McCain's demons
It's okay to be angry. Heck, I remain angry over a number of things that have happened to me over the years. Anger can be a motivating force, or a destructive one. It all depends on what you do with it. And what you CAN do with it.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, was a prisoner-of-war of the North Vietnamese for more than five years. He was a bomber pilot, and was shot down in 1967 on a mission to bomb Hanoi. One thing McCain must address in the coming campaign, either willingly or unwillingly, is how that awful experience--he was tortured--affects him today. Does he harbor grudges against Vietnam and--we learned yesterday--Cuba that could lead him into rash actions against either country? Is he driven to make up for the U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam War by staying in the Iraq War for another five years? Or 10?
I had not heard about McCain's claim that Cuban agents helped torture him in North Vietnam until news stories yesterday about Fidel Castro's published denial of any involvement by Cuban agents. AP says he addressed the issue in his 1999 book, "Faith of Our Fathers," which I'm going to make a note to find and read. Although this does sound like urban legend, it may well have happened. Other former POWs and U.S. government investigations have backed up McCain's story. I take Castro's denial and that of the Vietnamese with a grain of salt. They're worried about dealing with an angry McCain as President of the United States.
But before anyone gets in a dither, we should remember that Cuba and the United States during the period of McCain's imprisonment were in a state of war and remain so today. Cuban participation in harsh interrogations of McCain and other prisoners in distant North Vietnam was reprehensible, but no worse than the torture being carried out by U.S. agents on terrorism suspects at the Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo prisons. Bush flushed away our moral high ground, but that's an issue for another day.
The issue now is McCain and what he will do with his anger if he becomes President. Will he be a statesman and rise above it, or, like Rambo, let it drive him--and us--back to the jungle of everlasting war?