Posted on 05/14/2008 5:34:20 PM PDT by Dawnsblood
In the New York Times’ upcoming edition of their Sunday magazine, they take a look at John McCain’s divergent views of the Iraq War from those of his fellow Vietnam veterans. In The McCain Doctrines, Matt Bai reports that most of these colleagues (with the noted exception of Bob Kerrey) attribute McCain’s support for Iraq to the fact that he didn’t serve on the ground in Vietnam — and that his years as a POW somehow “sealed” him away from the war’s lessons:
There is a feeling among some of McCain’s fellow veterans that his break with them on Iraq can be traced, at least partly, to his markedly different experience in Vietnam. McCain’s comrades in the Senate will not talk about this publicly. They are wary of seeming to denigrate McCain’s service, marked by his legendary endurance in a Hanoi prison camp, when in fact they remain, to this day, in awe of it. And yet in private discussions with friends and colleagues, some of them have pointed out that McCain, who was shot down and captured in 1967, spent the worst and most costly years of the war sealed away, both from the rice paddies of Indochina and from the outside world. During those years, McCain did not share the disillusioning and morally jarring experiences of soldiers like Kerry, Webb and Hagel, who found themselves unable to recognize their enemy in the confusion of the jungle; he never underwent the conversion that caused Kerry, for one, to toss away some of his war decorations during a protest at the Capitol. Whatever anger McCain felt remained focused on his captors, not on his own superiors back in Washington.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Another NY Times hit piece imho.
That sounds like a serious stretch to me.
Early warning radar has picked up enemy planes approaching from the far left, man your battle stations
THEY have GOT to be KIDDING.....they’re delusional ....
I much prefer “an inside view few others had”.
“Early warning radar has picked up enemy planes approaching from the far left, man your battle stations”
John McCain is going to wake up and realize his buddies in the MSM are going to be hitting him like Kamakazi’s. But that will be OK as long as they don’t go after Obama and offend him.
The Drive-By Media always likes to portrait veterans-turned-Leftist as the norm.
You’re telling me.. I’ve heard some pretty pathetic attempts at making McCain’s war record a liability, but this takes the cake.
Also, I’d be interested to see a poll of Vietnam vets to see what percentage of them agree with Webb, Kerry, and Hagel on what the “lessons” of Vietnam were. Of course, those three are the only important ones, because their version of the “lesson” of Vietnam is the media-approved one.
In the not too distant future, the NYT’s will be listing garage sales and lost pets exclusively. Their day is done and gone.
The NYT fails once again. I cannot stand McCain as our candidate....but this is a tad to absurd to the point of laughable.
I supposed it is supposed to somehow connect Juan to Bush and present an idea that McCain was one of the lucky, privileged, and out of touch while imprisoned in Hanoi.
Hope the NYT can do better than this. So far, they have made bigger fools out of themselves than ever before.
Lord have mercy.
Is there no depths the liberal media will not go to discredit John McCain’s service to his country? All this because Barack Hussein Obama can not win the general election.
Wow. That’s pretty amazing. I never even thought of this spin to try and discredit McCain’s military record and experience.
I think the only lesson of Viet Nam was that we didn’t stay long enough to finish the job. AND not to listen to the lamestream media, although they didn’t have any other choice then.
The Vietnam War opposition movement was led by Communists who WANTED the North Vietnamese Communists to Win over South Vietnam. It was not led by “disillusioned” soldiers who asked “what are we fighting for”.
Hanoi Jane, Jerry Rubin, et al were proud of their associations with Communist leaders. Jane Fonda said we’d all want to live under Communism if we only understood what it was.
The Vietnam antiwar movement was outright treason against the United States engaged in an active war. Siding with the enemy in word and in deed. Undercutting our elected government’s policies, meeting with the enemy, and in the case of Kerry’s group, targeting the assassination of elected members of Congress.
Who was it recently, Sen. Rockefeller of WV, who claimed McCain didn’t understand war, he just dropped his laser-guided bombs from 30,000 feet and flew away?
This is a bizarre correlation
Dude, seriously, does the NYTimes do anything other than hit pieces on Republicans? I mean it's like wild-eyed fanaticism with them.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have had Laser guided bombs in Nam? If we did, calling an close in airstrike wouldn’t have been a high pucker factor affair, especially with Naphalm.
By writer, i meant the NYT writer and not the writer of this...
Think of this article as a trial balloon by the Dems to see what derogatory slander will have the most effect. Look for more trial balloons in upcoming editions of the NYT and the Washington Post!
Actually, I’d like to see some evidence that Webb, for one, even agrees with the other two on what the “lessons” were. I think Webb probably would have agreed with McCain (and Colin Powell) that the cause of the Vietnam debacle in the end was the insistence of Washington to fight with one hand tied behind its back. The big problem with the left isn’t that they compare Iraq to Vietnam, per se (comparisons between wars are done for lots of valid reasons). Just my guess.
Anyway, the problem is that they aren’t comparing Iraq to Vietnam at all—they’re comparing an inaccurate portrayal of Iraq to a an even more inaccurate portrayal of the Vietnam War.
All that said, the article itself exposing the NYT hitpiece is well done and should be widely distributed. I agree that this is the most obtuse angle the NYT has come up with yet: that A POW doesn’t understand the consequences of fighting a war. It’s quite possibly the most idiotic thing the NYT has ever published, and that’s saying a lot. Really; it’s not a far stretch to say that McCain can save all his ad money and let the left and the NYT and driveby MSM do their hits. Every time they do this, McCain rises in the polls.
Wow. You can't make this stuff up.
I wonder if Kerry, Webb or Hagel would have been willing to exchange a year on the ground with 5 1/2 years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. In Kerry’s case, let’s bring that year down to 3 lousy months.
Leftist politicians and columnists have already started to circulate the talking point that his POW experience has left him mentally unstable.
But we aren’t supposed to point out that Barack Obama has serious psychological issues on race and fatherhood based on his own childhood experiences growing up in a variety of homes.
No McCain fan here, but I call BS on this crap.
Sheer horse sh!t. John Kerry is who they are talking about (along with Murtha and others). McCain saw infinitely more than these dirtbags. I am constantly surprised at what these POS com up with. I am so mad I can't form a coherent rebuttal as I want to go out and "converse" with these POS as well at the scumbag writer.
These so-called “journalists” need to be called on this disrespectful behavior: Where were they during Vietnam, the Cold War, Desert Storm, WoT, etc...?? I think we know the answer, don’t we? Also, has anyone ever found out if Barack Hussein Obama registered for Selective Service as required by law on or about his 18th birthday? That would speak volumes about his “patriotism” and love of country!
http://www.sss.gov/PDFs/Who%20Must%20Register%20Chart%20Fit%20page10_07.pdf
Kerry was over there re-enacting stuff and filming it ~ totally strange dude, then he turned coat and betrayed Viet Nam vets.
Herr Hegel, interestingly enough, votes parallel to Herr Lugar of Indiana, and some other Herr so-and-sos with German surnames in the Senate. (Not all the guys with such surnames do though, but those two are definitely body tatoo to body tatoo Fur Shur).
They vote German national interests and actually seem disturbed that we used our European units for use in Iraq.
I would imagine the NYT likes Hagel since they think he's as antisemitic as Webb.
If I were "Matt Bai", I would have eyes in the back of my head. This sort of idiocy is the thing that might make a disgruntled vet think about taking him out. Regardless of whether you support McCain or not, this is slime politics at its very worst even from the likes of the New York Slimes. Matt, keep your eyes open.
If they’d just restart the war for a couple of weeks and allow folks to fire on the domestic enemies, I think it’d be OK actually.
Count me as one Vietnam veteran who has no use for the views of Kerry, Webb or Hagel. The United States Congress sold out the Vietnamese and those of us who served in that war, and they’ll sell out on Irag and those who served in that one is they don’t have a President goading them to do the right thing.
Of course, “Matt Bai” never served.
They're not nuts; we are!
Sealed away ?...time to debunk some more NY Slimes BS....
Ask McCain how he felt about never yielding to his Communist captors in 7 years; ask what it felt like with two broken arms, a busted shoulder and a bayonet wound in the gut if he ever felt the ‘pain’ of war with no humane treatment whatsoever for over a month; ask him if he felt the ground shake as our B-52’s dropped tons of bombs on North Vietnam- if he ever felt the terror the North Vietnamese felt; ask why his face is misshapen because he was beaten by his captors..Ask him if he ever thought each day would be his last day on earth, if he ever felt sheer terror every single day, especially when confined in solitary..you know he did !
He felt the pain of war beyond what most soldiers in Vietnam ever felt...He suffered from real wounds, not from some self-inflicted wounds, and he did it in defense of democracy-so the South Vietnamese could have some years of freedom until the anti-war cowards in this country put an end to their hopes for freedom...
As for the bum who wrote this piece—Shame on him and on the NY Times for showing such a lack of sensitivity and decency for a man who helped defend their journalist’s freedoms..
Kerry was "on the ground" in Viet Nam?
In a boat? For three months?
Any comparison of Kerry's and McCain's experience in Viet Nam is absurd on its face.
One of them served their country. The other served himself. And I'm not even a McCain fan...
I still don't think there is anyone/anything that can p me off enough to vote for Johnny, but the contest is apparently just getting warmed up.
Mr. niteowl77
Stay tuned, it's about to happen again.
Can anyone translate this for me?
Kerry, Webb, and Hagel's moral confusion has left them unable to recognize their enemy.
It is Kerry, Webb, and Hagel who did not have the experience of looking their enemy in the eye, day after day, year after year.
I would be willing to admit that McCain's military experience is not run-of-the-mill. But it gave him an insight into the enemy that few have had, thank God.
“Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”
:)
They have a bottomless appetite for genocide.
You know, the Nazis and the Cheka have to be reincarnated as somebody, but why as Democrat Congrescritters? Aren't there enough criminals in this world that they could just stick to them.
And yet once again the premise is based on, with the exception of Bob Kerry (the DNC's new dirt job guy) anonymous sources.
Hey NYT - what did Obama or Hillary learn from their experience in Vietnam? Oh...Obama was too young and Hillary was a young woman. Well surely their military experience would have taught them that....oh yeah that doesn't apply either.
The Dems and their ever shifting standards. I would ask when their hypocrisy will end but the answer is clear - never.
This confusion supposedly made it difficult to fight the war.
The Left turned it into one of those deals that portrayed our soldiers as being too stupid to tell the difference between legitimate targets and innocent people.
They then turned that into the "baby killer" litany, and all the other false charges and nonsense they came up with.
The fact the writer even referenced that stuff is a demonstration that he is, in fact, an enemy of the people of the United States, and that he hates our soldiers.
This is why we need about a 10 day "Viet Nam War Restart" right here at home ~ just some freefire zones and you'd never see articles like the referenced piece of trash appear again.
“Jane Fonda said we’d all want to live under Communism if we only understood what it was.”
One of the funniest and at the same time saddest and most pathetic statements anyone ever said was by Jane Fonda. Here it is, the best I can remember it.
“If you really knew what communism is, you’d get down on your knees and pray for it.”
For shame...
Webb is a nut job who needs and ass whipping. Kerry is a self-promoting glory whore who lost an election despite a media that did everything it could to get him elected.
I don't agree with SEN. McCain on a lot of things, but in my book he served with honor.
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