Ha!

Bill Perdue

John McCain is not ‘honorable’. He engaged in air attacks on Vietnam during an illegal and immoral war, which, like the one going on now in Iraq, claimed over a million civilian lives. It doesn’t matter in the least if he was ‘ordered’ to carry out his crimes; so were the Luftwaffe pilots who bombed Guernica, and yes, that is a good comparison.

He as captured and punished and likely its some perverted sense of revenge that’s behind his calls for a hundred years of genocide against the Middle East. Of all the positions on all the issues he’s only right about one – he’s opposed to torture. The rest of this politics can be reduced to support for the war, pandering to the rich and appeasing the christian right. Those are the same politics as Clinton, who’s Bush Stout and Obama, who’s Bush Lite.

To say that the heartfelt opposition of African Americans and others to racism, which is still a defining characteristic of US society, is ‘racism in reverse’ is a sure sign not only of gross historic ignorance but also of rancid racist mentality. It’s inexcusable.

kevin57 – Clinton didn’t reform welfare, he decimated it while constantly giving tax breaks to the rich. Bush’s program is properly called ‘No Child Left Standing’, not ‘No Child Left Behind’ after he vetoed desperately need health care programs for children.

Bill Perdue

rickroberts – His country’s call???? What kind of perverse paytriotic madness is that?

Our country was born fighting for independence and reborn when we took up arms and crushed southern slave-owning traitors. There is nothing in that history that pardons the genocidal wars against the Creek, Cherokees, Apaches, Sioux and a hundred other native nations. Nothing to excuse the invasion of Mexico, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico again, Panama, Korea, Lebanon. Cuba, Vietnam, a second genocide with over a million causalities, Laos, Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama again, Honduras again, Haiti, and now Iraq (a third genocide.) (And please don’t get pissed if I missed one or two.)

Your approach the question of the ‘honor’ involved in these US attacks on colonial peoples fighting for independence are from the perspective of a different class than most of us. John McCain, whose daddy and granddaddy were Four Star US Navy Admirals, volunteered for an illegal war. Meanwhile most of the men and boys I knew who were sent to Vietnam were extremely unwilling victims of the draft.

While there they did their best not to get killed and there is nothing dishonorable in that. Over time their reluctance to go on the offensive and their grenade throwing prowess (some refer to it as fragging, a nasty habit GI’s developed that involved tossing grenades at lifers and gung ho officers) caused military operations to ever so slowly begin grinding to a halt. In the face of obstinate Vietnamese resistance, a vast antiwar sentiment and the real risk of GI unrest becoming a real mutiny all US troops were withdrawn. But by then over 55,000 GI’s and over a million Vietnamese had been murdered by American political leaders of both parties.

In Iraq and Afghanistan we have all the same ingredients: an illegal oil piracy, arrogant and bungling US leaders, a stubborn, largely successful Iraqi resistance and growing unrest among GI’s. Some of them are sickened at the genocide occurring as a direct result of US efforts to steal Iraqi oil. Others just want to get home in one piece. Again, there is nothing dishonorable in that. And again, the solution is immediate and total withdrawal of all US military, ‘security’ and mercenary forces from the Middle East.

I hope they pulled out and the carnage ends. I hope the Iraqis, like the Vietnamese, get their independence and a chance to settle their own affairs and become prosperous selling their oil. However that dishonorable little warmongering windbag you adore so much, McCain, has a different goal; he wants to keep killing Iraqis for a hundred years.

That’s fucked up, and so are you and so is McCain.