Is McCain a Hero?


      Whenever I see, or hear, the media refer to John McCain as a war hero, I keep wondering: WHY?

      I do understand that every nation needs war heroes. It is not enough for us that the thousands of young men and women who are facing enemy fire are performing heroic deeds. We need bigger than life heroes, people that went above and beyond the call of duty to be set as examples for others to emulate in the next war.
      The first World War gave us Sergeant Alvin York, in the second World War we had Audie Murphy, but then we ran into trouble. We has a brutal, unpopular, and different kind of war in Vietnam, a war that was not conducive to the creation of real-life super heroes -- so we had to create fictional ones: the simple minded, but good, Forrest Gump, and the dedicated and handsome professional, John McCain.
Now, don't get me wrong, there really was, and is, a John McCain. 
     But is he an American war hero, as his admirers refer to him? As an aviator he rained bombs from thousands feet up, on the Vietnamese during twenty-two missions, before being shot down. To me, that is hardly heroic. He endured five and a half years as a Prisoner of War, during which time he was brutally tortured, but he was only one of about a thousand American POWs tortured by their captors. Their, and his, survival is an act of courage and perseverance, but should he be singled out as a hero, while his fellow POWs were neglected by the press and maligned by anti-war protests.
      John McCain is, first and foremost, a survivor, as he proved in the Keating five affair, in rebounding from his defeat by George Bush in his previous presidential run, and by defeating Mitt Romney in the primaries.
      John McCain is definitely a survivor, but hardly a war hero.
 

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