Robert L. Terrell

General Wesley Clark’s recent commentary regarding Republican Presidential candidate John McCain is accurate and entirely appropriate. The truth of the matter is that the General was correct when he asserted that getting shot down in a fighter jet over Vietnam is not sufficient to qualify one to be President of the United Sates. The point to be understood is that the “war hero” status that McCain has shamelessly milked for the past couple decades is, from my perspective, unseemly and inappropriate.

I have been struck over the years by the manner in which McCain has used his alleged victimhood in order to present himself as a superior person, possessing wisdom beyond that available to those of us who have not worn the uniform and murdered other human beings in the name of imperial patriotism. The folly inherent in Senator McCain’s gruesome posturing is readily apparent when one considers contemporary relations between the United States and Vietnam. For example, the escalating flow of people, goods and services between the two nations expose the ridiculous nature of the horrific war, and the misbegotten reasons why the United States waged it in the first place.

To his credit, in recent years Senator McCain has played a high profile role in helping establish peaceful, normal ties between the United States and Vietnam. But unfortunately, his reckless and poorly conceived support for similar murderous assaults in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that he has learned little about the savage nature of imperial warfare, and the manner in which such crimes destroy the basic humanity of those who wage them. As a result, those who assert that Senator McCain’s mentality is still stuck in Vietnam, and that he is still metaphorically fighting that particular war, are essentially correct.

I have never met Senator John McCain, and there is scant possibility that I ever will. But if I do, I will ask him how many Vietnamese people he thinks he killed from the relative safety of his fighter jet while flying far above their heads. Assuming he answers the question, I will then ask why he considers himself more civilized and noble than the Vietnamese, who could have killed him at any moment during the five years he was held as a prisoner of war had they so desired. Finally, I will ask why he considers it appropriate for the Bush administration to engage in routine torture of prisoners at the same time he claims every good opportunity to excoriate the Vietnamese for torturing him and his fellow prisoners of war.

In the interim, I salute General Wesley Clark for getting it right regarding Senator McCain’s effort to acquire access to the oval office, and thereby set in motion policies that may well bog the U.S. down in additional criminal assaults on other poor nations of color for the next 100 years.