I would have preferred that John McCain’s pow service was not politicized. President Trump said that Senator McCain wasn’t a hero. That is probably true, if one is comparing a p.o.w. that did not escape with medal of honor recipients.
Suffering in the Hanoi Hilton was very bad. Being a captive and remaining when relief was possible is wierd. McCain’s father was technically in charge of the naval theatre of war in that portion of the Pacific. He was exceedingly powerful and possibly hated by some of the draftees. John’s aircraft was destroyed on the deck of the Forrestal by another aircraft’s missile that hit it, and more than a hundred sailors died. John was made a liason in Vietnam for some time after the incident the requested to go aboard a carrier again.
He went quickly on a mission he didn’t need to, flew too low and was shot down by a missile that no one else saw, and broke his jaw evacuating the aircraft. He remained in captivity went he could have returned to duty. He saw duty as being a captive for encouragement of his fellow captives or to resist being made a propaganda tool? The entire paradigm has an amorphous nature about it, yet unit cohesion is important and so not going a.w.o.l from his unit as a p.o.w. may have been his point.
President Trump tends to see things in black and white, or at least doesn’t say things in nuanced terms. So one may easily understand how ‘p.o.w.’ isn’t doesn’t share equal weight in valor with those that were awarded medals of honor. Heroic personal conduct in captivity is disqualified implicitly from the President’s objective standards. L.B.J. awarded many of the 260 medals of honor that were given in the Vietnam War. Probably none went to p.o.w.s. maybe a new medal for valor while a captive could be invented by Democrats.
I am not a combat vet. The Cold War ended while I was a reservist followed by the Velvet Revolution.Peace was victory for me. In other words I prefer a Reagan kind of military preparedness that transitions into peace and prosperity instead of perennial blood and guts, death and hell-for-others.
Being a p.o.w. in some respects is worse that simply being killed in action. tens of thousands of Americans were killed in action and received nothing more than a purple heart. For those that have experienced the worst end of killing fields and human depravity, one need be understanding, so much so that one doesn’t necessarily accept values that may or may not reflect the best interests of the nation. My father was a four year naval veteran of the Second World War and he never talked about that war at all. There’s was the greatest generation.
The medal of honor recipients tend to say that they are wearing the medal representatively for all those that served in an action. They are almost entirely humble. Sgt. Roy Benevidez for example, or Kenneth Stumpf each were awarded medals for valor and neither was a p.o.w.
Kenneth Stumpf actually made a joke that he relates in a video describing the action. Someone had explained to him before he got the medal and was still in Vietnam that a c.m.h. meant ‘casket metal handle’. so when he overheard someone saying “that guy is getting the cmh” and realized they were talking about him, his first thought was…
No comments:
Post a Comment