UPDATED August 27, 2018 to include farewell letter, Hanoi tributes and his apology for using an ethnic slur.
"AND THERE'S the monument to one of your senators, John McCain," said the tour guide on a bus tour of Hanoi. By the time I got out my camera, we were way past the monument. Too late for a proper picture. Sitting in the back of the bus, I did glimpse a sculpture of man hanging by his arms.
I guess, the tour I was on didn't want to dwell on the torture of the man who would become a U.S. senator and an American icon. His 5 and one-half years in Hanoi led to his 36 years representing Arizona in the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate.
Today, flowers and other tributes lay at the base of the sculpture in Hanoi placed there by the Vietnamese and other admirers.
It tells you the measure of the man that after being tortured by the North Vietnamese guards for all those years, so much so that both his arms had been broken so that after his captivity and release, he could no longer raise his arms above his shoulders to simply comb his hair. he led the effort in the Congress to repair relations between the U.S. and Vietnam.
In his first campaign for the presidency in 2000, it came to light that McCain freely used the racial slur "gooks" to refer to his Vietnamese captors, but then doubled-down on his use of the racist term by stating that he thought it was an appropriate term for those who had tortured him. He tried to clarify that he used the term in reference to his prison guards, not an entire race.
Needless to say, his use of the term caused a minor uproar among Asian Americans. “I hated the gooks, and I will hate them for as long as I live,” McCain told reporters as his campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, rolled through South Carolina. “Every single one of my POW friends, that’s what we called them.”
In the face of mounting criticism, primarily from leaders of Asian American organizations because mostly white mainstream media didn't think the slur merited their attention, the candidate on Feb. 21 issued a statement declaring that, “I will no longer use the term that has caused such discomfort. I deeply regret any pain I may have caused by my choice of words.”
"There is no reason for me to hold a grudge or anger," McCain told C-Span about visiting Hanoi. "There's certainly some individual guards who were very cruel and inflicted a lot of pain on me and others but there's certainly no sense in me hating the Vietnamese ... I hold no ill will toward them."
At the news of McCain's death last night, my thoughts turned a blog posting, "Profiles in Disappointment," I put up a couple of years ago,. In that posting, I wondered what had happened to the "maverick" senator who voted for what he thought was best for the country, politics be damned. His reputation was that he always put country first, but in recent years, he seemed to talk a good game but when the vote came, he eventually sided with the Republican leadership.
McCain showed his independence from the GOP loyalists numerous times. Three stick out in my mind.
One of McCain's shining moments occurred during his 2008 campaign against Sen. Barack Obama, McCain was speaking at one of his rallies when one of his supporters tells him that she doesn't trust Sen Obama and insists that the Illinois Democrat is an Arab.
Before she could finish her sentence, McCain shook his head and took the microphone away from her and politely defended his Democratic rival.
“No, ma’am," said McCain. "He’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign issue is all about,” he said, prompting applause from some other audience members at the gathering in Minnesota.
 |
SCREEN CAPTURE C-SPAN
Senator John McCain defended Huma Abedin, a Muslim American aide to Hillary Clinton. |
The second instance occurred in 2012, McCain on took to the Senate floor to defend Huma Abedin, a top aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He blasted five fellow Republicans who have questioned Abedin's loyalty to the U.S. and alleged she has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The allegations against Abedin, a Muslim American, are an “unwarranted and unfounded attack on an honorable woman, a dedicated American, and a loyal public servant,” said McCain.
“I know Huma to be an intelligent, upstanding, hard-working, and loyal servant of our country and our government, who has devoted countless days of her life to advancing the ideals of the nation she loves and looking after its most precious interests,” said McCain,in his floor speech.
“Put simply, Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully,” McCain added.
Those two instances raised my opinion of the Arizona senator so that feeling dopped drastically after Trump appeared to win the election. That's when McCain began his futile campaign to change the GOP from within. That's why I was crestfallen when I thought McCain was all talk and when crunchtime came, he would vote with Trump supporters.
in McCain prompted that post expressing my disappointment
I disagreed with McCain on many issues, but I never doubted that he always put our country first. I wanted the "maverick" back to stand up for what's right and good for the country. The third instance happened in dramatic fashion when he voted thumb down against Trumpcare and for the continuation of Obamacare in that late night vote caught on camera.
Since he was diagnosed with brain cancer a little more than a year ago, McCain has been more outspoken about the Trump administration. Perhaps he knew that his time was limited and there was no longer a need to think long-term or the next election. The return of the maverick was welcomed. In today's political climate, we need more
Even when the end was near, McCain was still working to unite our country against the current White House occupant. He left specific instructions that for his eulogy, former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
He left behind a final letter to the American letter, perhaps to help us get through our current malaise fostered by the administration. He wrote, in part:
To be connected to America’s causes — liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people — brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
'Fellow Americans' — that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and great power in the process.
We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of our ideals, rather than trust them to be the great force for change they’ve always been.
McCain concluded:
Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history. We make history.
_______________________________________________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment