An anti-war protester interrupts US Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain (R-AZ) (R) as he addresses a National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in Washington, June 28, 2008. The banner reads, “McCain equals war”. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
John McCain will always equal war to me--the Vietnam war.
If you are of a certain age, you remember the now Senator John McCain from television images of him and a large handful of others from the “Hanoi Hilton,” a Vietnamese prison which could pass for Abu Gharib–but worse. He was shot down in Vietnam in the 1960’s when he was a young jet pilot. He ejected from the jet and parachuted into an area with angry villagers, unhappy about him bombing them. The ejection from the jet and landing broke a number of important bones (legs, arms, then after the capture I think ribs). Then McCain was beaten, bayoneted, and then tortured repeatedly for years by his captors. The torturing, in the hands of the enemy Viet Cong, went on for years. At the tail end of the Vietnam war, the Vietnamese agreed to release the last of the American prisoners of war but they controlled the release and it was done with the newly free men paraded in their pajama-like attire where the cameras could snap away. McCain, look below at the photo of him being captured by VC and click the link to see the VC "treating" his injuries. stood out from the other guys even then, or maybe especially then.
I realize Cindy McCain is blond but even she should be able to fake thinking though what Michelle Obama meant when she said she was proud of her country for the first time (paraphrase). “Cindy,” heiress to a beer company fortune, has never not had a ton of money. She’s always been blond, attractive and well-kept. She may as well have grown up in another universe than Michelle.
Michelle grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a “loving” 2-parent family
with one older superstar-athlete-scholar brother and all of them
crammed into a one bedroom home in a bungalow. She went on to Princeton
and Harvard on scholarships and loans.
In contrast, except for having the brains you need for an Ivy League (and not liking the weather, or so I read) Cindy McCain would have been quite at home among the other rich kids.
Michelle did quite well–though not a superstar.
So Michelle made her way in this world as the most successful black woman in a middle-class Chicago family. And now her husband is poised to become president and she decides to use our must-lauded right to free speech about Barack’s and her future but Cindy McCain, the alway rich, blond, and very white self-described “navy wife,” doesn’t get what Michelle was saying? Truly though, would we expect someone of Cindy McCain's privilege to “get it?” She’s have to be a special rich person/woman and she’s just plain not.
(McCain’s Vietnam horror story after the jump)
From wikipedia
On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had previously been off-limits to U.S. raids. McCain's A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile while pulling up after dropping its bombs. McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane. He nearly drowned after he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi. After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around him, spat on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing. Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi's main prison. Although McCain was badly wounded, his captors refused to put him in the hospital, deciding he would soon die anyway. They beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care and announce his capture. At this point, two days after McCain's plane went down, that event and his status as a POW made the front page of The New York Times.
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