Senator John McCain is dead. Many are praising him today and saluting him anew as a war hero. While I disagree with such sentiments, as a humanist I will not respond with hateful slurs against him personally. Hopefully, again as a humanist, I may manage to reflect upon his legacy with compassion and a measure of forgiveness. But I feel compelled to respond to the widespread praise afforded him during the course of his career and again now following his death.
Tributes to Senator McCain were first awarded due to his imprisonment in (North) Vietnam after his plane was shot down during Operation Rolling Thunder. McCain was then an Air Force pilot. He had flown multiple missions and had bombed targets within the North. None of those praising his heroism during captivity reflect honestly upon his bombing missions prior to being shot down. Yet thousands of innocent Vietnamese civilians were killed by such bombing. The history of the Vietnam conflict is now well understood. We should all condemn the US role in the war and the extensive bombing campaign.
The Vietnam war, which the US conducted reputedly in defense of democracy, was an injustice from the outset. France had held Indochina as a colony prior to WWII. The French abandoned the colony at the outbreak of war. Ho Chi Minh led a national resistance movement during the war against Japanese occupation. (Yes, he was connected with the international communist movement, but he also received support from the US during the war years.) Following the war the French felt entitled to return to Indochina and resume their colonial rule. They were indeed supported in their effort by the US, despite the prevailing trend toward national liberation. The result was the French-Vietnamese war which ended in the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The war ended with a treaty signed in Geneva whereby the French troops would depart. The country was to be temporarily divided for a period of two years following which national elections would be held to unify the country. Those elections were never held. By all accounts the political party headed by Ho would have won in a landslide. However, the elections were cancelled by a corrupt South Vietnam regime with the support of the US. Later the US became increasingly involved through escalations by Kennedy and Johnson against the democratic will of the people of a Vietnam.
McCain and other airmen and soldiers accepted their roles. Some will say they were simply following orders. Others will say that at the time the full knowledge of events had yet to become commonly known. But what about the Geneva Conventions? The whole point is that soldiers and citizens have a responsibility to defy orders, when necessary. The bombing of North Vietnam was an historical injustice if not an outright crime. Again, even though some will insist that the historical judgment was not yet available, the enormous damage and loss of innocent lives due to the bombing should have been perfectly clear to the pilots involved. Pity that Yossarian was absent from the missions. Perhaps he might have convinced the squadrons to drop their bombs in the Gulf of Tonkin rather than on a poor farming village to reduce the natural foliage as well as the village to ashes. John McCain chose to accept his mission. He repeatedly bombed civilian targets before his plane was shot down.
During his career in Congress McCain continued to support military adventurism. It seems he never had regrets or second thoughts. He was unquestionably one of the key supporters, if not one of the architects, of the ‘modern’ war strategy where the US uses air power and bombing to achieve political goals. This strategy is the logical consequence of the bombing campaign conducted in Vietnam from 1965 through the end of the war. The strategy is now enhanced by the myth of precision bombing with limited ‘collateral damage.’ Yet it remains an immoral practice, if not a war crime. Representatives in Congress, like John McCain, never raise objection. They all seem to unquestioningly support the corporate goals of an unchecked military industrial establishment clothed in the continuing slogan that we are supporting democracy internationally. And the Press and Media fail to exercise their true mandate; to investigate and report the facts. Rather they have chosen to embed themselves with the military. Those embedded media outlets now praise Senator McCain as a war hero. The facts tell different story.
