For years, McCain has been one of the most powerful voices in Congress advocating against torture; a position informed by his personal experiences at the hands of the North Vietnamese during 5 years as a prisoner of war. And McCain has consistently spoken out against torture during his run for president.
“Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot and being used on Buddhist monks as we speak,” McCain said after a campaign stop in Iowa in October 2007.”
“People who have worn the uniform and had the experience know that this is a terrible and odious practice and should never be condoned in the U.S. We are a better nation than that.”
“America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model,” McCain said. “How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured.”
John McCain did not plan the Vietnam War. He didn’t lie to the Americ an people about the nature of the conflict, the atrocities it entailed, or the probability of its success. He merely trusted the civilian leadership that did. There is no reason to doubt that McCain believed he was in Vietnam to risk his life — and then, to endure a living hell — in defense of our nation’s highest ideals. His willingness to sacrifice his own well-being to what he believed to be America’s interests deserves our awe-struck admiration. As the senator is laid to rest, one can reasonably argue that respect for his family, and legacy, compels us to isolate his act of transcendent patriotism from the indefensible war that produced it.
Daily Intelligencer
John McCain’s Service in Vietnam Was a Tragedy
FROM THE DAILY INTELLIGENCER
In 1971…a remarkable 58% of the public told pollsters that they thought the conflict was “immoral,” a word that most Americans had never applied to their country’s wars.
How quickly times change. Jump ahead a decade and Americans had already found an appealing formula for commemorating the war. It turned out to be surprisingly simple: focus on us, not them, and agree that the war was primarily an American tragedy. Stop worrying about the damage Americans had inflicted on Vietnam and focus on what we had done to ourselves.
… Americans began to treat those who served the country as heroic by definition, no matter what they had actually done … You no longer had to believe that the missions American “heroes” fought were noble and just; you could simply agree that anyone who “served America” in whatever capacity automatically deserved acclaim.
In 2012, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes voiced a similar concern on a Memorial Day episode of his weekend talk show. “It is very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words ‘heroes,’” Hayes observed. “Why do I feel so [uncomfortable] about the word ‘hero’? I feel comfortable — uncomfortable — about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.”
This sentiment was not well-received. Hayes quickly issued an apology. And yet, the idea that invoking the heroism of the war dead is “rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war” isn’t a radical one. In fact, it’s a notion tacitly endorsed by President Trump’s own speechwriters.
Last year, when the commander-in-chief made his argument for prolonging the longest war in American history — a conflict in which the U.S. has neither a credible strategy for victory, nor significant national interest — he devoted much of his remarks to celebrating the sacrifices of fallen soldiers.
American patriots from every generation have given their last breath on the battlefield for our nation and for our freedom. Through their lives — and though their lives were cut short, in their deeds they achieved total immortality.
By following the heroic example of those who fought to preserve our republic, we can find the inspiration our country needs to unify, to heal, and to remain one nation under God. The men and women of our military operate as one team, with one shared mission, and one shared sense of purpose.
… Our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made, especially the sacrifices of lives. The men and women who serve our nation in combat deserve a plan for victory. They deserve the tools they need, and the trust they have earned, to fight and to win.
But what the “men and women who serve our nation in combat” truly deserve is a country that reveres their lives more than their suffering — and, therefore, that only asks them to endure the latter in wars that are just, winnable, and necessary.
If we wish to honor McCain’s wartime sacrifice, we must remember it less as an example of the kind of heroism we wish to emulate, than of the kind of tragedy that our nation is duty-bound to avoid repeating.
