McCain was no hero

[Onlooker]

He was an ordinary soldier who got captured and handled his predicament the way most people would. By his own account, he got frightened by his injury and volunteered to give military secrets if the Vietnamese would take him to a hospital. After they finally took him to a dirty, unsanitary hospital he made a quick recovery, so one has to wonder how accurate his self-diagnosis was. I'm not faulting McCain for acting like most people would, but he certainly does not deserve hero status because he got caught, got scared, and gave up secret military information in order to get help.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account.html?PageNr=3

I think it was on the fourth day that two guards came in, instead of one. One of them pulled back the blanket to show the other guard my injury. I looked at my knee. It was about the size, shape and color of a football....

When I saw it, I said to the guard, "O.K., get the officer." An officer came in after a few minutes. It was the man that we came to know very well as "The Bug." He was a psychotic torturer, one of the worst fiends that we had to deal with. I said, "O.K., I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital."

...

I woke up a couple of times in the next three or four days. Plasma and blood were being put into me. I became fairly lucid. I was in a room which was not particularly small—about 15 by 15 feet—but it was filthy dirty and at a lower level, so that every time it rained, there'd be about a half inch to an inch of water on the floor. I was not washed once while I was in the hospital. I almost never saw a doctor or a nurse. Doctors came in a couple of times to look at me. They spoke French, not English.

[grannie4peace]

1. amen to that!!!!!!

[The Night Owl]

2. Oh come on. This is not the way. {EOM}

[Balderdash]

3. He was an ordinary soldier...

that makes him a hero. Ask any of the guys and gals over in Iraq or Afghanistan.

[atreides1]

6. No it doesn't

Wearing a uniform does not make one a hero, the actions taken by the individual is what makes that person a hero.

And yes I was an ordinary soldier once!

[GoneOffShore]

11. Ever read Wilfred Owen? DULCE ET DECORUM EST

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

It's a job, like any other, except you can get killed doing it. Nothing particularly heroic about it.

[atreides1]

4. McCain wasn't "Most People"

McCain received traning that "most people" don't get, he received medical care after agreeing to give military information, violating the Code of Conduct, other POW's remained true and loyal, McCain didn't.

Yet he had the audacity to label others as rats, a label that was he failed to give himself.

While I can only try to understand the why, I will never regard him as anything more then a legacy child who got something based on his parentage and not on merit. If the standards had been followed at the time, McCain would have probably been a ship's laundry officer at best, a job he was most qualified for.

[No Elephants]

10. He agreed to give military info? I thought he "only" made a propaganda film.

[fasttense]

5. Sounds like enhanced interrogation techniques to me.n/t

[leveymg]

7. An ordinary soldier doesn't destroy six U.S. aircraft, and keep flying.

Anyone else, who wasn't an Admiral's son, would have been reassigned to laundry duty, or worse.

[NatBurner]

8. i need to nit pick for a second- he was NOT a soldier

he was a sailor. there's a difference.

ok, carry on :)

[No Elephants]

9. I hate John McCain and almost everything he stands for, but

he was a hero. Anyone who risks or her his life for me is my hero. That goes for all our military, police, firefighters. I don't care if they were drafted or enlisted. If they showed up to be inducted, that suffices. However, he did enlist.

[Onlooker]

12. Hero then loses it's meaning

If every soldier is a hero simply for signing up and following orders, how do you distinguish them from a soldier who, for instance, rushes into a burning building to save a child? Our troops are brave, loyal, committed, and so on, but heroism requires acting above and beyond the call of duty in my opinion. In your opinion is a fisherman who dies in a storm automatically a hero because he was trying to bring us food?