I've noticed a somewhat disturbing trend among my fellow Democrats, one that concerns me not just as a partisan, but as an American as well. That is, the propensity to impugn the integrity of John McCain with regard to his military service to this country. And perhaps more alarmingly, the frequency with which such underhanded criticism occurs.
I've heard some from my party characterize his time as a prisoner of war as a liability to his mental capacity today. I've heard others question the legitimacy of his account of his stay in Hanoi.
And truthfully, I'm appalled. Four years ago, we had a name for that kind of attack: we called it swiftboating.
I won't vote for John McCain, but I won't slander him either. His service to this nation is among the finest of any in history. After four years at the US Naval Academy, he was commissioned as an ensign and sent to flight school. After graduation, he survived two plane crashes and a collision with electrical wires. In 1967, while sitting in his A-4 fighter aboard the USS Forrestal, a missile mistakenly fired from across the flight deck struck his fuel tank, and set of a fire that resulted in the deaths of 134 sailors aboard. McCain was able to extract himself from the cockpit just 45 seconds before his plane exploded, being struck in the leg and chest by shrapnel. Nonetheless, McCain attempted to help other pilots escape from the flames. Still, he went back to work.
It was later that year that his Skyhawk was shot down over Hanoi. His arm and leg broken, McCain nearly drowned when he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake, before he was captured, his shoulder crushed with the butt of a rifle, he was stabbed with a bayonet, and beaten into unconsciousness by Viet Cong. He was transported to Hoa Loa Prison, where he was again beaten and questioned, and denied medical care until his interrogators discovered that his father was a high-ranking Admiral. Over the next several months, McCain averted the death that both his fellow prisoners and captors were certain was imminent. The 5'7 McCain lost 50 pounds. In March 1968, McCain was put in solitary confinement, where he would remain for two years. The North Vietnamese offered to release him when his father was named commander of all US forces in Vietnam. The younger McCain refused, citing the "first in, first out" policy for prisoners in the military code of honor, and not wanting the Viet Cong to use his release as a propaganda tool to display their generosity and engender international sympathy.
The beatings for McCain continued, increasing in frequency to three times per week. He was tortured, his shoulders broken, rendering him unable to raise his arms above his head for the rest of his life. When pressed for the names of his commanding officers, he recited the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. The torture continued.
All told, he spent five and a half years as a prisoner of war. When he returned, his body was crippled. His hair had permanently turned white. But for seven years, he remained in the service. And after that, he ran for Congress, seeking to serve his country in a different way. It is for that lifetime of service that I am grateful to John McCain.
The reason McCain will not have my vote come November has nothing to do with his service in uniform. Rather, I won't vote for John McCain because I think he'll initiate free trade policies that will open the floodgate for American jobs to be shipped to South America and Asia.
I won't vote for John McCain because I believe he'll extend the very tax cuts that he voted against to appease his Republican base, further bankrupting the middle and working classes.
I won't vote for John McCain because his attitude toward the housing crisis is to deny that it exists. And as we plummet toward the worst recession since the Great Depression, I believe he'll wait until too many American families have lost their homes, their farms, and their businesses to actually involve the body charged with the responsibility to "promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
I won't vote for John McCain because his honesty was called into question with the Keating Five Scandal back in the 1980s, and he won't answer a single question about it today.
I won't vote for John McCain because I fear that the guarantees of personal liberty so eloquently outlined by Mr. Jefferson when he penned our Constitution, will continue to be burdened by the Patriot Act.
I won't vote for John McCain because as Justice John Paul Stevens nears the end of his tenure on the Court, he'll be replaced by someone whose judicial philosophy more closely reflects that of Antonin Scalia. I fear that the rightist Court will make a mockery of the establishment clause, due process, the implied right to privacy, and every single piece of the Bill of Rights that have shaped this nation's history.
But most of all, I won't vote for John McCain because I believe, in my heart of hearts, that he will precipitously engage Iran militarily, and that regional warfare will be inevitable. The ensuing fallout from such an attack will initiate a downward spiral that may very well bring about a third world war. Unrest in Iran would spill into an already unstable Iraq, galvanizing the ethnic factions and causing the collapse of the fledgling central government. The destabilization will mean open season on Israel, and when the first shot is fired on the Gaza Strip, all hell will break loose. Lebanon will become involved. Syria will jump in. Turkey may seize upon the opportunity to make a play for Kurdistan. And while pro-western rulers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates struggle to stay out of it, the United States and most of Europe will scramble to quell the violence and keep the warring nations at bay. And if China sends so much as a rifle to an anti-American belligerent, the pressure will mount on Russia, whose memories of communism and dictatorship are too fresh and too palpable to guarantee their commitment to peace with the Western world.
It is for these reasons that I don't think you- or any American- should vote for John McCain: because the four years into which he'll lead our country will be worse than the previous eight. Not because he spent 20 years in service to our nation. Some Democrats will wail that people are duped into voting for McCain because he's a war hero. But while his military service is no reason to cast a vote for the man, it's no reason to deny it to him, either.
It's my hope that my party will refrain from this dastardly kind of attack. Republicans have descended to that level of gutter politics all too many times. Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) did it when he questioned the patriotism and service of Max Cleland, a man who became a triple amputee when the grenade he tried to keep from killing his men detonated and cost him an arm and both legs. George Bush did it when he swiftboated John Kerry, a man who courage and valor earned him a silver star and a purple heart. And in the midst of that debacle, do you remember who came to Kerry's defense to condemn the attack? It was John McCain.
And my fellow Democrats, we're better than that.
