There might be something to this.
Basically McCain can take comfort in the fact that it took a year of severe torture for him to break down and sign a utterly meaningless admittance of guilt?
If he does, would you think less of him?
It took them 4 days, actually.
That’s exactly what my wife would say right before she smacked me in my bleeding forehead for being such and idiot.
But seriously the CoC only requires that soldiers resist, not die to avoid doing what the enemy wants
The way it was explained to me on my way to my first tour in Iraq was resist telling them anything but when they start attaching electrodes to your balls you can tell them whatever you have to…Basically torture can break anybody so if the enemy has demonstrated a willingness to torture it is futile to try to resist because you will eventually do what the tell you to do. This doesn’t mean sing like a canary at the first hint of a late meal but don’t let them kill you or unreasonably harm you if it can be avoided.
Officers were certainly draftees in some cases. My FIL was drafted in the US Army Reserves (and he was married with two kids). Sent to Vietnam as a physician. HATES the Army to this day.
70% of all troops during Vietnam were volunteers, not draftees as well. This is, of course, messed by the people who would “volunteer” for the Navy and Air Force if they had a low draft number.
Thought I posted this earlier but I just wanted to say that even though I don’t think their actions (not giving in) were wrong, but that condemning someone else for doing what they felt they had to do to survive is. People react in different ways, especially under duress.
Dieter Dengler managed it, but no…it wasn’t easy.
If their mindset was “this is what I personally need to do to survive this experience for myself and my family”, then no problem at all. My “problem”, for lack of a better word, is if the mindest was “I really don’t want to take another second of this abuse, but the military rules say I should, so I will”.
Try ‘My brothers need me to, so I will.’ It’s not about rules, it’s about esprit de corps, and a man’s own honor. No, seriously. Rules are one thing. Culture is another.
Actually, McCain signed the meaningless confession, because part of the POW training tells them to go ahead and do that, I believe. Everyone knows it’s meaningless.
What McCain stood up against was his captor’s decision to release him. He refused for two reasons - one is that they would use him as propaganda, being an admiral’s son. They knew that his release would make the papers, make them look more honorable, etc.
The other reason was that if he walked out of there while people who had been there longer had to stay, it would have been very damaging to morale in the camp, and would have made the other prisoner’s lives more miserable. So he told them to shove it, and that he wouldn’t leave until those who had been there longer were sent home first.
I don’t know how anyone can possibly criticize that. He wasn’t just acting for some higher purpose, he was standing up in solidarity with the other men in his POW camp, He endured years of confinement and torture when he could have just walked out of the place, because he refused to trade his freedom for the additional hardship of his comrades.
I don’t know if I could do it, but I do know that McCain has a lot to be proud of.
You haven’t read the code of conduct then. Read through the link provided earlier. Everytime I have received a class on it there has always been an emphasis against empty gestures. Signing a confession because of torture is not wrong. Signing one because you are promised better treatment is wrong. If you are still not getting it by now I’m not sure what else can be said.
For those who advocate co-operation, what would you do in a scenario where your captors tell take a group of ten POW’s and tell all of you that they want one of you to sign a propaganda confession. The one who does it first will get a good meal and be moved to a more comfortable cell. The other nine will be throw into the hole and won’t be fed for twenty-four hours. If nobody signs you all go into the hole unfed.
Do you reason, “One of us might as well sign. Otherwise nobody gets anything. And if somebody is going to get better treatment anyway, it might as well be me. So I’ll sign it.”
I’d sign like lightning.
This is why I have an immense amount of respect for him as a person. Always have and probably always will like him personally. Seriously doubt I’ll ever vote for him, though.
James Stockdale is one of the toughest and most honorable men ever to wear the uniform, IMO.
I absolutely understand honor, duty and leading from the front. Those men are great men in every sense of the word.
Do you see no virtue at all in sacrifice for ideals that someone holds noble?
I’m speaking in generalities, not about Vietnam. Like if someone in the Soviet Union were thrown in the gulag for refusing to give up his freedom of conscience, or a civil rights activist being lynched for refusing to accept racism, or a soldier who is maimed or killed fighting for his country, or these kinds of situations.
Come to think of it, let’s say there’s a platoon of soldiers surrounded by terrible enemies - Commie Nazi Jihadist Imperialist Barbarian Heathens, or whatever. What do you think about them fighting to the death rather than facing capture and inevitable torture?
I’m sure the feeling is mutual.
Not remotely surprised.
Perhaps Diogenes’s “personal code” is toughness and stubbornness on a message board, with very little personal cost. When the situation involves actual personal injury, Diogenes would most likely behave in the most craven way possible, signing a false confession in triplicate before they laid a finger on him.