Phillip Butler, an American POW during the Vietnam war, has received attention for a recent ad in opposition to John McCain. The short ad is an excerpt from this longer piece:
Butler is a hero whose service and bravery merit our praise and thanks. But there's no indication in anything he says here that he has spoken to McCain in decades. And an op-ed he's written to expand on his concerns both confirms much of what we already know, and suggests that Butler is more jealous of McCain than anything else. For example:
In fact [McCain] barely managed to graduate, standing 5th from the bottom of his 800 man graduating class. I and many others have speculated that the main reason he did graduate was because his father was an Admiral, and also his grandfather, both U.S. Naval Academy graduates.
People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And we have our own seniority system, based on time as a POW...
Was he tortured for 5 years? No. He was subjected to torture and maltreatment during his first 2 years, from September of 1967 to September of 1969... I got there April 20, 1965 so my bad treatment period lasted 4 1/2 years... But my point here is that John allows the media to make him out to be THE hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals...
Because John's father was the Naval Commander in the Pacific theater, he was exploited with TV interviews while wounded. These film clips have now been widely seen. But it must be known that many POW's suffered similarly, not just John. And many were similarly exploited for political propaganda...
John was awarded a Silver Star and Purple Heart for heroism and wounds in combat. This heroism has been played up in the press and in his various political campaigns... But it must be remembered that he was one hero among many - not uniquely so as his campaigns would have people believe.
I'm not sure why Butler believes that McCain has emphasized his own heroism over those of others; the opposite seems true to me. McCain rarely discusses his POW experience without paying tribute to the comrades who saved his life. From his acceptance speech last night:
Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.
I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.
Butler is entitled to his opinion, but he seems not to have spoken to McCain in years. His characterization of McCain as a hothead matches McCain's own description of himself -- from 40 years ago, when Butler knew him. Butler offers nothing about McCain today that you can't get from DailyKos. And to characterize McCain as a warmonger is unfair bordering on slanderous. McCain again:
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house. A Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I rarely saw my father again for four years. My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me. I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination.
Apparently Butler thinks McCain's lying. But then, he's a 'peace and justice activist' with a traditional liberal agenda. I wouldn't expect him to think anything else. But there is one way in which his piece is valuable: go read the whole thing, and it becomes clear that even a partisan who opposes him still characterizes McCain as a man of great bravery and character.
HT: Hot Air
