[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] What's So Heroic?

Thu Sep 4 03:46:35 MDT 2008

About Being Shot Down While Bombing Innocent Civilians

by Liliana Segura

AlterNet (August 21 2008)

This post originally appeared in PEEK's blog.

Confession: I have not yet read all six (short, illustrated, large type)
chapters of Mike's Election Guide 2008, Michael Moore's, latest work of
jaunty political opinion. Am I supposed to discuss it with him on "Meet
the Bloggers" tomorrow? Yes. But I'm not worried. It's a breezy read,
has already made me laugh out loud, and besides, I may have already
found the best part in Chapter One.

The title is "Ask Mike!" and, in it, ordinary voters, old and young,
pose questions about politics and current events. Some are more serious
than others ("If Iran has weapons of mass destruction, we should invade,
right?"), which does not make Moore's answers any more subtle.
("Excuuuuuse me? Did you say the words, 'weapons of mass destruction'?
Take it back. I SAID TAKE IT BACK!") Of course, the "questions" are
really satirical jabs at the media - "When a Republican wears a little
American flag lapel pin, what is he trying to say?" "If Obama can't
bowl, can he govern?" - but there's one in particular that is worth
paying attention to - especially if you happen to be a member of the
press and have been utterly unwilling to take McCain's supporters and
opponents alike to task for perpetuating a narrative that would be
central to a McCain victory, and which has already become a dominant
theme in this election: The McCain as War Hero canard.

The "question" is posted thusly:

"Why did the Vietnamese shoot down John McCain and put him in prison for
five years? He seems like such a nice guy".

ANSWER: I'm guessing, in spite of his anger management issues, he is a
nice guy. He has devoted his life to this country. He was willing to
make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our nation. And for that,
he was tortured and then imprisoned in a North Vietnamese POW camp for
nearly five-and-a-half years.

That's the set-up. It gets better. Moore proceeds, not to question, as
Wesley Clark recently did to so many shrieks of criticism, whether
McCain's capture really makes him qualified to be president of the
United States - the answer, any thinking person realizes, is "no" - but
whether the Vietnam war was a conflict that can really be said to have
produced the breed of "American hero" McCain is so often celebrated as.

"Sadly", he writes, "McCain's sacrifice had nothing to do with
protecting the United States. He was sent to Vietnam along with hundreds
of thousands of others in an attempt to prop up what was essentially an
American colony, South Vietnam, which was being run by a dictator whom
we installed."

Lest we forget, the Vietnam War represented a mass slaughter by the
United States government on a scale that sought to rival our genocide of
the Native Americans. The US Armed Forces killed more than two million
civilians in Vietnam (and perhaps another million in Laos and Cambodia).
The Vietnamese had done nothing to us. They had not bombed or invaded or
even sought to murder a single American. President Johnson and the
Pentagon lied to Congress in order to get a vote passed to put the war
in full gear. Only two senators had the guts to vote "no".

But the parallel between Iraq and Vietnam is not the only point Moore is
making. He makes it personal.

John McCain flew 23 bombing missions over North Vietnam in a campaign
called Operation Rolling Thunder. During this bombing campaign, which
lasted for almost 44 months, US forces flew 307,000 attack sorties,
dropping 643,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam (roughly the same
tonnage dropped in the Pacific during all of World War II). Though the
stated targets were factories, bridges, and power plants, thousands of
bombs also fell on homes, schools, and hospitals. In the midst of the
campaign, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara estimated that we were
killing 1,000 civilians a week. That's more than one 9/11 every single
month - for 44 months.

What's not heroic about that? Is it any wonder all politicians speaking
in public about John McCain are required to preface their remarks with a
fawning admiration for his war service?

Alas, McCain does have some regrets about Vietnam. As Moore points out,
in his memoir Faith of Our Fathers (Random House, 1999), McCain called
it "illogical" and "senseless" that he was limited to bombing only
military targets.

"I do believe", McCain wrote, "that had we taken the war to the North
and made full, consistent use of air power in the North, we ultimately
would have prevailed".

In other words, McCain believes we could have won the Vietnam War had he
been able to drop even more bombs.

When McCain was shot down, on October 26 1967, he was busy bombing what
he would describe as a "heavily populated part of Hanoi".

What follows is a a rather entertaining passage in which Moore then asks
what you would do to a man who "fell out of the sky" after dropping
bombs on you or your children. But the most important question comes at
the end:

John McCain is already using the Vietnam War in his political ads. In
doing so, it makes not just what happened to him in Vietnam fair game
for discussion, but also what he did to the Vietnamese ... I would like
to see one brave reporter during the election season ask this simple
question of John McCain: "Is it morally right to drop bombs and missiles
in a 'heavily populated' area where hundreds, if not thousands, of
civilians will perish?"

Of course, no member of the "mainstream" media is going to ask John
McCain that question. (And given his famous quips on "Bomb-bomb-bomb-ing
Iran" or, when asked to comment on the US exporting cigarettes to the
country, on the speculation that "Maybe that's a way of killing them",
the answer may be too disturbing to bear.) Regardless, this is the same
press that obligingly calls McCain a "maverick" and McCain's campaign
bus the "Straight-talk Express". Going after his war hero credentials?
Why, that would be ... un-American.

Luckily, in the absence of an effective media - or one that takes its
cues from Michael Moore - there are some people who are uniquely
qualified to ask tough questions about the war hero John McCain, and
they can't all be considered "surrogates" for Barack Obama. One of them
is a man named Phillip Butler, who, on AlterNet today, has an article
whose point, really, is laid out in the title:

"I Spent Years as a POW with John McCain, and His Finger Should Not Be
Near the Red Button"

Originally published on Military.com, it's a scathing, point-by-point
indictment of McCain that punctures the war hero mythology he has so
successfully insulated himself in.

It is part fact-check ("Was he tortured for five years? No. He was
subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first two years, from
September of 1967 to September of 1969"), part much-needed perspective
("Because John's father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater,
he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have
now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW's suffered
similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for
political propaganda"). But perhaps its most compelling characteristic
is that it is written by a former POW of a misbegotten war, who has seen
the death and destruction firsthand, and who is fearful of what McCain
would do as commander in chief. "I can verify that John has an infamous
reputation for being a hot head. He has a quick and explosive temper
that many have experienced first hand. Folks, quite honestly that is not
the finger I want next to that red button."

Now that's a quote. Maybe it's time for a new three am ad.

Liliana Segura is a staff writer and editor of AlterNet's Rights and
Liberties and War on Iraq Special Coverage.

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/95906/

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