There are certain things that can’t be taken away
from the late John McCain:
He was a Navy pilot
he was shot down over Vietnam and captured
he was held as a prisoner of war for five and a half years
he was tortured by his captors
he survived torture
he survived prison
he became a US senator
and he ran for president twice.
Surviving that long as a prisoner of any sort
I suppose, is heroic
and maybe regardless what you were doing
when you became a prisoner
like armed robbery
or petty thievery
or securities fraud
or a simply being a refugee
forced to flee
your burning village
by crossing a border illegally,
or burning a village with napalm
or blowing up a power plant…
surviving prison for over 5 years
no matter how you wound up there
is heroic
because no human being
should ever be locked in a cage
but hero of war,
was he a hero of war
for dropping bombs from the heavens
on strategic “military” targets,
villages,
schools,
churches,
and pagodas,
sending peasant farmers
to meet their maker?
John McCain was, as they say
just following orders
and those orders led to
a lot of collateral damage
led to a lot of napalm
and death
and destruction
and a lot of cluster bombs
still unexploded
still waiting for victims
and it’s sad when anyone falls victim to cancer
but a lot of Vietnamese people fell victim to cancers
caused by people like John McCain
John McCain was shown far more mercy
by Vietnamese peasants
after he was shot down
while bombing a power plant,
than America showed them
throughout the entirety of the war
or afterwards.
John McCain saw the power
of the bombs that he dropped
up close, for the first time
when some of those bombs exploded
after an accident on his aircraft carrier
took the lives of 134 sailors
but, even after that,
he flew more missions
and he dropped more
of those same bombs
onto Vietnamese peasants
who became collateral damage.
He knew that Vietnam was a political war,
a war of aggression
against peasants
who posed no threat to America
but he flew more missions
and he dropped more bombs
and created more collateral damage.
And during the presidential campaign in 2008
he certainly defended Barack Obama
against the slanderous claim
made by one of his supporters,
an old woman
at a town hall meeting
who said that Obama was,
-gasp-
“An Arab…” the woman said
McCain shot back,
“No Ma’am…
He’s a decent family man and citizen
that I just happen to have disagreements with
on fundamental issues,
and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
No, he’s not an Arab
he’s a decent family man
and citizen…
definitely not an Arab
as if it were a pejorative term
like Gook
as in “I hate the gooks…I will hate them as long as I live”
which is what candidate John McCain said
in the year 2000
in reference to his Vietnamese captors
while running in the republican presidential primary
and he said he would always describe them this way
using a term whose sole purpose during the 1960’s and 1970’s
was to dehumanize the people of Vietnam
and the rest of South East Asia
and make it easier for the military to kill them
and easier for John Q. Public
to not care about the growing list
of dead civilians.
John McCain lived to be 81 years old
that’s a long life by many standards
I wonder how many Vietnamese children
would have been grateful
to have lived half those years
or even a quarter of them
had their lives not been cut short
during the war and after
by men like John McCain,
men we call heroes.
He may have been,
in the words he used to describe Barack Obama,
“A decent family man and citizen”
he certainly served the American government
for all his adult life
and he may have been heroic
in surviving his imprisonment
and he may have been honorable
for not accepting early release
because of his family connections
but a war hero?
A war hero?
The heroes are those who knew,
like McCain knew
that the war in Vietnam
was illegal
and unjust
and immoral
but instead of dropping bombs
on villages of peasants
instead of dropping bombs on schools
instead of scorching the earth
and everything on it,
instead they went to prison
some serving lengthy sentences.
When I was a kid,
people like John McCain were the heroes
and those who went to prison
for opposing the war in Vietnam,
well, they were fucking cowards
but in the years since I came home from Iraq
I’ve realized that there is nothing cowardly
about standing up for what is right,
standing up for truth and justice
standing up for the oppressed
and possibly losing your freedom
because of it.
The GI resisters who went to prison
maybe they weren’t treated as bad
physically
as the Vietnamese treated McCain
even though McCain treated the Vietnamese
pretty goddamn bad
before he was shot down
and he killed a lot of them
and they didn’t kill him
and he came home to a hero’s welcome
after he was released
and the resisters
were seldom welcomed back at home at all
or welcomed anywhere for that matter
and they became outcasts
for standing up for truth and justice
in a country that claims to stand
for truth and justice.
John McCain is dead now
so he no longer hates anyone
and he was 81
and 81 is is a good, long life
no matter who you are.
Dr. King was 39 when he was died
imagine if Dr. King lived to be 81…
Dr King was a hero.
In 1967, John McCain was shot down
and imprisoned
for following orders.
In 1968, Dr. King was murdered
for following his conscience.
John McCain was not a hero
he was a victim of torture
he was, in the end, a victim of cancer
but, most importantly
he was a victim of the idea
of American exceptionalism.
Above all,
John McCain was a human being
juts like any other human being
just like the Vietnamese.
For all of us
we are born
we live
and then we die.
Now he has joined the victims
of the bombs that he dropped over Vietnam
in death.
America mourns today
and I also mourn
but America mourns John McCain
and I mourn the people that he killed
in Vietnam
who have long been forgotten
who have largely been written
out of history.
Now, as the thunder again rolls
all I can utter is
“So it goes…”
soitgoes1984 