The Republican presidential candidate John Sidney McCain III is a con man. The term “con man” comes from “confidence man,” an individual who swindles his victim by first gaining the mark’s trust. Having nothing to do with the word convict, a prisoner, nowadays, the term “con man” refers to anyone who is all about deceit and lies, it is about passing fiction for reality, or inventing a myth to bolster one’s image. John McCain is a “com man” extraordinaire: his Vietnam War legacy as accepted by supporters, the media and even his sheepish opponents is not what it seems.
McCain fancies himself as war hero. His supporters do not waste any moment to remind the public that he was an ex-POW (prisoner of war), who spent time at the “Hanoi Hilton,” the infamous Hoa Lo Prison, where the North Vietnamese held the American prisoners of war. A naval aviator by training, in 1967 McCain was shut down over North Vietnam while on his 23rd bombing mission. It is claimed that he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi, losing consciousness. After coming-to, its is said, his captors pulled him ashore, another crushed his shoulder with a rifle butt, while another bayoneted him. The North Vietnamese, the myth goes, refused to treat him for his wounds until they found out that he was the son of an American admiral. He was released in 1973.
While in captivity, McCain claims, he experienced episodes of torture, giving the impression that his visible infirmity and “scars” that he boasts came from mistreatment at the hands of his captors. McCain’s war hero-bubble is further puffed by claims of his turning down the North Vietnamese offer to return him to the United States. McCain has defended that refusal on two grounds. First, he did not think it appropriate for him to be released out-of-sequence, when there were so many others who had been captured ahead of him. Second, because he was the son of an American admiral, McCain claims he did not wish to become part of North Vietnamese publicity stunt, whereby American would look like favoring the sons of its elite over the soldiers from common backgrounds.
Both of these justifications are shallow underpinnings for any claim to righteousness or extraordinary valor. A common perception among folks familiar with military matters is that a prisoner of war’s first duty is to escape so he can re-join his command. McCain could have accepted the North Vietnamese offer of early release and get back in the air or serve the United States war effort in some other capacity. Instead, he chose to continue his sojourn at the Hanoi Hilton, perhaps not wishing to stare death in the face a second time. The bit about not wanting his out-of-sequence repatriation being to be part of any North Vietnamese publicity stunt is utter nonsense. An ideological adversary like North Vietnam would have not released McCain at the risk of it being viewed as acting contrary to its egalitarian dogma. If North Vietnam wanted to impress the American public, it would have repatriated out-of-sequence the sons of ordinary Americans.
One picture from the times of McCain’s captivity showed him stretched out on a bed or cot, reading a book. The Hanoi Hilton indeed! It probably was no picnic for McCain and other POWs. But those were also times when the Geneva Conventions mattered. The world was decades away from the atrocities and systematized torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison, Guantanamo, and at CIA-operated rendition and detention centers. While McCain’s “war wounds” have left him with lifelong physical limitations, the fact is that he received them not from the enemy.
A married man, a gentleman or an officer McCain was not. In April 1979, McCain met Cindy Lou Hensley, a well-to-do former beauty queen and 18 years his junior. After a brief courtship with Cindy, McCain asked his first wife for a divorce, which became final in April 1980. In May 1980 Cindy married her trophy man and McCain his trophy bride, who would bankroll his next career. In 1981 McCain retired from active military duty, moved to Arizona and entered politics, a profession as equally deceptive as advertising or marketing of products and services, or wartime propaganda for that matter.
The casting of McCain as a “maverick” too is an act of deception: Occasional difference with the party line or personages does not a maverick make. McCain’s values are solidly conservative Republican, unabashed and unapologetic, as are those of his running mate, Sarah Plain, also a former beauty queen and go-getter and 28 years his junior. She too is being touted as a “maverick,” which is really a euphemism for a strong-headed person usually incapable of getting along or working with others. Nevertheless, McCain’s self-afflicted brand of “maverick” finds a cozy connection with Harry Truman whose middle initial too was “S.” It is no coincidence that on the day of her unveiling as the Republican candidate for Vice President, Palin should refer repeatedly to her future boss as “John S. McCain.”
Recently, the Boston Globe ran documentary piece in which McCain was described as fiery, intemperate person who was also a womanizer while still married to his first wife Carol (“Taking Command – The McCain Way,” Boston Sunday Globe, Aug. 31, pp A1 and 14A). In the same issue, the Globe had an article describing Palin level best efforts to her adulterous brother-in-law fired from his job because he displayed a temper (“Longstanding family feud in Alaska embroils Palin,” Boston Sunday Globe, Aug. 31, page A11). By Plain’s own code of conduct, therefore, John McCain should have been fired form the Navy for cheating on his wife and having a bad temper.
While McCain was resting his weary bones and nursing his wounds, another American was slogging it in the swamps and jungles of Vietnam, not from the comfort of his cockpit but in waist high water and on dry land, in midst of ambushes and firefights.
John Fitzgerald Kerry joined the United States Naval Reserve in 1966, during his last year at Yale. After graduation, Kerry joined the Navy and served until 1970. On his first tour of duty in Vietnam, in 1968, Kerry was an ensign on the guided missile frigate, which for the most part was on rescue mission in the Gulf of Tonkin, plucking downed aviators. Later that year Kerry went into training for swift boat duty, to patrol the rivers and waterways. As it turned out, on his second your in Vietnam, Kerry would come to lead swift boat contingent that saw much action on the rivers and on land, face to face with the enemy. Suffice it to say, for his second tour in Vietnam, Kerry received the Silver Star (for valor in the face of the enemy), Bronze Star (for bravery and acts of merit), and three Purple Hearts (for being wounded). His tour ended in March 1969 and year later he left the Navy in order to run for the U.S. Congress, continuing however as a Naval reserve until 1978.
Kerry and his first wife, Julia Throne, were married in 1970. They divorced in 1988. He first met his current wife, Theresa Heinz, at a rally in 1990. At the time, she was married to H. John Heinz III, a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and heir to the Heinz fortune. Theresa Heinz and Kerry did not meet again until 1992. By then, her husband had died in a plane crash in 1991 and she was now the heir to her husband’s fortune. Kerry and Heinz married in 1995.
One of the major differences between this year’s presidential race and the last one is the almost god-like reverence and deference that the Democratic candidate and establishment show toward McCain’s military service. Whereas just four years earlier the Republican machine savaged Kerry’s military record, unjustifiably, no question is being raised about McCain’s as if the man and his myth are beyond doubt. It is time to unveil the indolent war-hero and expose him for the cowardly farce that he is.
