I have a theory about John McCain based on my twelve years in line fighter squadrons. Bryanna’s right; McCain is insane. The unimaginable sufferings he endured in Communist prisons unhinged him permanently.
Flying fighters in the 1980s and 90s, I got to know several Vietnam POWs including some who had been captive even longer than McCain’s five and a half years.
All were unbalanced. The ones I knew who were long-time POWs—with one exception and that exception I knew only very slightly—were high-functioning lunatics. Common denominators were trouble with alcohol, cars, divorces, tempers and aggressive flying verging on recklessness—a very unwelcome trait in a fighter pilot.
Bear in mind that they were all in good enough shape after prison to get back into line fighter squadrons. But while McCain was able to get flight orders after Hanoi, he was never assigned to a line attack squadron or a carrier air wing again.
Arizona Senator John McCain III went to the U.S. Naval Academy because he was the grandson and son of Admirals John McCain Sr. & Jr., both Annapolis graduates.
McCain Senior was a distinguished fleet commander in the Pacific War who rotated command of the fast carrier task force with Admiral Marc Andrew Mitscher. The only reason Mitscher didn’t get his fourth star was that he died, totally worn-out, a few months after V-J Day.
Junior McCain rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific during Vietnam. Because of the bizarre chain of authority, he was nominally General William Westmoreland’s commander.
McCain III, however, was a mediocre midshipman (894 of 899 in his class) who became an average attack pilot with a history of foolish mishaps in the training command and the fleet. Without the admirals in his family tree, I doubt his career would have survived his crashes.
McCain’s getting shot down might have been as much a tactical blunder as an act of God. He was badly injured in his ejection, and the North Vietnamese Army – as was typical – gave him no real medical attention. That he was tough in captivity is beyond dispute.
McCain also – again as was typical of the long-time POWs – spent at least two years in solitary. Once he got out McCain stayed in the Navy but was not promoted to flag rank, retiring as a Captain in 1981. With his POW service, probably the only thing that could have kept him from promotion to Captain would have been raping the Chief of Naval Operation’s daughter at high noon on the Mall.
Should the fact that the Navy passed on a third consecutive Admiral John McCain tell us something? Maybe – in 1980 anyway – the collective wisdom of the Navy was greater than that of Arizona’s voters a few years later.
The combination of the moral, mental and physical injuries of years of captivity deranged McCain. Like many of the other POWs I know, McCain has a sense of superiority to those who haven’t suffered what he has.
McCain doesn’t listen. He likes to stir things up---like his “Banana Bill”--- but I don’t see any principled pattern to his outbursts. Compounding his problem, McCain must be in chronic pain from injuries that never healed properly. He may be medicated.
Anyway, although he is a Republican, I think it would be a disaster – as bad as Bush – if John McCain were to become President.
McCain does far too much harm already, right where he is.