John McCain's first foreign policy decision was to volunteer for combat in the Vietnam War. His second was to stay in the Hanoi Hilton when he was offered a chance to leave. He was against going into Bosnia. He was for going into Iraq. This is the guy who gets to have credibility criticizing Barack Obama for lack of experience? -- The Rude Pundit
The question isn't McCain's experience. The question is his judgement -- and he's shown piss-poor judgement from day one of his career.
-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
Yep that McCain has the experience to get us into deeper S***
ReplyDeleteBravo, Penguin.
ReplyDelete--ml
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ReplyDeleteRules, rules, gentleman! The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here, and posts that consist solely of insults are automatically deleted. If you believe The Rude One is incorrect, please debate on the merits. Insults are not argument, it is simple stupidity. ZAAP!
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Rules Penguin
Shameful.
ReplyDeleteTo denigrate a man because he chose to serve his country?
Disgusting.
Look, I have no great love for McCain but the man left his body parts in country, something none of us did, something I was lucky enough not to have to choose to do.
We ought to respect that, no matter whether that war was just or not. Would you please tell that to Paul Rieckhoff? To any Iraqi vet? Those folks volunteered to be in Iraq and you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves, from RP on down to you, Tux, for making fun of that decision.
Shameful.
ReplyDeleteTo denigrate a man because he chose to serve his country?
Disgusting.
Look, I have no great love for McCain but the man left his body parts in country, something none of us did, something I was lucky enough not to have to choose to do.
We ought to respect that, no matter whether that war was just or not. Would you please tell that to Paul Rieckhoff? To any Iraqi vet? Those folks volunteered to be in Iraq and you all ought to be ashamed of yourselves, from RP on down to you, Tux, for making fun of that decision.
DITTO
Well, Carl, I'm not aware of many fighting in Iraq who volunteered to fight in Iraq (basically only the gang bangers who want to better learn how to "cap some homies"). They volunteered to serve our country, and were assigned by our country's leadership to Iraq. Last soldier I talked to who came back with more metal than bone in his leg, he just shook his head and said "I wanted to get into the Air Force, but I didn't have the grades." He knew when he signed up that there was a good chance he'd get sent to Iraq, but he wasn't exactly eager to get sent to the world's biggest cat toilet -- he went because it was his duty to obey his commanders, not because he was eager to do so.
ReplyDeleteJohn McCain, on the other hand, didn't wait around to be assigned to Vietnam. He explicitly checked the box, "Assign me to Vietnam!", then rattled cages to make sure he got assigned to Vietnam, even to the point where he used his father's connections to bump a pilot off of the U.S.S. Oriskany who belonged there after he managed to be caught in the U.S.S. Forrestal fire (or cause it, depending on who you ask) and thus lost his original combat berth. John McCain wasn't eager to serve his country. John McCain was eager to kill some gooks and get some combat ribbons that could get him promoted so that maybe at some point in the future he could be an admiral like pappy and grandpappy.
There's a difference between volunteering to serve your country, and volunteering explicitly to go into combat. There certainly are people who do the latter, but generally they are not the best-strung folks around, or they know they're exercising poor judgement but have other reasons to do so, such as guilt, a desire to protect "their boys", or PTSD. I know some folks who served multiple combat tours in Vietnam voluntarily, and by current standards they'd have been diagnosed as PTSD and, well, nuts, after the first tour. They got better. But I don't know any of them who think they exercised good judgement by volunteering for another combat tour of duty in Vietnam. It's like a guy I know who came back with more steel than flesh in his left leg and a 50% disability rating who just shakes his head and says "that was the craziest thing I ever did."
As for John McCain's judgement, there's so many times he exercised poor judgement during his military career -- the crashes caused by ignoring military flight rules, the final shoot-down caused by his poor judgement in ignoring the SAM buzzer warning that a SAM had locked on to him, etc. -- that it certainly is fair game to question his judgement there, even if you do give him a pass on whether it was good judgement to volunteer explicitly to serve in Vietnam. Given McCain's military nickname -- "McNasty" -- it appears that given his poor scores at Annapolis he was trying to make admiral by being more aggressive than everybody else. Aggressiveness is fine and dandy in a warrior, but aggressiveness untempered by judgement is just, well, stupidity, and if he let his aggressiveness override his judgement then, that certainly is an issue that should be considered now when considering whether he is still someone who lets his aggressiveness override his judgement.
- Badtux the Considering Penguin