John McCain’s hero status has largely been promoted by John McCain himself. There were over 800 POWs in Hanoi who suffered at prisons like ”The Hanoi Hilton" during their capture by the NVA. John McCain is the only one we we hear about on a constant basis. He has spent the last 44 years making sure of that. Let's not forget, those 800 men were all being held prisoner by an enemy, who did not start the war, for bringing indiscriminate death and destruction by the most powerful nation on earth to a defenseless people in a third world country.
John McCain is the guy who returned home from being a prisoner of war, in 1973, to a former beauty queen wife who stood by him while he was being held prisoner for five and a half years, but who had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries. When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self. He divorced her in 1980. According to Carol McCain….”Not because of the accident but because he wanted to be 25 again.”
John Sidney McCain III was a well known "hot dog aviator”, careless pilot, who graduated at the bottom of his class and who was also the arrogant, troubled son of Four Star Admiral John Sidney McCain Jr, (the Commander-in Chief of the US Pacific Command during the Vietnam War, and thus his commanding officer) and grandson of Admiral John Sydney McCain Sr, whose routine daily job was to bring death and destruction from the skies by enthusiastically dropping hundreds of bombs on thousands of innocent, unseen men, women and children from 40,000 feet and was shot down, captured and imprisoned for it. Had he never got shot down, we would know nothing about him. He may be considered a patriot by some…but, to me, he is not a hero.
What makes him any different than the savage and heartless soldiers who purposely and deliberately wrought mindless havoc and mayhem to the small quiet village hamlet of old men, women and children at Son My, Vietnam on March 16, 1968 which eventually became known as The Mai Lai massacre? The fact that we make people like John McCain a hero for what he did in Vietnam makes me nauseous. Why do we celebrate “The War Makers” instead of “The Peace Makers”.
To me, heroes are people whose actions save lives. A guy who flies a helicopter into a hot LZ to take out wounded. A guy who falls on a grenade to save his comrades. A guy who carries his comrade to safety in a deadly firefight. A hero is even a guy who is in an aerial dog fight in a jet like John McCain flew at 40,00 feet because he is facing the enemy face to face, on equal terms. And guys who speaks out against war atrocities………..like Tom Glen, and Michael Bernhardt of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, who blew the whistle on the Mai Lai massacre of 1968 which saw the murder of over 500 innocent women and children. To his credit, he has personally faced his former enemies with grace and forgiveness.
John McCain has spent his life advocating for and protecting rich people and corporations. He is a STAUNCH Republican who cares nothing for the average American. He can only considered a moderate in comparison to today’s Far Right Nut Job Republican Party. He has never done anything for the working people of this country. The fact that Liberals are now praising him for ONE VOTE makes me ill. It does not change his past. He has never been “The People’s Friend”.
I am very sorry to hear about John McCain’s cancer prognosis…..but I have never liked John McCain much and I have never considered him a “Hero” and I will not be shamed into changing my position now because he is sick. I have the utmost sympathy for The Senator and his family in view of the announcement and have compassion for the serious and difficult battle they face and respect for the lifetime of public service he has given. I do not wish him harm or ill but I do not consider him a hero. You cannot rewrite history by taking one positive action in the 11th hour.
