John McCain died Saturday, August 25, 2018. As expected, he is being lauded as a great American hero, is being called a special man, and being praised for his exemplary service to his country. More accolades are forthcoming, and the praise for this man coming out of Washington DC and its complicit media is rather sickening. In many cases, it is coming from the mouths of very suspect and evil political players. This is reprehensible.
Sometimes the truth hurts, but the truth is what matters the most. That is why it is of such great importance for all of us. Hiding from reality is not only shirking responsibility but can be very harmful to what is right and just.
So who was John McCain? Most know the McCain portrayed by the media; that of a war hero shot down in Vietnam only to become a POW in an unpopular war. In fact, that war was nothing more than brutal murder affected against innocent people. Most of his life revolved around this persona, that of his suggested misfortune, of a hero protecting his country, and of bravery in the face of torture and solitary confinement. This false picture of McCain put him in the limelight, helped him in business, and propelled him into a powerful political position for life. None of this was warranted. As I see it, he was a maniacal warmonger with an ego to match.
I am not attempting to analyze the life of John McCain here in these few words or go into any detailed accounting of his crimes, but only to unmask the false caricature of him portrayed by most of the media pundits. There is ample time now to expose the real John McCain, and to shed light on the dishonest eulogizing and glorification of this man so rampant in the news today.
McCain was a POW, and deserved that fate in my opinion. Unlike those young men forced into war by conscription, McCain voluntarily chose to murder the Vietnamese from high in the skies where he was not forced to see the heinous nature of his actions. For his efforts, he was shot down, captured, and held as a prisoner. There is much speculation about his time during capture, but we may never know the truth concerning all that happened while a prisoner. But what happened after his release is much more telling than his so-called heroism as a POW.
There is an enormous amount of evidence that McCain used his political power to hide the fact that prisoners held in Vietnam after the war did not exist. In other words, he purposely abandoned them. He gutted legislation meant to help prisoners, and he made ineffective the “Truth Bill” which would have made transparent the plight of missing prisoners of war. He did this by drafting his own bill, the “McCain Bill,” which created a bureaucratic wall that blocked most documents that could have been released. Why would he do this? What was he attempting to hide? What was his motive?
John McCain had a checkered history of corruption, lying, and scandal. Regardless of his transgressions, he seemed always to escape mostly unscathed. Consider the Savings and Loan debacle and its consequences for so many. McCain was the most blameworthy of the Keating Five in my opinion, but he used his POW status and the media to not only get out of harm’s way, but to save his political career in the process. These are not the actions of an honest man.
No one in Congress was more committed to war than John McCain. His position concerning war and killing was constant throughout his life. His dedication to war was beyond that of most brutal dictators, but his position as a U.S. Senator allowed him to be praised here at home for behavior that would be condemned anywhere else in the world. Hypocrisy at this level is disturbing to say the least.
So who can forget the frivolous nature of his call for war when he laughingly sang “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran? That kind of outburst by McCain should not have been surprising, given that he was the consummate warmonger. He promoted aggressive war over his lifetime in countries including Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Kuwait, Libya, and Mali, among many others, and of course supported the war in Vietnam where he slaughtered innocents without remorse.
John McCain was no war hero, he was a war criminal. He was never a savior of “American values”, nor was he compassionate in life or politics. He had a violent temper, he was unmoving in his taste for killing, and he was corrupt. If the timing of this criticism seems harsh, so be it. The truth should not be foreign to us, especially now.
Lauding an unscrupulous politician upon his death, even as a simple matter of “respect,” is a deceitful practice clouded in lies. Without truth, more deceit follows, and more lies become evident. Honesty is the only proper way forward, so all should know the real John McCain.
