Seeing the Elephant

My father's generation is the one that went off to fight World War 2. One thing that was almost a constant was this: The men who went off and "saw the elephant," the guys who did the hard fighting, almost never talked about it.

Twenty or fifty years later, their children or grandchildren might have been rummaging around in a carton in the attic or the basement and found a small box with a Silver Star or a Purple Heart. They would take that box to their father or grandfather and ask: "What did you do to get this?" Their father and grandfather would gently take the box away from them, say "it was something I did because I was young and stupid" and put the box in a drawer.

The same largely holds true for the Vietnam War.

As a result of this, I have become, over the years, very suspicious of those who trade on their past military service. I did not care for John Kerry's frequent references to his service in Vietnam. Oh, I wanted him to beat Bush (and he might have, if Ken Blackwell hadn't stolen the results in Ohio), but I didn't like him.

And I really don't like John "have I told you within the last five minutes that I was a POW" McCain for that. I have seen not a single rational statement that explains what being a POW has to do with being President (or, for that matter, a dog catcher).

Worse, one might think that someone who has seen the hard side of combat would be a little more thoughtful in sending our soldiers to war. One would think that such a man would know the truth to the saying that "no plan ever survives contact with the enemy" and would know that even wars planned to be short and sweet have a nasty habit of spiraling out of control. But I sense none of that from McCain.

What I sense is a wholesale swallowing by McCain of the neo-con "perpetual war" theology. We can't afford that. If we keep on the course charted by George W. Bush and advocated by John McCain, if we keep to spending as much on the military, if not more, than all of other the nations of the world combined, then we are going to end up in the same place as did the Russians in 1991: Flat-ass broke.

Someone who had seen the elephant might understand that. Bush didn't care, for he is of the whacko "end of days" cult and he thinks that the end of the world is nigh and so who cares about debt or global climate change or running out of resources or any of that. John McCain is not of that religious persuasion, so far as I know (his running mate is another story).

McCain has, in pursuit of his ambition to be president, has gone from the maverick to the sellout, and nothing more illustrates that complete sellout than his flip-flop on torture. His ambition to be president is such that he will try to ride the Hanoi Hilton right into the White House.

It is unseemly and crass. It certainly is not the act of a hero of any stripe.