Attacking McCain's service on week of July 4th

Steve Huntley:

It was perverse -- not to mention tone-deaf and foolish -- for Barack Obama's supporters to pick the week of July Fourth to attack John McCain's military background. The cliche rings true: With political friends like these, Obama doesn't need enemies.

First up was retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who told CBS' "Face the Nation" that "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president." That was tame compared with a vile posting by the nut-roots liberal Americablog.com headlined "Honestly, besides being tortured, what did McCain do to excel in the military?"

These ham-handed assaults revealed a lack of insight into McCain's experience that is surprising, at least on the part of a military man like Clark. Average Americans intuitively comprehend that McCain's character was tested in a way that all but an unlucky few will never have to face. Shot down over North Vietnam, McCain spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war and was tortured so brutally that to this day he cannot raise his arms above his head.

The story of those years of survival is testimony to his character, courage, duty and sense of honor -- surely important qualities for a president. The North Vietnamese broke the arm of one prisoner -- part of a bone was left sticking out -- intending to cripple him. McCain forced the bone back in the arm and, using bamboo and bandages from his own wounds, made a splint for the fellow pilot's arm.

McCain helped maintain morale among the POWs by giving sermons in religious services.

The North Vietnamese, learning McCain was the son of an admiral, hoped to score a propaganda victory by releasing him early. McCain refused, holding fast to the principle that POWs would be freed in the order of their capture.

It is true McCain was tortured beyond the limits of human endurance. At one point after four days of beatings and rope torture while he was sick with dysentery and isolated by solitary confinement, McCain made a propaganda "confession." But he then refused to sign other propaganda statements or meet with anti-war activists visiting Hanoi, and thus endured many more beatings.

McCain, who considers the "confession" dishonorable, learned every man has a breaking point. The vast majority of Americans understand that. But not the cruel men behind Americablog and the newsletter CounterPunch. They accuse McCain of "disloyalty" and of being a "collaborator." It makes you want to echo Joseph Welch's famous rebuke to the infamous 1950s right-wing character-assassin Joe McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency?"

...

Also unfortunately for Obama, his defense of his patriotism was left sounding a bit hollow thanks to his supporters' smears of McCain's service during the July Fourth week.

It does tell you something about the lack of character of many on the left. I think it will be counterproductive. McCain has done nothing since his return that makes the smears credible. Unlike Kerry, McCain never slandered his fellow troops in Vietnam. In fact he resisted mightily making statements that Kerry made under no coercion, and endured great torture in the process. There could not be a more stark comparison of character and courage.