Whatever you think of McCain, he would never want his fellow soldiers and all Americans to be put at risk in order to be freed from enemy captivity.
So Crowley was placing a moral equivalence on a Sailor shot down over Vietnam, tortured and placed in captivity by a enemy “country” with a deserter who fled his post to join with a group of terrorists?
McCain should have just said, “When I was in the military a deserter would be court martialed and shot, not returned a conquering a hero.”