John McCain Dies.

McCain in Iraq. A War Criminal by any definition

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

All the talk of McCain being a hero is nonsense. Who knows how many Vietnamese peasants died due to his activity before he was shot down. One might say it's a credit to the Vietnamese that he wasn't torn limb from limb once his plane hit the ground after dropping exploding devices on people who had caused him or the US no harm. The focus is on his suffering and bravery. Well, even our worst enemies can be brave and endure suffering to in defense of a cause they believe in like corporate profits.

McCain was a fighter pilot, not many people from working class backgrounds end up in that position. A worker that was drafted in to a conflict or joins the military out of the economic necessity or limited choices is not the same as a bourgeois militarist whose dad was a four star admiral. McCain was fighting for US capitalism and corporate plunder. The rank and file soldier might have accepted the con that these wars are defensive or for some sort of nebulous freedom but McCain was a conscious warrior for Wall Street. It's impossible to say how many Vietnamese died due to his zeal but we know a million or more Iraqis did.

We know he enthusiastically supported the destruction of Iraq, another country that never threatened or harmed the people of the US in any way. He chose the imbecile Sarah Palin as his political running mate. He supported the Zionist Lieberman and politically his life was spent in an assault on the standard of living of the US working class and poor. You want a military hero, how about Pat Tillman or Marine General Smedley Butler or the three heroic Americans who turned their weapons on fellow soldiers instead of My Lai residents in the massacre we know as Vietnam. Working class people should not shed a tear for McCain, he was not our friend.

Here's a decent article about McCain's legacy:

Because a solemn respect for war and soldiers is the most bipartisan area of agreement in this country, McCain’s history as a prisoner who was tortured during the Vietnam War is the topline of his obituary. It is largely the reason he was able to have a career in politics in the first place. McCain unquestionably experienced great suffering in Vietnam; whatever your thoughts on the war, his time there is a real and substantial part of his legacy. But we cannot forget that, despite such a deeply personal experience with the brutality of an unnecessary war, McCain was the Iraq War’s biggest, loudest cheerleader outside of the Bush administration, using his war hero status to lend credence to the invasion and subjecting another generation of soldiers to another horrible, pointless conflict.
The New York Times wrote in a 2008 review of McCain’s actions and statements after 9/11:

Within hours [of 9/11], Mr. McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against Al Qaeda far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, Mr. McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.
[...]
Within a month he made clear his priority. “Very obviously Iraq is the first country,” he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, Mr. McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: “Next up, Baghdad!”

He pushed the war even after it became clear to all but those with the rosiest-colored glasses that it was an abject failure. McCain only admitted in his final memoir, written when he was practically on his deathbed, that the war “can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.”

Here's a link to the full article.  https://splinternews.com/the-myth-of-john-mccain-1828587230?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Splinter_facebook