John McCain, Traitor. I am so tired of hearing Senator McCain of Arizona being described as a "hero". He was a victim, not a hero, and this country has got to learn the difference. Moreover, the torment he suffered at the hands of his Vietnamese Communist captors may well have driven him out of his mind — unless he was just always bizarre.
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A hero is someone who, for the sake of others, knowingly risks fully foreseeable, horrendous, and possibly fatal consequences of his acts. Not everyone in the military qualifies as a hero, just because they know they might conceivably be killed, wounded, or captured, because almost nobody goes into the military with the real expectation that they will be killed. "That won't happen to me!" is the way they really feel. It's always the other guy who will get killed or maimed. Most military volunteers are young, and the young are notorious for feeling invulnerable and immortal.
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Nor does the pilot of a ground-attack fighter-bomber really expect to be shot down nor, if shot down, expect to survive, be beaten by a mob, then taken captive by the enemy's military, hung from the ceiling by guards, and subjected to 5 years of imprisonment, 2 of them in solitary confinement, in defiance of the Geneva Convention.
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It is dubious that McCain even really chose to be in the military. He was the son and grandson of four-star admirals, so was expected to follow their footsteps into 'the family business'. Born to a life of privilege in the Panama Canal Zone (my mother was also born in the Canal Zone, but not to a life of privilege), he attended the Naval Academy (Annapolis), practically as of right, whereas most people have trouble getting appointed to a military academy.
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Once he was taken captive in Hanoi, he did do one admirable thing: he refused early repatriation offered because of his father's high military rank, instead insisting he not be treated specially but be released in the customary order, first taken, first released. That supposedly infuriated his captors and led them to abuse him (tho a column by media pundit Margaret Carlson says his treatment was no worse than some U.S. captives in Afghanistan have received).
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However it may have happened, this man born to privilege, victim-turned-"hero", parlayed his advantages to take his Rightful place in the ruling elite by running for Congress, then Senate from Arizona. He has been a puzzlement ever since.
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Today, on NBC's Today show, Senator McCain, an ostensible conservative Republican, again played champion of Communist Vietnam, as leads me, again, to wonder if the Vietnamese "broke" him and "turned" him, into their active agent in Washington. This dynamic is known as the "Stockholm Syndrome". A captive comes to identify with his captor, appreciate his point of view, even defend his actions:

The Stockholm Syndrome is an emotional attachment, a bond of interdependence between captive and captor that develops 'when someone threatens your life, deliberates, and doesn't kill you.' (Symonds, 1980) The relief resulting from the removal of the threat of death generates intense feelings of gratitude and fear which combine to make the captive reluctant to display negative feelings toward the captor or terrorist. In fact, former hostages have visited their captors in jail, recommended defense counsel, and even started a defense fund. It is this dynamic which causes former hostages and abuse survivors to minimize the damage done to them and refuse to cooperate in prosecuting their tormentors.

This seems to have happened with McCain, who has visited Communist Vietnam several times since his release, and happily advocates reconciliation with the Communists who not only mistreated him but also launched a war of aggression that killed over 3 million of "their own people". Remember that it is slaughter of "his own people" that was used to demonize Saddam Hussein and justify a war that Senator McCain has always fully supported. McCain reiterated that support Today.
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This morning McCain at once championed Communist Vietnam's admission to the World Trade Organization, a reward for its murderous assault upon and takeover of South Vietnam, and backed a continuing U.S. military occupation of Iraq, a country we had no right to attack in the first place, and where our presence is a constant irritant that produces endless violence and an inpouring of foreign fighters who would not be intent on ravaging a sovereign Iraq were there no "Crusader" soldiers there fighting for Zionism.
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The man's politics are all over the map. No one can predict how he will come down on any given issue. He has no consistent principles whatsoever. He positions himself as a moderate Republican, and even indulges talk of being nominated for President by the Democratic Party, then says, 'No, I'm a Republican and will stay a Republican', then backs the most regressive policies of the rightwingers who now dominate the Federal Government. Maybe the Vietnamese destroyed his mind.
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In any case, I'm tired of hearing from him, tired of all the insane talk of making him into, in effect, a "fusion" candidate for President. John McCain is a nutjob, and an active enemy of the United States as regards Vietnam, a country still ruled by the people who murdered 3 million of "their own people", killed over 58,000 Americans, tortured American prisoners, and has never uttered so much as a syllable of apology for their crimes, but now profit mightily from trade with the American 'enemy' they so hated not long ago. We are their largest trading partner, thanks to 'normalization' embarked upon by the Vietnam peacenik Bill Clinton 10 years ago. Given his "antiwar" (pro-Communist) behavior in the Sixties, it's hardly surprising that Clinton would favor "normalizing" relations with Communist butchers. But why would a supposedly conservative Republican President do so?
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During the Vietnam War, when I was, as now, an anti-Communist liberal, I had a letter published by The New York Times that asked pointed questions, among them, 'Which way do refugees flow, toward Communist-controlled territory or away?' In case you don't know, the answer was always away from Communism, not toward it. That did not stop our brave heroes in Washington from abandoning the South Vietnamese to Communist takeover, all the while pretending devotion to "freedom", as they still do.
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George Bush is actually meeting, this very day, with the premier of Vietnam, a 71-year-old who since age 14 has been an ardent Communist and who was actively involved in what the Vietnamese Government's website calls "the American war"(!). That war was ended by another traitorous, supposedly conservative Republican, the "crook" Richard M. Nixon and his commsymp Secretary of State, the foreign-born Jew, Henry Kissinger. Now the Republicans are "making nice" with Communists and getting Americans killed for Jews in the Mideast.
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What has happened to this country? And how do we escape the madness? How did traitors come to dominate both major parties? And when will American interests and American principles recapture the national government?
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Cozying up to Communists and killing Arabs for Jews is not "the American way". It would seem we need a lot better teaching of American history to explain to Americans what our civilization is and is not.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,724.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:06 AM