Degrees of Risk

I watch American politics. I can't help it. But it does put things at home into persepective..

In the last election I couldn't believe what Republicans did to John Kerry over the swift boat affair. War provides circumstances every day for men and women to draw down on strength they never knew they had. Bravery and selfless acts are common.

John McCain's story however has some glaring contradictions.

I had heard about his trials and tribulations as a prisoner-of-war. The media noted he had never really talked about it before this campaign. Well, I thought, maybe that's why his story endured.

He told about being shot down into a lake and thrown into a cell to die. When I'm listening, I need to imagine the scene. This picture did not jell.

Somebody had to fish the man out of the lake before they could throw him into a jail cell to die.

Why would they do that? Why would they save his life just to let him die?

There was a picture of a young McCain lying on a hospital bed in a body cast. He was surrounded by white coats. They looked like doctors. The cast was obviously not an instrument of torture. Why would they make the effort to heal his broken body, to torture him later when he was well?

Propaganda has a place during a war. But this was thirty years after.

The biggest puzzle is how obvious discrepancies in the story are never challenged. John McCain has had a successful career in politics based on his heroism, sacrifice and love of country. Even former President Bill Clinton stated "no man could give more for his country".

But what if he didn't? What if the story is a dramatized fabrication for the purpose of political exploitation? If parts of it make no sense, why should any of it be true?

What does that make of the sacrifice of thousands killed in the cruel and inhumane circumstance of war?

The ones who never came home to receive the plaudits of a grateful nation. Who have no known graves. Whose bodies were blown apart in pieces too small to gather or pitched into an ocean of flaming oil.

What about all those without a resting place? Whose families were haunted forever after by the horror of their deaths.

Of all human enterprise war is most fraught with drama and risk and incredible stupidity and waste. Wars are not won. They are lost by the side that makes the most blunders and runs out of men and ammunition first.

In politics, being rigorously honest is chancy. Reality can be tedious , irritating. and terrifying People are not always inclined to deal with it.

In war,there is plenty of talk about courage and bravery and glory.It obscures the blunders and the carnage.But claiming heroism and sacrifice where there was none and where so much was lost by so many, bespeaks a lack of character, intelligence and integrity. I think if John McCain did make a sacrifice he has been more than compensated .

If he did not, he is seeking a reward he is not entitled to receive on the backs of those whose sacrifice can never ever be compensated.