Fred Barbash -spent most of his journalism career at The Washington Post
Posted on 07/20/2015 3:41:21 AM PDT by rickyrikardo
It was the spring of 1968 and Donald Trump had it good.
He was 21 years old and handsome with a full head of hair. He avoided the Vietnam War draft on his way to earning an Ivy League degree. He was fond of fancy dinners, beautiful women and outrageous clubs. Most important, he had a job in his father’s real estate company and a brain bursting with money-making ideas that would make him a billionaire.
“When I graduated from college, I had a net worth of perhaps $200,000,” he said in his 1987 autobiography “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” written with Tony Schwartz. (That’s about $1.4 million in 2015 dollars.) “I had my eye on Manhattan.”
More than 8,000 miles away, John McCain sat in a tiny, squalid North Vietnamese prison cell. The Navy pilot’s body was broken from a plane crash, starvation, botched operations and months of torture.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“As a USN lifer, anyone who straps themselves into a military jet is a hero to me.”
Then you are misusing the word, and you’re not alone.
Naval aviators are brave. They display courage every time they climb into the cockpit. And, they are braver than many others.
But all men should be brave. The designation “hero” used to mean more, and it should be made to mean more again.
Not “NOW”, McCain has ALWAYS been the Liberal’s saint: a distinction (R) without a difference (D). These , as we should all know by now, are essentially the same people.
This is one of the stupidest comparison you could make.
Scott:
Seriously? Did you not live ANY of your formative years during Nam? If you served, thanks for your service (truly!). Military service is honorable in the pursuit of Liberty across the globe..
Being deployed at the whim of a politician to make himself look better is not equivalent to serving the Liberty that the USA can offer. My SIL is in Ghanny because he believes that the Afghanistanni people deserve liberty from the tyranny of Islamic rule (HINT: LBJ didn’t care about the liberty of the Vietnamese...he cared more about the political situation related to the war. He lost focus.)
ANYONE, regardless of race or wealth, attempted to get every available deferment available so that they were not sent to LBJ’s meat-grinder. I applaud their efforts...even the men who went to Canada.
LBJ mishandled the war. Even then, he and his advisors’ did so in the WORST WAY. Even Nixon, a know military hawk, couldn’t fix it.
Yes, regarding the designation “hero”-—not too long ago O.J.Simpson was referred to as a “sports hero”, and his friend Cowlings, who chauffered him in that Bronco escape,I actually heard referred to this way “if there is any hero in this thing, it’s Cowlings”.And that’s just scratching the surface on the way that word has been shorn of meaning.
Trump is bringing dialogue on illegal immigration to the forefront. I applaud that. He cannot run the country like he does the board room, not the same animal. I want Ted Cruz, but like Ted....I don’t plan to slam Trump.
Note to Juan McCain:
This is typical campaign rhetoric.
To paraphrase the Bard of Avon: “Why must thou protest so much?”
Isn’t Trump a member of your party and currently running for POTUS?
Juan, what is your POTUS campaign status and history, hmmmmm?
What Donald Trump was up to while John McCain was suffering as a prisoner of war?
And what has Juan done since capitalizing on his POW status. I forget was McLame the only POW there. I don’t see many others out there trying to use their status for self promotion. Juan has long ago worn out his POW ranking. He is now little more then a political hack.
Conservatives quickly realized that there were globalists on the left supporting the war to spread their Communist agenda and globalists on the right into it for profit. Isolationists, who I think of as today's Constitutional Conservatives, are still looking for someone who thinks of us as any more than voting fodder.
The original anti-war people didn't want anyone going to war, and didn't really understand why people did. When the leftists took over the protests, it became something very different, something the original anti-war conservatives never bought into.
Fred Barbash -spent most of his journalism career at The Washington Post
Michael E. Miller has been named a Morning Mix reporter covering national news for The Washington Post. Miller was most recently a senior writer for Miami New Times. He holds master’s degrees in journalism and Latin American studies from New York University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago.
Yep. Too jaded to put my trust in a very shaky commodity. If you’re willing to ignore Trump’s past (which I note you did not refute), hey.. go for it.
Good point. Constantly the media interchanges the terms “victim” and “hero” and “celebrity” and “hero.” A bad person can be a victim and/or a celebrity - that does not make him a hero.
He DID earn hero status for bravery on the front. Flying through the toughest air defense in the world, and landing on a carrier many times. He DID save lives of his fellow Soldiers, being a leader, rendering medical aid to those in his cell. AND WHEN HE WAS OFFERED TO BE SENT HOME TO THE USA...HE SAID NO AND STAYED...TO BE TORTURED FOR YEARS.
I’m waiting for them to do this to Hillary and her ‘lost’ emails. I’m sure they will get around to it ‘someday’! /s
I didn’t say he didn’t, I just get that Trump said he earned it after capture. Good debate, though.
I’m listening to Rush on the radio just now, defending Trump and not McCain and the viper MSM. Just sayin ...
Yes. Seriously.
At what point do we stop at deferments and cross the bridge to draft dodging? Anyone can invent a reason to avoid service in time of war. So where does it stop?
I did, too.. but I don’t take my cues from Rush.
Koch was a lot of things, but he was a pretty doctrinaire leftist in his 9 years in Congress, earning a 96% left-wing (or 4% Conservative) lifetime rating from the ACU (almost identical to Bella Abzug’s rating). When he was Mayor, he clearly lifted the spirits of the city after 12 years of rank incompetence under Lindsay and the hapless Beame, but he never really was successful with tackling the underlying issues that had been festering since the 1960s (namely the awful crime rates), and by the time he was beaten by the even more execrable Dinkins, the murder rate was at or above 2,000 per year. A lot of flash, warmth and panache, but not a lot of substantive accomplishment (which didn’t come until Giuliani).
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