Speaking as a typical ignorant American, I had no idea that McCain had violated the Code of Conduct at all or that he had received any special treatment. This is rather shocking. I am not suggesting that he didn’t suffer, nor that he didn’t try to endure as much as he could. But it would seem that the myth has far outstripped the truth in this case. I guess that was inevitable.
The two Forrestal links are from sites that clearly have ideological bents I don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole, so I think I’ll wait for some more mainstream reporting on that. The worst they can do there anyway is accuse him of having been a young hotdog - big surprise in a young jet pilot! Asshole, yes, criminal, no.
Gentlemen, I am General elucidator, and you can call me **'luci ** so long’s youi don’t call me “sir”! You can call me “ma’am” if you catch me in a good mood, but I wouldn’t bet on it. By whatever quirk of fate, your CO is a hippy. Outstanding! The permanent orders regarding capture and interrogation are as follows, so listen closely…
Sing. Tell them everything you know, make up the shit you don’t know. Do not suffer for one moment for your country, you already risk your life for your country, and that will do nicely, thanks. We will assume that the enemy knows everything you know, so you won’t be hiding anything worthwhile. We also will strictly enforce information discipline, if you need to know, you will, beyond that, we give you the mushroom treatment. If they would like to know the precise blueprints for the bomb we’re going to shove up their asses, they’re welcome to it.
We intend to make this public knowledge, freely available. You cannot betray your country by revealing secrets, you won’t have any. You can sign anything they put in front of you, we know its bullshit and we don’t care. Sooner or later, they’ll let you go, and no one will say diddlysquat to you for anything you did in captivity. Period. Full stop. Heroics is good when it accoomplishes something, when it saves lives. Empty heroics is for Hallmark Cards. Fuck that shit. That is all.
Whether or not it’s true (which I doubt,) that first site is like, the shadiest site ever. Surely you’re not going to say you actually believe it? It doesn’t even offer any evidence, it just makes up a story out of whole cloth.
Generally speaking, I think it’s a mistake to assume that anyone you admire, for whatever reason, is therefore admirable in all respects. That goes for sports heroes and actors as well as war heroes and politicians. The idea of an all-purpose role-model is often dangerously reductive.
So, Luci, would you rat your friends out if some pigs slapped you around a bit? Turn narc? Tell the cops where everyone and their mother-in-law keeps their stashes?
Because that’s why soldiers don’t “sing” under torture - not for their country, but for their fellow troops. If someone captures a squad-mate of mine, I sure as hell hope he doen’t tell the other guys how many we are, what weapons we have, and what’s the best way to sneak up to our base, because if he does, I’m dead. And that’s why I’d try and hold out as long as I can if the situation was reversed.
luci, I think there’s a lot to be said for that policy, although there are going to be some people who know something of value. Fortunately, very few of the people who know actual secrets will be in the field; they’ll be back home in R&D facilities or HQ. If someone gets captured, you change the immediate tactical plan. It shouldn’t be that big a deal, because individuals likely to be captured shouldn’t know enough about long term future plans to be dangerous.
Also, there’s this testosterone-laced idea that anyone with True Balls[sup]TM[/sup] should be able to hold up under the most excrutiating torture rather than read some stupid statement written by The Enemy[sup]TM[/sup] that everyone knows is BS anyway. I’d love to do away with that idea, but unfortunately, the last eight years (actually, when you thing about it, that last twelve years, or however long it’s been that the ultra-right wing and its supposed Values[sup]TM[/sup] have been on the rise) have not been all that conducive to what people like you and me consider good sense.
However, when we’re talking about the past, that’s simply not the culture in which people like McCain were raised or trained. So we have to view his behavior in the light of the customs of his time, not our own.
Good point, soldier! (Someone get that soldier’s name, put it on my list of guys who ask good questions…)
As an American soldier, we assume that you have the good sense that God gave a goose. You ar thereby ordered to ignore this order if circumstances make that necessary.
In their own minds, I think most political prisoners believe themselves to be heros. Gitmo is a poor example, because a lot of these people were brought in by bounty hunters in Afghanistan (as I understand it), and there’s not a whole lot of evidence that they did much of anything. But take someone who really is a terrorist, and is resisting torturous interrogation. I think in their own mind, and in the view of their organizations and whatever people think they represent them, they are heroes. After all, someone like McCain was no hero to the North Vietnamese.
When it comes to war or conflict, heroism often very much depends on the side you’re on. In our culture, killing innocents deliberately often eliminates you from heroism. But in other views, the condition is viewed as so grim that the killing of innocents is viewed the same way we’ve been viewing the death of civilian Afghanis - an unfortunate reality. Or even with satisfaction that the evil villains (that would be us) got their just desserts. I don’t think so. But then, I’m not one of the terrorists.
On the other hand, dying while saving a kid from an oncoming train is heroism across cultural boundaries. There are different kinds of heroes.
But does it change your opinion that McCain did, in fact, break?
"They wanted a statement saying that I was sorry for the crimes that I had
committed against North Vietnamese people . . .
I held out for four days. Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5½
years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I
was reaching the end of my rope. I said, O.K., I’ll write for them.
They took me up into one of the interrogation rooms, and for the next 12
hours we wrote and rewrote. The North Vietnamese interrogator, who was
pretty stupid, wrote the final confession, and I signed it."
Until today, I had the impression that he had never cooperated with the NV at all. While I’m sure he never said that, he has at the same time allowed that myth to be perpetuated, and his campaign ads claim he is a great war hero. fish above is right in saying that suffering alone does not a hero make. I’d say McCain tried very hard to be that guy, and some of the time succeeded, but not always. If the Songbird link ETF provided is valid, he spent months on the radio doing broadcasts for the VC, and he got superior medical treatment to that the ordinary POWs got. That being said, it’s like saying he starved to death more easily in Pakistan than in Biafra. But it doesn’t sound like he held out nearly as much as the myth suggests he did, and without saying so directly, he and his people have sure as hell contributed to that myth. I don’t not respect him for what he did in Viet Nam, but I respect him a whole lot less for what he’s done with the story since returning, and especially what he’s done with the story in the past ten years.
Makes sense to me. The “confession” McCain signed was pretty meaningless, and he did refuse to do many things which might have led to his receiving better treatment, or perhaps even an early release.
What strikes me as interesting though is that McCain’s time as a POW is highlighted as the keystone of his heroism and great determination. However, when push came to shove (literally), John McCain did, while under great physical and mental duress, sign a document which he believed to be wrong and against the interests of the United States.
Oh, the quote comes from a McCain interview in the May 14, 1973, issue of U.S.News & World Report. It was posted online on January 28, 2008.
Not at all. I in fact don’t put any credence in it. I brought it up to point out that there are people willing to denigrate the service of McCain as viciously as was done to Kerry, based on evidence at least as flimsy. But, unlike the Swiftboaters’ attack, the story isn’t being dragged out from under its rocky habitat and given exposure in the mainstream media.
What I find interesting is that the Songbird story appears to be coming from veterans of the Vietnam War, and there does appear to be evidence, checkable evidence, to back at least some elements of it. But it, too, is a story of which there’s not a whisper in the media’s narrative on McCain.
Double standard at play? Dunno, but I can’t help wondering.
It may very well boil down to the fact that there’s no money backing the Songbird story and/or the hero myth has been so well established for so many years that it would backfire on whoever tried to bring it out now. That would be my guess. I mean, it seems to me to be pretty easy to verify - either the man made broadcasts or he didn’t. He admits he signed papers. I have submitted ETF’s songbird article to FactCheck.Org as a question - we’ll see if they’re able/willing to verify or not.
I hasten to point out that if we followed my scenario, McCain would have probably never have been pressured to sign such a thing, the resistance to such a signing is the only credibility it has, if everyone knew that our people were told to sign anything put in front of them, its propaganda value would be zero,
My paternal grandfather was a genuine war hero. He was a fighter pilot who flew 21 ground attack missions in Europe in WWII, and also brought down a V-1 buzz bomb. During an attack on a German train his plane was shot up, and he was forced to crash land in occupied Holland. Rather than surrendering, he joined up with the Dutch resistance and served with them for months. He lost 40 pounds because there was no food, but they fought on. When the Germans finally captured him, he was holding off a squad of SS with a submachine gun to let his Dutch compatriots escape. I met one of those men, and he spoke of my grandfather with the love and respect with which you would speak of your own blood. They sentenced my grandfather to hang, but the British Army rolled over the town before they got the chance. I’ll match his accomplishments against John McCain’s seven days a week and three times on Sundays.
You know what? After the war he was a fucking scumbag. He was a drunk, a terrible father, and a shitty all-around guy. He abused his children. After 1945 he didn’t do a single heroic thing for 37 years.
Being a war hero makes you a hero in the war. It doesn’t make you a saint. It’s not some sort of Monopoly card that lets you out of your sins the rest of the time.
You know, I used to work with a guy who, twenty years later, still suffered from PSTD from Viet Nam. And yet he still remembered it, sometimes almost longingly, as the most exciting, the most vital period in his life - the time during which he felt most alive. I think we may really feel and behalf entirely differently when faced with emergencies.
Why do you say that, mswas? In general, until the GWB administration, he had a reputation for being a pretty straightforward guy, with the arguable exception of the Keating business, which I find unclear at this point.