John McCain: War Hero or War Criminal?

[T.Ruth2power]

Let's talk about Nam, that nasty little quagmire in the American subconscious always waiting to be sprung like a bouncing betty whenever it is politically opportunistic, we are still fighting that fucking war and will continue to fight that fucking war until we as a nation are ready to collectively acknowledge the accumulated weight of all of our military interventionist sins and to seek atonement. That John McCain can continue to trade on his Vietnam record as he runs his campaign on the promise of more war for the rest of all of our lives even if it bankrupts us and rapes the futures of those who have yet to even be fucking born. Now I have a lot of problems with this great narrative that McCain has constructed for himself about being this great war hero, first let me say that there is absolutely nothing fucking heroic in dropping bombs on civilians and McCain himself has come out and admitted this when questioned during interviews, he correctly called himself "a war criminal" during another 60 Minutes interview back in 1997.

The Democrats and the more flaccid spined liberals out there with their pet issues snap to attention when it comes time to bestow their platitudes on the great and almighty war hero John McCain who will happily continue to send young men and women to their deaths if and when he snags the keys to the war machine. I have always found this sort of deferential treatment to be not only pathetic but self-defeating as well, the quisling Dems to use a sports analogy are all too happy to spot their opponent a two touchdown lead before they even take to the field for the opening kickoff. This is an area where I am flummoxed especially after the treatment that was given to John Kerry (a foofy haired elitist doofus who actually was something of a war hero) when he was savagely swiftboated by a Karl Rove operation back in 2004. Of course Kerry also came out against the war in his now legendary winter soldier hearings that peeled back the flags from the faces of the armchair patriots and the deniers which was and to this day is still a big taboo in a country that bathes in the blood of the innocent that are murdered by the war machine that has made death out top national export. It is far easier to decry Kerry for statements such as:


"They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

Glorifying a man like McCain for whistling Dixie and then bombing the fuck out of people who he didn't even have the guts to look at when they were sucking in jellied fire with their dying breath as a hero while vilifying Kerry is so truly Amerikan. McCain saluted the flag, did time in the Hanoi Hilton where according to who you believe received favorable treatment and then he made anti American propaganda videos of the same sort have carved a scarlet letter of "treason" onto the forehead of Jane Fonda for the last three and a half fucking decades not to mention every person who speaks out against our great wars of conquest rather than to just be a God kissed patriotic American who is content to watch television, go shopping and be a productive little cog in the murderous machine of industrialized murder that is our grand stinking capitalist empire of rot and death.

John McCain is no war hero, he is a war criminal that is plain and simple and in addition to being a war criminal he is also by definition a terrorist for committing terrorist acts against unarmed civilians and no amount of hand wringing fake moralizing is ever going to overturn that ugly and rancid little fact. War IS terrorism and no man who praises war as a way of life as does McCain is nothing other than a terrorist himself. Consider the irony of that particular statement for a minute and the now institutionalized phony war on terror that has brought the war, eternal war home to America as our way of life. None other than that flaming leftist Patrick J. Buchanan acknowledges that war is terror in relation to the bombings of Japan that would bring about an end to World War II and spawn the post war era of as Gore Vidal calls it "perpetual war for perpetual peace". Buchanan despite the blanket discrediting he receives both by the pathetic mess that passed for the left these days and the neocon right is actually spot on about many things in these horrible days of a rotting empire and he asks the question: "But if terrorism is the massacre of innocents to break the will of rulers, were not Hiroshima and Nagasaki terrorism on a colossal scale?"

<snip>

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=6261

[stellanoir]

1. Probably one of the most reprehensible, crass, and disrespectful political maneuvers

I've ever witnessed was when those Repubs at their convention in '04 put those band aids with purple hearts on their faces to mock the injuries Kerry sustained in Vietnam.

It was so pathetically mean spirited. They thought it was funny.

Ughhh

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Smirk." - Commander AWOL Bush

"Sneer." - VP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney

"Snark." - Rush "Ass Pimple Deferment Chickenhawk' Limbaugh

"Mbffff." - Bill 'Draft Dodger' O'Rielly

"Giggle" - Sean 'Gucci Loafer Deferment' Hannity

[madokie]

3. I don't know about the ace but for me I have carried the burden of what American forces done in 'Nam

for close to forty years now. Being the dumb kid I was at the time I seen what we were doing there was wrong within the first couple weeks of being in country. My recourse for making changes was the same then as it is now, zilch. I at this point in time believe it will not be necessary to point out anything maCain whether good or bad. Our next President is going to be Obama and there won't be no stopping that. Thats who we want, most of us anyway and thats who we're going to get. This will be a landslide like never before

[Winterblues]

4. I applaud your sentiments

McCain is no Hero no matter how many here would like you to believe he is..He is running as a war hero and he can most certainly be attacked on those same grounds...People here seem to think anyone that puts on a uniform is automatically a hero and can not ever be criticized..They want to make fun of purple heart recipients then I say they deserve everything they get..

[Bigmack]

5. "Traitor", too...

Don't forget ....

http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/

The scumbags who "swiftboated" Kerry got their time on every MSM outlet, but somehow the vietvetscumbagsagainstjohnmccain.com have yet to be discovered by our glorious media.

Note: Don't bother to tell me how we should never mention the vietvetsagainstmccain assholes because that just lowers us to their level. They are there, and they are being ignored. I don't believe them, but I just want to know why the MSM is ignoring them.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

6. On a related note

...

In his introductory remarks at the Ann Arbor book signing, McCain, well aware of the antiwar sentiment that prevails on the University of Michigan campus, made no direct mention of the Iraq war. He did, however, indicate the “values” that his book promotes by singling out for praise one of its subjects: Pat Tillman, the professional football player who joined the military after 9/11 and was killed on a battlefield in Afghanistan.

After McCain’s remarks, this writer asked the following question:

“Senator, you have taken a position against torture. But there is an underlying principle that was laid down at the Nuremburg trial after World War Two. The prosecutors of the Nazi leaders—the lead American prosecutor was US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson—asserted that the primary war crime committed by the defendants, from which all of the other atrocities sprang, including torture, concentration camps and the extermination of entire populations, was the planning and carrying out of aggressive war. Do you believe that this principle is still valid? And if so, should not those US government and military officials who planned and carried out the unprovoked war against Iraq be made legally and criminally subject to this principle?”

McCain did not answer the question. He dodged it by saying he had a different understanding of the Nuremburg principle: namely, that a solider or official could not legally absolve himself of criminal actions on the grounds that he was merely carrying out orders. The senator then went on to say torture was wrong because it did not “work,” and was harmful to US legitimacy and America’s image around the world.

This evasion revealed the hypocritical essence of McCain’s democratic pretensions—and not only McCain’s, but those of the entire political establishment, supporters and critics of the Bush administration, Republicans and Democrats alike. They are all implicated in a war based on lies, carried out in defiance of international law, against a country that had neither attacked nor threatened to attack the United States.

...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/mcca-d09.shtml

[tblue]

7. Great post! I've been wondering how dropping napalm makes someone a hero.

Welcome to DU! And post more and often!

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Easy answer, NEITHER... he was a POW...

and as hard as that was on him... it is hard to be a hero while a POW. There have been some... but trust me, not John McCain

[Quantess]

9. I also think

we shouldn't go there.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. That he was a POW and MOST POWs are not heroes

but survivors?

There have been some, but mostly in the Medical Corp

Sorry if I know some history

What He is definitely is a survivor

Why we probably shouldn't go there is because people are truly bothered by that concept... why do you think the Bataan death march survivors were not allowed to speak by the Army after they came home?