From a secured airbase, pilots dont see the casualties of war. And it is a good thing. If they actually sawand smelled and inhaled the results of a napalm run on innocent civilians, they'd have a mental breakdown. Fact is that bombs kill women, children, mice, pets, old men, and sometimes a combatant, often however a friendly. And they keep killing children long after the war is over and the pilots are home snug in their beds. Pilots are hermetically sealed from the human perspective of war. To them it's a video game. McCain's rhetoric displays it every time he opens his mouth on the subject. He was brutalized, and he survived. But he joined the service for glory, daddy and granddaddy did and all the boys and girls back home cheered. McCain has been feeding from the silver spoon since birth. And his sons continue the tradition. I'd like to see more swabbies who are proven leaders in the military sent to the academy instead of these spoiled rich boys with their convictions of entitlement.

McCain flew low-level bombing runs over the North. Bombing runs by fighters required low-level flight because precision weapons were not in wide use and iron bombs have zero accuracy (well, maybe 0.01%) from 30,000 feet. He was low enough to identify SAM missiles on the decks cargo ships, and there are plenty of jet fighter pilots who actually saw the men manning the AAA guns shooting at them. Hermetically sealed my ass.

An A-4 pilot in Vietnam had a completely different experience from an F-117 pilot in Desert Storm.

The original poster knows zilch about war. It's interesting how civilians imagine this huge gaping hole between aircrew and ground troops when none exists. Considering that only a small fraction of any servicemen are in direct contact with the enemy, pilots and combat arms troops have more in common than the infantryman and a supply clerk.

This "pilots view war like a video game" business has got to stop. I'm a pilot. It's not a video game. Maybe it feels like that to someone watching FLIR video on the news, but it's not.

One of McCain's sons enlisted in the Marines as an infantryman. Another is at the Naval Academy. Sounds more like a tradition of selfless service than a tradition of "silver spoons."