McCain wasn't part of the solution.....
Posted on 05/26/2006 3:23:30 PM PDT by RWR8189
JOHN McCAIN IS, without a doubt, heroic.
Disagree with his politics, mistrust his shifting political alliances, but no one who's benefited from the tortured sacrifices he made at the Hanoi Hilton should question his integrity. How can we, whole in body and strangers to the hell he experienced, challenge this patriot? To do so indicates a fundamental inhumanity.
That aptly describes the young woman who stood up last week and ridiculed the senator from Arizona. Jean Sara Rohe, a graduating senior at the New School in New York, introduced McCain before he delivered his commencement address.
Ms. Rohe took the opportunity to attack McCain because he supports the war in Iraq, making him a proxy for the president she and her ilk so obviously detest. Her words, dripping with the elite disdain perfected by liberals, is an example of how the pampered progeny of the boomers are always demanding rights without acknowledging prior debts.
The righteous Ms. Rohe was only able to give voice to her beliefs because of McCain and others like him who sacrificed their youth (and, in some cases, their lives) to secure the freedom of strangers. You wonder what sacrifices this young woman has ever made for her country, or if she even thinks it merits the effort.
The disrespect didn't stop there. At one point, the school's president, Bob Kerrey, admonished the crowd to let McCain speak, dryly noting that it takes courage to stand at a lectern but none to scream from the crowd.
The response? Kerrey, who left part of his own leg on a battlefield in Vietnam and who received the Medal of Honor, was called a "war criminal." Given the caliber of the accuser, this is actually high praise.
To hear these things makes my blood boil. What type of people are we, so mired in our partisan anger, that we dare attack the few and singular examples of valor in our midst?
McCain, Kerrey and their comrades deserve respect and gratitude. If we disagree with their politics, the remedy is at the ballot box. But to label as "criminals" men who withstood physical assaults that make Abu Ghraib look tame? Citizenship is wasted on such as these.
Like Vietnam, Iraq is a lightning rod for controversy. Many Americans genuinely feel that we should never have invaded a country that (they say) posed no strategic threat. Many others believe that the threat existed, and provide salient arguments to counter the tired claim of "the president lied." Still others believe that even though the invasion was flawed in its execution, it was a necessary exercise of executive authority. Our country is divided, and the rhetorical battles are as fierce as the real ones.
But regardless of our personal convictions, there is no place in public discourse for the rantings of spoiled children who have never risked life or limb for the greater good. The First Amendment protects their right to protest, even though it is defiled by the content of their thoughts. Unfortunately, it doesn't endow them with courage or character.
Of course, some would disagree. Arianna Huffington has called Ms. Rohe fearless, or words to that effect. Others have praised Jodie Foster, who graced our local Penn graduates with a nice rap song and some ruminations on how we squandered the good will of the world's people.
Still others think that Mumia Abu-Jamal has something of value to impart from his seat on death row. Cop-killers, actresses and clueless little girls. Our graduates are truly blessed.
What most upsets me is that hardly anyone in the liberal community has criticized the attack on McCain. Remember the outrage at "swift-boating" and the indignant defense of Jack Murtha?
Those who were rightly upset at the mud thrown in John Kerry's direction are conveniently silent when it comes from their own side. Those who said we should listen to Murtha's call for an immediate withdrawal of troops because of his war record turn their backs on McCain and stigmatize Kerrey. Their hypocrisy is limitless.
My wish for Ms. Rohe is that, away from the admiring cameras and accompanied only by her conscience, she make as great a mark on society as John McCain and his brothers-in-arms. But I doubt it. The only Hilton she'll ever occupy belongs to Paris' daddy.
You took the words out of my mouth, at least regarding those who belittle Sen. McCain's service.
And everyone else needs to start realizing that simply because someone does something at one point in one's life, that doesn't give them a perpetual mulligan politically!
McCain's a hero! Fine! But he's a self-servant now and as such he's open to the same criticism that everyone else is. In the meantime, we've heard this all before. It's long past, he's fine, and he's got millions coming at the hands of taxpayers when he retires. I think that's more than enough to get his a$$ doing what's right for the nation for a change instead of once again having to "be cut slack" due to his socialist views and votes that are near treasonous!
Not more respect, but he doesn't, nor has he earned it, disrespect for his service. As I answered earlier.
"I would never vote for McCain, but McCain served with the highest honors and he has NEVER stood before the people of America and called our brave U.S. troops killers, as Kerry and Murtha have done."
McCain used his daddy, a Senator, to get prefferential treatment during his imprisonment.
He is a coward, and a liar.
Maybe I'm the only retard in the world that does not think that getting shot down because you suck as a pilot and surviving torture ranks as heroic in the same vein as what an Audey Murphy, George Patton or George Washington did in their heroics
That's a good question. I wonder if people know that Ted Chapaquidic Fats Kennedy was a service man. Served in Germany during the Korean war.
No, that is incorrect. Mclame's father was an admiral. I don't know if this got him prefferential treatment by the vc but it did get him prefferential treatment in flight school and kept him from being washed out. Which when you look back on things wasn't really a favor because it put him in a plane that got shot down and he got to be tortured.
Happy Memorial Day to you too. Thanks for the reply. I got off on the wrong foot and for that I apologize!
But some who did "benefit" thusly do and have.
One wonders if this had been the solidly conservative Congressman Sam Johnson, who spent a year and half longer in the Hanoi Hilton than Senator McCain, that former Senator (and SEAL) Kerrey would have defended him as vigorously, and if this writer would have written this article? Somehow I doubt it, especially in the case of the writer. Bob Kerrey probably would have defended Sam Johnson's right to speak, although it's unlikely he would have supported Johnson being invited to speak.
He may not have won the war himself, but the US, allied and South Vietnamese militaries did. Only to have it lost in the conference rooms of Paris and most especially in the Democratic Cloakrooms of Congress.
True, he only called them torturers, and by implication war criminals. The torture in question involved panties on the prisoners heads, humiliation, etc, but by implication, he made it one with the sort of real torture he and the other POW's of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong suffered. It was nothing at all like that, and, IMHO, was no torture at all.
While Kerrey's politics are left of Lenin, he is certainly an American hero. He is not running for any office and should not be abused by left wing scum. On the other hand, Mc Pain is a patently, certified political fraud and like his buddy, John Kerry, is wide open for criticism from both left and right.
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Good pilots get shot down, and being a sucky pilot doesn't necessarily mean one isn't doing the best one can. Given a chance, I'd probably have been a sucky pilot. They were smart enough not to give me such a chance.
But by all reports, McCain was a sucky pilot, whose father was an Admiral (CINCPAC in fact, a submariner), as had his grandfather been in WW-II (Commander Aircraft South Pacific Forces).
Better check your facts. His father was the four star admiral in charge of all US Forces (not just Navy) in the Pacific. CincPac was his title. He was never a Senator. His father before him had also been an Admiral, in charge of all air forces in the South Pacific theater in WW-II.
Only John S. McCain III dishonored the family name by becoming a politician.
You are correct, his father was an admiral, and he told the vc that as soon as he was caught.
He did get preferential treatment.
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