Barack Obama first responded to Wesley Clark’s recent comments about John McCain by saying he honored McCain’s past heroism and service to his country and that disparagement of military service was always wrong. Next, his campaign announced he rejected Clark’s statement. Yesterday, he described Clark’s comments as “inartful.”
None of this was good enough for the McCain campaign. They called it attack politics as usual and responded by viciously attacking every Obama surrogate in sight. Clark’s comments, no matter how he subsequently “sugar-coated them,” meant to disparage McCain’s heroism. Jim Webb’s suggestion that McCain ought to “calm down” meant to disparage McCain’s heroism. It is probably only a matter of time before we learn the purpose of Obama’s American flag lapel pin is to disparage McCain’s heroism. McCain’s handlers insists all is being done with “a wink and a nod” from Obama himself.
Personally, I disagree strongly with what Clark said.
I do not dispute the part about how showing courage and fortitude as a soldier in battler is different from exercising command-level judgment and learning from that the judgment. This is simple fact and dovetails nicely with Obama’s own long-standing argument that he displayed superior judgment in opposing the Iraq War that McCain helped authorize President Bush to conduct.
Where I disagree with Clark is his contention that McCain’s experiences as a prisoner of war are “irrelevant” as to how he might conduct himself as Commander-in-Chief. I think they played a major role in shaping McCain’s character and worldview; I really cannot imagine how they could have failed to do so. To that end, they are very much fair game for consideration.
Although McCain has a reputation for public modesty when it comes to talking about his POW experiences, he has not been above pulling them out to his advantage, especially when he sees them as putting critics in their appropriate place. When he ran for a U.S. House seat after living in Arizona for less than a year, some questioned whether he met the state residency requirement. “The longest place I ever lived was Hanoi,” McCain snapped back. The objections faded away.
In this year’s primary season, McCain has become especially fond of relating the story of fellow POW Mike Christian, who stitched together a homemade American flag to which American prisoners said the Pledge of Allegiance daily, despite North Vietnamese jailers severely beating him for doing so. “Mike came from a very poor family,” as McCain likes to tell it. “He didn't own a pair of shoes until he was thirteen years old.”
Charlotte Strong Neal, Christian's wife, admits the tale has grown a bit in the telling. “Every time I see John, I tell him Mike had shoes,” she says demurely. McCain realizes nothing disturbs the prosaic nobility of a hero more than facts.
An Associated Press article of almost exactly one year ago suggests that recalling his military past might be key to John McCain's political success. “Being a POW is at the core of McCain's appeal to voters and talking about it more would help re-invigorate his sagging Presidential bid,” according to Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University.
“But it's not enough to base a Presidential campaign on,” Black fretted. “That's not the part of John McCain that's controversial.” [my emphasis] Perhaps astute McCain handlers recognized that Clark’s valid but sensitive criticisms of McCain could give this issue the fire it previously lacked.
So let us look at McCain’s military service and how it shaped him. He grew up in the shadow of a famous father and grandfather, both of whom were Admirals in the U.S. Navy, the grandfather during World War II and the father eventually rising to become commander of all U.S. forces in Europe and later the Vietnam theater. By his own admission, McCain says he both adulated and resented his father.
The elder McCains were the sort of military men of whom Wesley Clark would approve for Commander-in-Chief. McCain’s story is quite different. He followed the family tradition and entered the U.S. Naval Academy. Once there, he immediately began displaying his famous “maverick streak.” His instructors at the time had other names for it, such as insubordination and stupidly stubborn. Clark was valedictorian of his class at West Point. McCain finished fifth from the bottom at Annapolis.
Once commissioned, he continued his stubborn streak, insisting that his commanding officers did not know how to fight and win a war. However, he was brave and desired to make a name for himself and volunteered for many dangerous missions.
On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying one such mission over Hanoi when a missile hit his Skyhawk dive-bomber at forty-five hundred feet. McCain managed to eject but the force of it knocked him unconscious and broke his right leg and both arms. He parachuted into a lake from which the North Vietnamese pulled him out. A mob quickly gathered on shore. McCain received a bayonet wound to the foot and a rifle butt was smashed against his shoulder.
After transport to Hanoi's main prison, jailers continued beating him for several days before, according to McCain, he called for an officer and agreed to give his captors military information in exchange for transport to a hospital. McCain said he told the North Vietnamese his ship's name, his squadron number, and confirmed his target as the local power plant. This was against the military code of conduct but no one could surely blame him for doing so in his pain and desperation.
By now the North Vietnamese realized they had captured the son of a famous Admiral. They returned him to prison and placed him in solitary confinement for some time. Eventually, they decided it might be good public relations to free him and asked him repeatedly if he wished release. McCain bravely refused this option unless also extended to prisoners held longer then him.
By August of 1968, the North Vietnamese lost interest in any special uses for McCain and brought him to a room where guards and interrogators charged into him, beating and kicking him until he “lay on the floor, bloody, arms and legs throbbing, ribs cracked, several teeth broken off at the gum line.” Next placed on “torture ropes,” McCain held out for several days before eventually breaking down and agreeing to sign a confession that he was a war criminal.
Again, no one could blame him for doing so after such an ordeal. In The Nightingale's Song, McCain describes himself as so ashamed that he attempted suicide but his guards stopped him. His captors placed with other prisoners at this time.
In an interview with ABC News’s Charles Gibson, McCain said that during his captivity he “grew to love America.” Does this mean, as some have claimed of Michelle Obama for a similar comment on her part, that McCain did not love America before? No, I believe that, like Michelle, McCain came to fully understand and appreciate how much he had always loved and been proud of his country. Her revelation was enabled by a dream come true, his by a nightmare realized.
The North Vietnamese held McCain prisoner a total of five and half years. Upon his release, after a period of healing and recuperation, McCain returned to active duty. He assumed command of a training squadron stationed in Florida in 1976. It was an undistinguished squadron but he turned it around eventually helped it win its first Meritorious Unit Commendation. This was McCain’s first and only legitimate example of the command-level experience of which Clark spoke, albeit in a non-combat situation.
Unfortunately, during this same period, McCain began a series of extramarital affairs that resulted in the destruction of his first marriage. He soon re-married but ultimately decided to leave the Navy because he said he realized his career has been too mediocre overall, lacking any major sea commands, to earn him promotion to full Admiral.
So how did all of this ultimately shape John McCain? He was the rebellious son of a distant if not outright estranged father, determined to win recognition, when he was suddenly and unexpectedly hit by the comprehension that terrible people existed in the world that hated both him and his country sufficiently to hurt them. Gee, of what other contemporary GOP politician does McCain’s story remind me?
Some Republicans have characterized McCain as the former military man most ready to be President and Commander-in-Chief since Eisenhower. Yet the defining event of McCain’s military career suggests he equates more closely to a Nazi Holocaust survivor as opposed to a victorious Allied commander.
Make no mistake, McCain’s courage and nobility in the face of imprisonment and torture are heroic and admirable. He was the kind of individual every soldier hopes he would be under similar circumstances. His subsequent political success and ability to rise above the pain and degradation imposed upon him are also admirable but it would be foolish to assume these have not left deep and long-lasting scars.
McCain is foremost a survivor and while that means he has many laudable personal qualities, it offers two very disturbing insights into how he might function as Commander-in-Chief. First, he tends to see every threat as absolute evil to our absolute good. Love of country is a fine thing but absolutes can be dangerous. Second, a survivor seeks to survive at all costs. This works fine on a battlefield but, at some point, it is necessary to weigh national security against our standing in the international community and our moral values.
The downside of being a fighter is a tendency to see everything as a fight. Can we endure a McCain Presidency of further ignoring international law, purposefully antagonizing those who disagree with us, abusing the goodwill of our allies, and pulling down the Constitution and civil rights in the name of exigencies? I argue these are exactly things that will make us less safe in four years than we are today, just as we are less safe today after a similar approach by President Bush than we were pre-September 11.
John McCain is so fearful of the hatred and violence of Islamic extremist terrorists that he lacks the ability to make judgments about Islamic extremism and terrorism in a clearheaded and reliable fashion. I say this clouded judgment is from fear. The poster Thrasymachus argues with me that military matters are the only ones for which McCain has any genuine passion. I do not see those two things as contradictory; fear is a type of passion, after all.
McCain’s fear is completely understandable. If I suffered from nightmares in which bad guys were coming back to put me up on ropes and break my legs again, I would be prone to reactionary responses too. Anybody would. Nevertheless, we do not need our next President to be somebody who is afraid, even somebody who can be a brave and stubborn survivor in spite of their fear. Instead, we need somebody whose judgment can balance risk with opportunity, somebody who can counter fear with the greater bravery of hope in something better as possible.
