[Marxism] Counterpunch Swft-Boats McCain

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This stuff has an organic, rightist pro-imperialist thrust that I hate.
Frankly, I don't care who "collaborated" with their captors in Vietnam. I
care about what these "heros" did to Vietnam, and I can fully understand
--albeit not agree -- if some of them served very hard time as a
consequence.

To me, this is more of Counterpunch's mélange of left-liberalism and
anti-Bush rightism. And because it is rightist propaganda, it is bound to
sound weird in the mouths of people who aren't totally caught up in the
militarist-superpatriot standpoint. It will probably not be very effective
against McCain. Although he and his supporters would surely string up (maybe
literally) any liberal ex-pow in politics about whom the same things could
be said, even if the claims were complete lies.
Fred Feldman


http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04192008.html
Weekend Edition 
April 19 / 20, 2008 

CounterPunch Diary 
"Hero" John McCain as Phony and Collaborator: What Really Happened When He
Was a POW?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

John McCain?s been getting kid-glove treatment from the press for years,
ever since he wriggled free of the Keating scandal and his profitable
association ? another collaboration, you might say -- with the nation?s top
bank swindler in the 1980s. But nothing equals the astounding tact with
which his claque on the press bus avoids the topic of McCain?s collaborating
with his Vietnamese captors after he?d been shot down.

How McCain behaved when he was a prisoner is key. McCain is probably the
most unstable man ever to have got this close to the White House. He?s one
election away from it. Republican senator Thad Cochrane has openly said he
trembles at the thought of an unstable McCain in the Oval Office with his
finger on the nuclear trigger.

What if a private memory of years of collaboration in his prison camp gnaws
at McCain, and bursts out in his paroxysms of uncontrollable fury, his
rantings about ?gooks? and his terrifying commitment to a hundred years of
war in Iraq. What if ?the hero? knows he?s a phony? 
Doug Valentine has written the definitive history of the Phoenix Program in
Vietnam. He knows about the POW experience. His dad, an Army man, was
captured by the Japanese and sent to a POW camp in the Philippines for
forced labor. Many of his mates died. Doug wrote a marvelous book about it,
The Hotel Tacloban.

Now Valentine has picked up the unexploded bomb lying on McCain?s campaign
trail this year. As he points out, he?s not the first. Rumors and charges
have long swirled around McCain?s conduct as a prisoner. Fellow prisoners
have given the lie to McCain?s claims. But Valentine has assembled the
dossier. It?s devastating. We?re running it in our current CounterPunch
newsletter and we strongly urge you to subscribe.

Some excerpts from Valentine?s indictment.

?War is one thing, collaborating with the enemy is another; it is a
legitimate campaign issue that strikes at the heart of McCain?s character. .
.or lack thereof. In occupied countries like Iraq, or France in World War
II, collaboration to that extent spells an automatic death sentence.. . .The
question is: What kind of collaborator was John McCain, the admitted war
criminal who will hate the Vietnamese for the rest of his life?

?Put it another way: how psychologically twisted is McCain? And what
actually happened to him in his POW camp that twisted him? Was it abuse, as
he claims, or was it the fact that he collaborated and has to cover up?
Covering-up can take a lot of energy. The truth is lurking there in his
subconscious, waiting to explode. ?

?McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous
Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain?s own
account, after three or four days he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese
captors, ?I?ll give you military information if you will take me to the
hospital ...

?His Vietnamese captors soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III,
came from a well-bred line in the American military elite. . .The Vietnamese
realized, this poor stooge has propaganda value. The admiral?s boy was used
to special treatment, and his captors knew that. They were working him.?

?. . .two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press
began quoting him. It was not ?name rank and serial number, or kill me?. as
specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military
information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based,
the number of U.S. pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his
flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue
ships.?

??McCain was held for five and half years. The first two weeks? behavior
might have been pragmatism, but McCain soon became North Vietnam?s go-to
collaborator?..McCain cooperated with the North Vietnamese for a period of
three years. His situation isn?t as innocuous as that of the French barber
who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors
for their kindness and mercy.

?This is the lesson of McCain?s experience as a POW: a true politician, a
hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain?s
campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him, and, in return, he
danced to their tune. . .?



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