (4:19) gets his panties in a wad about my comparison of American “war heroes” (like McCain) in Vietnam to the Einsatzgruppen. He writes,
“…That is a thoroughly loathsome comparison to make. Like him or not … he took his chances in combat and did indeed get shot down. The Einsatzgruppen exterminated people who had no ability to fight back and were part of a planned genocide.
The Vietnamese have the good sense to forgive and forget. They don’t believe we tried to commit genocide and thought we were worthy, if misguided foes…”
Mr Potter, please go cram it up your hindquarters. I very much stand by my comparison, which is true in the most important senses. I doubt your knowledge of the history is more accurate than mine, & doubt you are in any position to speak for what “the Vietnamese” really think (as though they all think the same thing!). // They would be fools to think we were “worthy, if misguided” foes — because in point of fact, we were remorseless mass murderers who viciously attacked them basically for the “crime” of thinking that they had a right to self-determination. It would be surprising if this basic truth were entirely lost on them. The US military killed untold numbers of Vietnamese (both N & S), as well as Cambodians & Laotians, “who had no ability to fight back.” (That’s what happens when you bomb civilians from 35,000 ft.)
Don’t try to lecture me, either, about respecting the individual troops. At the level of the individual soldier, there was as much heroism displayed by German WWII soldiers, as by Americans. All imperialist armies work pretty much the same way — the real viciousness lies with the policy-makers, while most of the individual troops just try to do the best they can. Though some are sadistic killers, most of them think they’re “just defending their homeland.”
Unknown Unknownable should ask him or herself exactly what is it that America is supposed to “win.” You logic, such as it is, makes absolutely no sense at all. You acknowledge that American bombs killed “5 million Asians” but you then lament that the U.S. did not use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Five million Vietnamese, as you say, were killed because of American militarism yet you still wish that the U.S. would have used nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Apparently 5 million Vietnamese killed at the hands of the United States were not enough to satisfy your blood lust.
But as I first mentioned, the United States can never “win” in Iraq or Afghanistan since in both countries, the U.S., as in Vietnam, is engaged in illegally and immorally and unjustifiably killing the citizens of those two countries. As I mentioned in earlier comments, there is no honor to be found in brutalizing and suppressing the lives of the Iraqi and Afghani people.
Support the troops. Bring them home-alive and in one piece-now.
I was in Ho Chi Minh City (i.e. Saigon) a couple of months a go, and visited the museum dedicated to the American War against Vietnam. There are so many pictures there that most Americans have never seen. There’s no doubt about it: McCain is a war criminal. If he *isn’t* a war criminal, then that term has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.
By the way, the Americans owned the monopoly on torture in Vietnam. It was systematic and it was brutal and it was relentless. There was a special concentration camp for women and children on an island off the coast of Vietnam. I’ve seen the small cages that women were locked in, and the torture devices used to terrorize them; as well as the mass graves their bodies were dumped in. I’ve also seen many people permanently crippled by the effects of America’s biological chemical warfare. The children born - you could not imagine the level of deformity; it is so heartbreaking. And while America runs candidates who speak of unending wars for “revenge,” Vietnam’s soul - so damaged, so scarred - remains intact - they’ve only ever spoken of healing and forgiveness. Which is the “Christian” nation, and which is an outpost of Hell?
I believe one who fights a war to protect his/her country and fellow soldiers would be a “HERO.”
But McCain, who fought an illegal war in Viet Nam, and is supporting an illegal invasion in Iraq, and is supporting an illegal war against Iran, is a “War Criminal,” rather than a hero.
McCain dropped bombs on a sovereign nation, murdered innocent women & children & was justly imprisoned. He is not a hero, but another GOP terrorist fraud.
I used to teach Vietnamese children in my 3rd grade class in Seattle. I can’t forgive McCain for dropping napalm on children just like the wonderful kids who I loved and knew so well as their teacher after their families came here as refugees after the war.
He is a war criminal and a sick, vengeful man. It is a sad commentary on our national culture that such a man is considered for the Presidency.
I remember seeing a TV documentary about the Battle of the Au Shau Valley, in which the US military was drawn into a trap and ambushed by the “Viet Cong”, although the participants weren’t allowed to call it an ambush because it reflected poorly on their commanders. I digress…Anyway, they interviewed one of the “Viet Cong”, an old farmer still working the land in that valley which was his ancestral home. He was always confused by the presence of the Americans in his country and the attack on his farm. He still assumes the Americans wanted something the Vietnamese had, but he still doesn’t know what it was. He was not a godless commie fighting for Ho or Mao or their ideology, but was merely fighting to save himself and his family from the invaders. Do you think the average Iraqi sees the American presence in his country as being any different? McCain, Cheney, Bush, ALL our “representatives”, Congressman and Senators, are all war criminals, complicit in instigating, initiating, and continuing an illegal war and occupation. That McCain is still in the presidential hunt at all is a shameful blot on America.
Wcdevins at 9:41 pm
Well said. Unfortunately, the last thing that Americans, whether they are politicians or the average citizen, seem to possess and care about is that trait called empathy.
This hero stuff is overrated.
One person’s war hero is another person’s war criminal.
In any case what does it mean to be a hero in the most useless and unnecessary war?
F*** The Burner Of Babies.
He volunteered to leave his rich, priveleged background and go 10,000 miles to make 50 Napalm runs on children, women, babies and men who could barely afford rice.
He is a Serial Killer who only stopped calling his victims ‘GOOKS’ recently.
Coward Not Hero. Rascist Coward. And TRAITOR. To his first wife.
This is for “Rich M, Mordechai, Galen, Hoa Binh, Erroll, and Hoytdouglas and Kivals” All of you ROCK!! I’m a 2 tour vet from VN and I stand with you people all the way!. McCain is no HERO. Heros are people who do something extraordinary in order to help others, sometimes it has even been opposing forces they helped, or civilians who were in danger etc. Not merely surviving in a prison (not POW that implies a WAR). You above mentioned folks are more heros than Mcshame can ever be.
As always I get irritated when people bad mouth McCain as a war criminal. There were 2.5 million men in South Vietnam and another .8 million in its waters and in neighboring countries, were we all war criminals? What about Bush, Cheney and the manager of Walmart and Home Depot who got out of serving? What about dad and uncle and granddad how did they get out of it? High lottery number, what was it? google it, it takes 30 seconds.
Another thing there is nothing wrong with bombing civilians, children sleeping in their beds —-if they are Germans— check back on the last 1000 common dreams entries and it is wrong to bomb Japs, wrong to bomb Vietnamese,wrong to bomb Iraqis, but open season on Germans. Not one German bomb or shell or bullet landed on American soil in WW1 or WW2 can everyone be under the influence of AIPAC?
McCain was no “war hero,” he was a hot dogger and a glory hound!
His old man, the admiral, used his influence to pull a slot to get his kid a legup at Annapolis.
McCain was a vain, swaggering bully who pushed his weight around, treating enlisted personnel like last week’s trash.
At the Hanoi Hilton, “war hero” McCain’s code name was “Songbird” for his cooperation in dropping dimes on his fellow POWs and was granted extra privileges (hot showers, sheets, radio, etc.).
If Mcbomber wanted to know what a real war was like, he should’ve spent a tour in an arty unit, or as a `Ground Pounders,’ Recon, Seabee, Medic/Corpsman, at a CAP unit, hump an M-60, et al. As an added bonus some sandbagging and cleaning the shitters out would definitely round out sky pilot McCain’s appreciation for “heroism” aboveand beyond the call of duty. Get some!
My war heroes are those who are in the trenches fighting the war against war. They are the true front line soldiers for a better peaceful world. War hero? Give me a peace hero for president any day.
There are no war heroes. There are war criminals. From the lowest level soldier to the highest level general. Contract killers, all of them.
I have absolutely no respect for people in the military, they’re utter scum. They are the ones who make possible the most disgusting of human activities, war and genocide.
Look at McCain, he’s no hero, he’s a freak. An angry, unbalanced and deeply disturbed man. And Americans might give him a chance to be near the red button? What are you people, just as insane?
This is unfortunately an aggressive warlike society. It is descended from the warlike barbarians of Europe and remains a culture that worships war “warriors” and violence. Some of you even want to transfer the holy status of “warrior” to those who struggle against it. McCain is trying to tap in to that very tangible worship of “warrior” as sacred hero and he’s likely to be successful. Wars should be, as Howard Zinn put it, as objectionable as cannibalism and slavery, but the reality is that we worship war, the machines of war, the “Heroes” who do the killing and the dying. That, along with the fetish of wealth, is our national religion. Until that changes, nothing else will. Those of us who truly object need to find other language and an ideal to replace the “warrior cult” with that can attract as much reverence.
Most of war is criminal. It’s the robbing of land, the destruction of houses and goods, and the enslavement, wounding, raping or killing of people without judges and juries. The judge is somebody with a rifle who sees a movement in the bushes and fires. Or, the judge sits in a plane or at a desk far away and never met you.
Young kids are heroic. Anyone who signs up for a war to risk getting shot at, usually in part for a principle, is somewhat heroic.
However, especially starting with Vietnam, aircraft pilots aren’t necessarily more heroic than grunts with their boots on the ground. Usually they fly because they’re more privileged than the grunts. George W. Bush is the epitome of privilege because he got to fly a plane-to-plane combat fighter that everyone knew would never see combat in Vietnam.
Even in combat the pilots don’t have to look at the people they kill. They don’t stop, stalk and shoot snipers like Kerry reportedly did. They usually have low incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder. They usually don’t get purple hearts. The pilots go to a spot in the sky and push a button, see some interesting plumes on the ground, then go home.
That said, a fair number of Vietnam pilots took missiles, parachuted down and were tortured. As a young man McCain knew his odds and still got in his plane every day. I’m a pacifist, but I’ll give him credit for that.
Wars aren’t typically stopped by soldiers. It’s ex-soldiers and parents of soldiers who often stop the war.
Let’s not forget that the strongest advocates against war are mothers and motherhood is a powerful thing! Mother’s day was founded as an anti-war effort as mothers united to demand an end to the sacrificing of their sons. This is a good time to take the holiday back from hallmark and Ftd with gifts that create awareness of the holiday’s Origin and demand an end to the needless waste of war.
JADED PROLE: Your most excellent (7:01 AM) posting utterly proves the contention I bring to this forum, that MARS RULES American society! Gracias!
EXPLORE LIFE: Excellent posting.
KUDOS to HEAVY RUNNER, too.
JADED PROLE: According to the ancient astrological paradigm, an explanation for the diversity of traits and character types we see personified in EVERY human society, Mars is the warrior. Mars is also the CHIEF consort to VENUS/APHRODITE. Whereas Mars is given ONE sign to govern, Venus rules two and has influence over a third (exalted in Pisces). The geometry of this arrangement is such that Venus’ realms form a triangle which would ideally encompass Mars in such a way that war and its passions would be check-balanced against the GREATER things that Venus represents. She begins her “rule” in Taurus, the sign of Demeter, the GREAT EARTH MOTHER, basis of life sustained for all living beings. Thus to speak of Mother’s Day supports the idea of raising VENUS to her proper station where she is intended as cosmic balance to Mars. (She rules LIBRA which is the sign of law, reason, negotation, and diplomacy; and given exaltation in Pisces, there, as embodiment of Christ, the fisher of men and TEACHER of COMPASSION, she represents the ideal that we ARE all connected, thus whatsoever is done to the least of these rebounds to impact all. EVERYTHING comes full circle. That is COSMIC law. We human beings mistake the evidence of our lifetimes with what is and may be possible. THAT is our flaw of ego based perception.)
The heroic men who fought in Vietnam (even though the policy was faulty, which was devised by a civilian government) are truly heroes. The men who were trapped in POW camps are heroes.
That has nothing to do with today. Being a war hero does not automatically make someone deserving or capable of leading a country, particularly when they cling to the past or condone the current policy.
NcCain had his day….it is time to move on with the idea of peace.
Another thought crossed my mind. McCain says we have to be there to fight and destroy the Muslim threat…and that we can’t leave there until the radicals are destroyed. It occurs to me that if we left there…left it to them…they would kill one another off….no blood on the hands of our soldiers….and McCain would get his wish…dead Muslims.
It is their country and they have to take control once again and solve the problem…without more interference from us…or occupation. Hasn’t Bushco and McCainCo..learned their lessons yet?
This won’t stop until we vacate the area…that includes Blackwater and the CIA black ops.
Let the Arab countries form a coaltion to help with diplomacy and resolution. It their region at stake here…
It occurs to me that McCain in charge is like presenting someone with a bomb that needs defusing….which wire to cut…is the blue one or the red one…oh well…cut both of them…what’s a little explosion.
No offense, but I don’t what this aged man running the government…he has memory lapses and lives in the past…and he has obviously sold out to the top bidder…and the most frantic and destructive one.
In answer to the question posed in the headline — it means absolutely nothing in Mr. McCain’s case. He participated in another of our idiotic imperialistic invasions and got himself tortured. We are all, of course, sorry that he got tortured. However, the fact that he participated in an ill-conceived and amoral invasion and got tortured in no way endows him with acceptable military judgment. The fact that he supported and continues to support our equally idiotic and imperialistic Iraq invasion/occupation ought to tell us he belongs nowhere near the White House.
Eric….McCain wants to chase to bin Laden.
All reports show bin Laden to be dead…except for the peculiar videos that surface on occasion…you know…the ones where bin Laden’s beard gets darker, not greyer with age!!
Why would he want to chase bin Laden…wasn’t the bin Laden family friends with the Bush family….what an intricate web they have woven.
What did John McCain do to deserve the title of “hero”? Do we actually know what he did as a prisoner of war?
Why should I really care? I care because the image of “a soft spoken old white guy” is likely to have greater resonance with certain of our citizens than either an intelligent woman or a brilliant black man. I am concerned….
RichM
“Mr Potter, please go cram it up your hindquarters.”
Oh that’s good, real mature. Somehow I missed that section in debate class.
“who had no ability to fight back.” (That’s what happens when you bomb civilians from 35,000 ft.)”
Gee, in spite of what you say, I guess I do have a better grasp on history than you do. Obviously you are unaware that North was one of the most heavily defended pieces of airspace on the face of the earth - Early warning radars, integrated communications, spotters, anti-aircraft-artillery in calibers ranging from 23mm to 127mm, a couple of hundred Mig-17’s, Mig-19’s, and Mig-21’s, and the odd 2000 SA-2 SAMs. I would say that was a pretty fair fight.
“Don’t try to lecture me, …”
I’m not trying to lecture you at all. I am pointing out the difference between machine-gunning Jews, Poles, gypsies, etc. in the back, in front of a trench (grave) they just dug and what the aviators like McCain did. The Einsatztruppen didn’t even pretend to be after military targets and certainly faced no opposition, so your comparison in inane.
Note: Before you get your panties in a wad - I did not call you inane, I said you made an inane comparison. If you want to hate, fine go ahead and hate. Just don’t try to present a false logic for it, to the rest of us.
kendpotter
What you are conveniently not addressing is that McCain was shot down while attempting to bomb a light bulb factory in North Vietnam which, in case you are not aware, is not considered a military installation but a civilian target and therefore in direct violation of the Geneva Convention. That act would make McCain not a war hero but a war criminal. Perhaps McCain’s actions during the Vietnam conflict were the reasons that he chose not to belong to the VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against the War].
Erroll
“kendpotter
What you are conveniently not addressing is that McCain was shot down while attempting to bomb a light bulb factory”
I did not address it because I was not arguing that point as I did not believe it was worth arguing.
“in case you are not aware, is not considered a military installation but a civilian target and therefore in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.”
But since you bring it up - Citation please.
I can think of any number of reasons that the statement is fallacious. Such as the output of the factory is unlikely to be limited merely to light bulbs for civilian use. Light bulbs are used in a hell of a lot of military applications, like searchlights, flashlights carried by soldiers, barracks lighting, etc. A TV factory could easily produce scopes used for radar or night-vision. Ball-bearings are used in roller skates and tank turrets.
The Vietnamese economy was on a war footing. How much of the production of any of their industry was turned over to civilian use let alone for strictly civilian purposes? Then of course, there is the fact that the Air Force is completely full of idiots. Why in the world would they want to bomb factories that help the Vietnamese war effort when there are Teddy Bears (or Uncle Ho dolls, whatever) to destroy? How much sense does that make to you?
“That act would make McCain not a war hero but a war criminal.”
I am pretty sure that I never said he was a war hero. Is there any particular reason you are putting words in my mouth?
I will say that anyone who has qualified to fly a plane off of a carrier is one significantly intelligent, well coordinated, and stony-brave individual. I have serious doubts about the majority of the posters here being capable of it.
“Perhaps McCain’s actions during the Vietnam conflict were the reasons that he chose not to belong to the VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against the War].”
Perhaps, if butterflies carried .45’s, pigeons would not fuck with them. It is pretty easy to “perhaps” anything. Perhaps if McCain were Iranian and 40 years old he would be painting signs saying, “Death to the Great Satan”.
I stand by my opinion that there is no moral equivalence between McCain and the Nazi liquidation squads.
Kendpotter
You claim that you were not “arguing that point”, i.e. that McCain was shot down while attempting to bomb a light bulb factory. My assertion was that you were not correct when you argued against Rich M’s point that “That’s what happens when you bomb civilians from 35,000 feet”. You attempted to shrug that off by saying that North Vietnam was heavily guarded and therefore “that was a pretty fair fight.”
You then engage in an attempt of verbal gymnastics by trying to bizarrely assert that a light bulb factory could somehow be disguised as a military installation. What you are asking me to do is to prove a negative, i.e. that this light bulb factory was not actually a light bulb factory when in actually the burden is upon you to prove that it is not. The perhapses that you throw around in your penultimate paragraph could just as well be applied to your, as you said earlier, fallacious argument regarding the civilian target, i.e. the light bulb factory.
This leads to the next point. For some reason, you clearly doubt that the targeting of civilians during war time is in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. Despite your belief, Protocol I, Article 52, paragraph 2 of the Geneva conventions state that “Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives.” These objectives have been defined to be “those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make effective contribution to military action.” It should be obvious to any rational, intelligent person that a light bulb factory is not an object which contributes to “military action.” A rational, intelligent person would not misconstrue a light bulb for a hand grenade or an AK 47 assault rifle unless someone like yourself would say that “Perhaps, if butterflies carried .45s” or, in this case, light bulbs.
Article 48 Basic rule of that same 1949 Geneva Conventions states that “Parties shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.”
Article 51-Protection of the civilian population
a) those which are not directed as a specific military objective.
Again, most intelligent, rational people would recognize that a light bulb factory is a civilian installation and therefore should not be targeted as a military target because it does not merit the definition of a military target. You are engaging in quite a bit of intellectual ju jitsu by trying to state that PERHAPS the light bulb factory in question MIGHT be “producing scopes for radar or night vision.” As you say, perhaps butterflies are also packing .45s.
You seem to be rationalizing as hard as you can in order to justify what McCain did. You believe that McCain, because he flew a jet, was “significantly intelligent and a stony brave individual.” You then state that there are few people here on this site capable of doing that. I would submit that most of the people here would be significantly more intelligent than to engage in bombing and killing civilians. I also submit that it was not terribly brave of McCain to have blindly obeyed those orders that he was given. A truly brave individual would have questioned the orders that he was given and said that he was not going to participate in war crimes. But McCain chose not to do that. McCain only wishes that he had the courage that many in the VVAW had, when many of them [as demonstrated in the powerful documentary Sir! No Sir!] said that they would no longer be a part of a military that engaged in the illegal and immoral destruction of another country.
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voxclamantis April 14th, 2008 11:26 am
I’m still waiting for John’s hero stories - you know, falling on grenades and singlehandedly holding off hordes of NVA so his buddies could escape the ambush, that kind of thing. All I’ve heard so far is that he crashed quite a few airplanes, dated a stripper, dropped napalm on civilians and got himself captured. Guess I need to read his biography.
……Don’t bother, it’ll be boring. You know, comes back to the US to find his wife dying from a rare disease and cheats on her with a socialite, after which he divorces the vegetable and marries the wench and gets her to loan him the coin to finance his first run at the Senate. At a very special introductory interest rate, no doubt.
Any decent exceptionally straight-talking Republican pol would do exactly the same thing. Right?
Me, I’m waiting for someone to officially title McCain a War Loser.
After all, the people who lose wars - particularly wars of choice - don’t get to title themselves anything else. We hear about the WWII War Hero “Pappy” Boyington in the US Marine Corps, but equally brave and dedicated Imperial Japanese Navy and Army pilots DON’T get a word in.
Erroll,
You are engaging in sollipsism.
“You attempted to shrug that off by saying that North Vietnam was heavily guarded and therefore “that was a pretty fair fight.”
The previous posting had asserted that they were defenseless. Are you saying I am wrong and all those weapons were mythical?
“You then engage in an attempt of verbal gymnastics by trying to bizarrely assert that a light bulb factory could somehow be disguised as a military installation.”
I did no such thing - I clearly stated a number of military uses for light bulbs (did you intentionally ignore that or what?), and made the point that virtually all industrial production was for the North’s war effort.
How widespread do you even think electricity was in the North? It was all reserved for the war effort or the bureuacrats/soldiers running it. What, do you think some peasant farmer was huddling in the dark in his hut because we bombed his light bulb factory? It is highly likely most if not all of that factory’s output was going to support the war effort (ever seen their extensive tunnel systems - most of them electrically lit). This is not a bizarre assertion or verbal gymnastics, it is the truth.
I understood perfectly the section regarding the Geneva Convention, thank you for the cite.
“It should be obvious to any rational, intelligent person that a light bulb factory is not an object which contributes to “military action.” A rational, intelligent person would not misconstrue a light bulb for a hand grenade or an AK 47 assault rifle…”
Are you so oblivious to arguments that you don’t agree with that you refuse to recognize the dual nature of technologies? You obviously are an innattentive reader as you mixed radar scopes up with light bulb factories when if fact I said that would be a military product from a TV factory. Are you trying to say the only legitemate target is a gun factory? The results of the Aerial Bombing Survey of WWII said dual-use technologies were the Achilles Heel of Germany. Three key elements - Fuel production, transportation, ball bearings. These brought their military production to a halt, not bombing Tiger tank factories. Do you want to tell me that it is wrong to shoot up a locomotive because it might be carrying civilians?
“I would submit that most of the people here would be significantly more intelligent than to engage in bombing and killing civilians.”
I would submit that most of the members of this group have 20/20 hindsight and that it is a whole lot easier telling right from wrong, standing on the sidelines, with the benefit of historical perspective.
There is a wonderful article in the current NYRB by historian Tony Judt, which helps to provide a context for how we have gotten to a place where we can glorify ‘war heros’ and embrace torture as an official policy of our government. Worth a read.
New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 7 · May 1, 2008
What Have We Learned, If Anything?, By Tony Judt http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21311
A short excerpt:
“…What, then, is it that we have misplaced in our haste to put the twentieth century behind us? In the US, at least, we have forgotten the meaning of war. There is a reason for this. In much of continental Europe, Asia, and Africa the twentieth century was experienced as a cycle of wars. War in the last century signified invasion, occupation, displacement, deprivation, destruction, and mass murder. Countries that lost wars often lost population, territory, resources, security, and independence. But even those countries that emerged formally victorious had comparable experiences and usually remembered war much as the losers did.
…A second confusion comes from conflating a handful of religiously motivated stateless assassins with the threat posed in the twentieth century by wealthy, modern states in the hands of totalitarian political parties committed to foreign aggression and mass extermination. Nazism was a threat to our very existence and the Soviet Union occupied half of Europe. But al-Qaeda? The comparison insults the intelligence—not to speak of the memory of those who fought the dictators.
…But the most serious mistake consists of taking the form for the content: defining all the various terrorists and terrorisms of our time, with their contrasting and sometimes conflicting objectives, by their actions alone.
…This abstracting of foes and threats from their context—this ease with which we have talked ourselves into believing that we are at war with “Islamofascists,” “extremists” from a strange culture, who dwell in some distant “Islamistan,” who hate us for who we are and seek to destroy “our way of life”—is a sure sign that we have forgotten the lesson of the twentieth century: the ease with which war and fear and dogma can bring us to demonize others, deny them a common humanity or the protection of our laws, and do unspeakable things to them.
How else are we to explain our present indulgence for the practice of torture? For indulge it we assuredly do.
…At the height of the Algerian war Raymond Aron published two powerful essays urging France to quit Algeria and concede its independence: this, he insisted, was a pointless war that France could not win. Some years later Aron was asked why, when opposing French rule in Algeria, he did not also add his voice to those who were speaking out against the use of torture in Algeria. “But what would I have achieved by proclaiming my opposition to torture?” he replied. “I have never met anyone who is in favor of torture.”[8]
Well, times have changed. In the US today there are many respectable, thinking people who favor torture— under the appropriate circumstances and when applied to those who merit it.
…Torture certainly “works.” As the history of twentieth-century police states suggests, under extreme torture most people will say anything (including, sometimes, the truth). But to what end? Thanks to information extracted from terrorists under torture, the French army won the 1957 Battle of Algiers. Just over four years later the war was over, Algeria was independent, and the “terrorists” had won. But France still carries the stain and the memory of the crimes committed in its name. Torture really is no good, especially for republics. And as Aron noted many decades ago, “torture—and lies—[are] the accompaniment of war…. What needed to be done was end the war.”[12]
We are slipping down a slope. The sophistic distinctions we draw today in our war on terror—between the rule of law and “exceptional” circumstances, between citizens (who have rights and legal protections) and noncitizens to whom anything can be done, between normal people and “terrorists,” between “us” and “them” —are not new. The twentieth century saw them all invoked. They are the selfsame distinctions that licensed the worst horrors of the recent past: internment camps, deportation, torture, and murder—those very crimes that prompt us to murmur “never again.” So what exactly is it that we think we have learned from the past? Of what possible use is our self-righteous cult of memory and memorials if the United States can build its very own internment camp and torture people there?
Far from escaping the twentieth century, we need, I think, to go back and look a bit more carefully. We need to learn again—or perhaps for the first time—how war brutalizes and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that war’s indefinite continuance. And perhaps, in this protracted electoral season, we could put a question to our aspirant leaders: Daddy (or, as it might be, Mommy), what did you do to prevent the war?”
We must recognize that the degree to which we Americans can be drawn into war by the fear-mongering and falsehoods or our leaders reveals that we lack some awareness much of the rest of the world has painfully learned. We are uniquely vulnerable to the manipulations of the war-mongers because we have not fully internalized the horrors of war visited upon so many others in the last century, and repudiated them in our thinking. In fact, we seem to still, uniquely among nations, elevate and glorify militarism, and the ‘war hero’, as we are doing now with McCain, as well as all the ‘noble’ veterans of our ‘noble’ wars. None of his opponents dare touch any critical examination of that part of McCain’s history without great risks, and both Clinton and Obama only speak reverently of his ’sacrifice’ for our country. It’s his strongest and most unassailable asset as a candidate.
As long as winning our wars seems to be more important to so many than the debate about whether they should even be fought, ‘patriots’ are easy marks for the manipulation of this gang in their obsession for global domination. And because winning is still the goal for a good share of us, all the tactics to help win that could possibly be used become legitimately debatable. Torture, spying, detentions,war with Iran, etc.; just do whatever it takes to ‘win’. Given this state of our society, we cannot discount McCain’s chances in November, especially when you add in all the switched votes we will see in the swing states.
hoytdouglas and all of the other Vietnam Vets posting here: Thank you for speaking out. No point in arguing the nuances of an aggressive bloodbath in which you were both victim and victimizer. The main point is that now you are using your unique credentials and your awful experiences to expose how insane war is. This may save some other young person from volunteering. As the saying goes: What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Charles Derber and Yale Magrass wrote: “By promoting the idea that Vietnam was an honorable war and denigrating antiwar Democrats as too weak to ’stay the course,’ Richard Nixon won the election in 1968. He then kept the war going for another five futile years, sustained by that myth.”
I was around in those days, opposing Nixon, LBJ and Humphrey due to their support of the Vietnam War. While I agree generally with this article, one point is wrong: Nixon actually campaigned endlessly on the platform of ‘Peace with Honor’ back then, not to keep the war going, but to end it with Vietnam divided in the same way as Korea was in 1953. Of course he lied and kept the war going — the Military-Industrial Complex was making money hand-over-fist replacing equipment over there — but Nixon did try to position himself as the ‘peace with strength’ candidate in 1968, and again in 1972.
I am also at a loss to find any of the same members of the ‘liberal media’ Punditrocracy who are now praising McCain as a ‘War Hero’ to the point of nausea, using the same words to describe Nam vets John Kerry — who saved a soldier’s life under fire — or former-Sen. Max Cleland, who left one arm and two legs ‘in country.’
Apparently to be called a War Hero these days, a prerequisite is to be a member of the Republican Party and a friend of Champaign Squadron slacker George W. Bush.
McCain served a total of ten hours in combat and received a medal for each hour, no doubt because he’s the son and grandson of Navy admirals.
Some of my friends who served a full tour in Nam did ten hours of combat in a week, and didn’t bring home that kind of fruit salad on their chests — if anyone tried to call them a hero, they’d throw a bottle at them.
A reflection of McCain’s character is that he never rejects the ‘War Hero’ appellation, or even tries to diffuse it by saying that there were many heroes who sacrificed more than he did in the war; instead, McCain proudly basks in the accolades. Disgustingly shameless, even for a politician.