Being a POW Does Not Make a Good President

Posted on August 28, 2008 in Campaign 2008

To hear John McCain tell it, he was the only resident of the Hanoi Hilton from 1967 to 1972. Or maybe the only one who was tortured — for the entire period! Phillip Butler became a resident in 1965. And for 4 1/2 years, he endured the kind of torture that John McCain endured for two years. Being a POW, Butler tells us, isn’t a solitary activity, but one which the 600 residents of the Hanoi Hilton went through together:

John McCain served his time as a POW with great courage, loyalty and tenacity. More that 600 of us did the same. After our repatriation a census showed that 95% of us had been tortured at least once. The Vietnamese were quite democratic about it. There were many heroes in North Vietnam. I saw heroism every day there. And we motivated each other to endure and succeed far beyond what any of us thought we had in ourselves. Succeeding as a POW is a group sport, not an individual one. We all supported and encouraged each other to survive and succeed. John knows that. He was not an individual POW hero. He was a POW who surmounted the odds with the help of many comrades, as all of us did.

I furthermore believe that having been a POW is no special qualification for being President of the United States. The two jobs are not the same, and POW experience is not, in my opinion, something I would look for in a presidential candidate. (Italics mine.)

Butler goes on to characterize McCain as anything but a moderate Republican but a man of the extreme right and temperamental: “that is not the finger I want next to that red button.”

As Joe Biden pointed out, McCain has been WRONG on every foreign policy gambit the US has made in the last eight years. His opponent, who knows a great deal about foreign policy despite the claims of the sound bites drooling from McCain’s rabid mouth, has been right. The months to come should expose Mean John McCain for the extremist that he is (one of his policy advisers insists that every American is insured!).

In the meantime, reflect on John McCain’s treatment of others who have served in our country’s armed forces. He has not been there when they needed his vote for better veterans’ benefits and he has voted to keep them in the Middle East in a war that the majority of them don’t believe in. In McCain’s mind, it appears, the only POW experience out of the 600 at the Hanoi Hilton, which counts is his own and the only American hero (8 residents of the Hanoi Hilton won the Medal of Honor but McCain was not among them) is himself.

We need a president for all the people — veterans and nonveterans alike. And that is Barack Obama.

[tags]campaign 2008, Mean John McCain, POW, Hanoi Hilton[/tags]