The So-Called POW
Matt Welch | June 16, 2008, 11:25am
One dog that just won't hunt in this presidential election is the octennial attempt to suggest that John McCain's imprisonment in Vietnam was somehow totally different than advertised. The latest example comes from the always-entertaining (and sometimes intentionally so) Gore Vidal, in a Q&A with the New York Times:
And what about Mr. McCain? Disaster. Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?
Everyone knows he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. That's what he tells us.
Why would you doubt him? He's a graduate of Annapolis. I know a lot of the Annapolis breed. Remember, I'm West Point, where I was born. My father went there.
So what does that have to do with the U.S. Naval Academy down in Annapolis? The service universities keep track of each other, that's all. They have views about each other. And they are very aware of social class and eventually money, since they usually marry it.
At the risk of taking Vidal seriously, there have been dozens of histories written about the 500 or so POWs in Vietnam, and every one I've seen that references McCain speaks about his spirited, morale-boosting resistance in the face of torture and humiliation. Which is enough to clear my "heroism" bar, for what that's worth.
Some bonus Vidal bitchiness:
How did you feel when you heard that Buckley died this year? I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred. [...]
Well, it was a great pleasure talking to you. I doubt that.
Link via Andrew Sullivan.
Guy Montag | June 16, 2008, 1:35pm | #
As libertarians, shouldn't we be askling ourselves why in the world would we accept, at face value, that this guy is a hero?
I, and I am not even a political supporter of his, was convinced that he was long before I knew the word libertarian. Plenty of evidence from before his being a POW, like having lost several aircraft (including one shot, by another US plane, on the deck of the USS Forrestall while he was in it) and he continued flying.
SHouldn't we also be asking questions such as why should we be impressed with a person who has fed at the public trough almost his entire adult life? Why should we be impressed by such an unambiguous mediocrity?
Being a Naval Officer does not quite fit your statement. Career politicians, I am not a fan of any more than you, but that does not reduce his prior acts of bravery and moral courage.
1. Legacy admittee to Annapolis.
There is not really any such thing. Might want to look up how appointments to the Acadamies are made. Prior graduates do not get to extend appointments. Medal of Honor recipients do get "automatic" appointments for their offspring, but his father was not one.
Congress members, Presidents and I am not sure who else get to submit individuals for appointments. Those others are not service members of any rank.
Also, getting an appointment does not get you in, you must still meet the academic standards and compeat against the other appointees for the available seats.
2. Finishes 5th from the bottom of his class.
Know what you call the guy who finished last? Ensign or Lieutenant (for Marines). Point is, he finished.
3. Accepted as a pilot because of dad and grandad.
Wow, you really don't know anything about this stuff do you?
If you can't pass the aptitude test and the physical it does not matter who your relatives are, you are not going to flight school.
If you suck badly enough in flight school, you do not graduate.
Plenty of other jobs out there for Officers you know.
BTW, he was an Aviator, not a pilot, as he was in a non-Air Force branch of the US Armed forces flying an aircraft.
Jelperman | June 17, 2008, 3:43am | #
McCain's "heroism" is phonier than Keanu Reeves' British accent in
Dracula.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j092999.html
McCain was shot down on October 26, 1967, over Truc Bach Lake, near Hanoi. As I pointed out in my last column about McCain, he claimed in a US News and World Report article [May 14, 1973] that he languished in a cell for several days, his injuries untreated. Confronted with a North Vietnamese officer who was "a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends we had to deal with," as McCain put it, he decided to cooperate. According to his own account, McCain said: "OK, I will give you military information if you will take me to the hospital." While there are some conflicting stories about how long he was actually in that cell, he gave his first interview on October 31, with French television reporter Francois Chalais for Beirut's L'Orient, who wrote:
Uh oh...
This John Sidney McCain is not an ordinary prisoner. His father is none other than Admiral Edmond John McCain, Commander-in-chief of US naval forces in Europe. In a weak voice, he relates his story to me: 'I was carrying out a bombing mission, my twenty-third raid over Hanoi. It was then that I was hit. I wanted to eject but while doing so I broke both arms and my right thigh. Unconscious, I fell in a lake. Some Vietnamese jumped in the water and pulled me out. Later I learned there must have been about 12 of them. They immediately took me to a hospital, in condition two inches away from death. A doctor operated on my thigh. Others at the same time dealt with my arms."
So I call bullshit on his stories. He claims he was tortured by the Vietnamese, but he supports torture and lynchings by kangaroo courts now. He whined about the SCOTUS decision last week, but the fact that he's able to run for President today is because the Vietnamese
didn't try and execute him for the war crimes he CONFESSED to committing. He claims he only confessed because he was tortured, yet he thinks evidence obtained by torture is just swell for others.
Fuck John McCain.
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