Some Straight Talk for John "POW" McCain

(Originally posted on DailyKos)

Congratulations, John McCain. You have managed to turn an act of strength and bravery 40 years ago into an emblem of your shame and cowardice today.

There are thousands of soldiers who have suffered as POWs, but you don't hear them trying to hide behind their suffering to avoid taking responsibility for a mistake. You don't hear them claiming that their experience entitles them to being hired for a job.

Even more than that, there are literally millions of Americans who have suffered some great pain or trauma or loss at some point in their lives, but you don't hear them whining that their experience entitles them to a free pass, or using their suffering to try and game the system to get their hands on something they want. No, most people have more courage and decency than that.

Maybe you'd like to take a look at the POW Network's Biography Pages, Senator McCain. There you can find the life stories of thousands of former POWs. Read a few. Read a few dozen. Read a few thousand.

There you will find lives of quiet courage, stories of people who have managed to make it through their lives with varying degrees of success despite the traumatic experience of their past. What you will NOT find is story after story of how they used their POW experience to be given a job or a hand-out. You won't find stories of how they whined repeatedly "I was a POW' in order to escape responsibility for things they said or did.

Or perhaps you would like to take a look at the website of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. There you can learn about soldiers who have struggled to make it. There are an estimated 200,000 Vets living on the streets on any given night, 400,000 who are homeless at some point during any given year.

47% of those Vets are from your war, Senator McCain. The Vietnam War.

Though you just love to tell us repeatedly how much you suffered 40 years ago, the fact is you have lived an elite life of wealth and privilege since that time. You want for nothing, John McCain, except of course your hunger for power. You dumped your first wife (who had gone through her own years of physical and psychological pain) and married into wealth, you have had the benefit of ample money and patronage to further your political career. In contrast to those hundreds of thousands of homeless Vets, you have so many fine homes that you cannot even keep track of them.

And what have you done to help those hundreds of thousands of homeless Vets? Well, you voted AGAINST providing $20 million to Department of Veterans Affairs for health care facilities. You were one of only 13 Senators to vote AGAINST providing $430,000,000 to the Department of Veterans Affairs for outpatient care and treatment. You voted AGAINST increasing Veterans' medical care funding by $1.5 billion.

Yes, you got yours, Senator McCain, but you have repeatedly voted against helping your fellow veterans, many of whom I expect were POWs, to get a leg up.

And now you have the unmitigated gall to whine, both through surrogates and from your own lips, that your misstatements and your mistakes should be overlooked because you were a POW. You dare to incessantly wave the banner of your 40 year old POW story as reason that you should be given entree into the office of President of the United States.

Forgive me if I don't buy it.

Every single speaker in the Republican National Convention repeated at length your POW story. Every video recounted it. And you yourself in your acceptance speech wallowed in it once again. You and your surrogates have used your POW experience from 40 years ago to let you avoid any accountability for everything from infidelity to cheating at the Saddleback church forum to not knowing how many homes you own.

It is shameful enough that you trivialize your experience 40 years ago in the service of your lust for power today. But it is even worse how your trivializing the POW experience demeans the experience of the thousands of others who suffered through similar experiences, and the thousands more who suffer post-traumatic stress from their war experiences. Those hundreds of thousands of people manage to get through life without constantly calling attention to what they went through, just in order to gain some advantage.

And this goes beyond military experience, Senator McCain. There are millions of people who have suffered through terrible periods of physical and/or psychological trauma.

There are people who have been in horrible accidents in which they lost limbs or mobility or, from which they suffer life-long physical pain, from which they required years of physical therapy to recover.

There are people who have been the victims of rape, abuse or incest, inflicting psychological pain which they carry around in secret suffering for years.

There are people who have lost loved ones to sudden and unexpected death, who have had to carry on raising their family through their grief and economic loss.

There are people who have, often through no fault of their own, gone through periods of economic hardship, lost their livelihoods or homes, and spent time living on the street.

There are millions upon millions of such stories to be told among the American people, John McCain. But most Americans manage to shoulder their burdens, to move on with their lives, to live with quiet courage and dignity despite whatever times of tragedy have befallen them in the past.

They do NOT, 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 years later, rehash their old wounds in order to gain advantage or avoid responsibility. By your actions, Senator McCain, you have also demeaned the experience of these millions of Americans.

You have said in the past, Senator McCain, that you would never use your POW experience for political gain. Obviously that is no longer true.

Some people call you a liar because you have gone back on your word, but I don't think that quite gets to the heart of it.

The truth is, I think that you are a prisoner today to a much greater extent than you ever were a prisoner in Vietnam 40 years ago. You are a prisoner of your political ambition, and more importantly, of the political ambition of your advisers and handlers. You have gone back on your word about not wanting to use your POW experience for political gain, you have gone back on most of your policy positions in order to pander to the right wing of the Republican Party, you have gone back on your motto 'Country First' by appointing an unqualified vice presidential candidate for purely political reasons.

Yes, John McCain, today you are a prisoner. But unlike that time 40 years ago, you are not a captive due to fateful circumstances. This time you are captive due to your own poor judgment. 40 years ago, you may have responded with bravery and determination to your captivity. Today, you have shown yourself to be weak and a coward. You have caved in to those who control you, you have ratted out your beliefs and the good of the country, you have betrayed and belittled those who have borne the circumstances of their lives with quiet courage.

You are unfit for command.

Enough of your shameless whining. Enough hiding behind your experiences of 40 years ago. Enough demeaning your fellow soldiers and your fellow citizens.

Enough.