It is sad, when anyone passes, and many believe no one should speak ill of the dead. But on hearing the news that longtime US Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona has died at the age of 81 after a long battle with brain cancer, all I am currently reading about him by the mainstream media is him being described as a war. hero, whilst being canonised at the same time. So as a result,thought it was necessary to add a few words.
Is this not the same man who before being captured in Vietnam as part of the U.S military machine was bombing innocent women and children, making him a front-line participant in one of the greatest war crimes in history, the savage American onslaught on Vietnam, in an attempt to terrorise the population into surrender.
The overriding feature of McCain's career, was his hawkishness on foreign policy. He supported war after war, intervention after intervention always promoting the use of force as the primary feature of American foreign policy. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, he backed the US invasion of Grenada in 1983 and the Reagan administration policy of supporting fascist forces in Central America, including death squads in El Salvador and Guatemala and the contra terrorists at war with Nicaragua.
Who then along with the entire U.S political and military establishment, supported the wholesale bombing of Iraq's water purification plants during the first Gulf War. In what amounted to planned genocide. Documents released in 2000 revealed that the U.S, had studied in detail all aspects of Iraq's water system, had planned a strategy for preventing Iraq from reconstructing that system
( via sanctions) and knew in advance that this could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics of disease. Indeed it did, with more than half a million Iraqi children dead as a result, one of the greatest war crimes in history, carried out by the next generation of U.S. pilots who followed John McCain and with his full throated support. He also backed the later invasion of Afghanistan and called for the bombing of Iran and supported the Saudi invasion of Yemen.
When anti-war protestors stormed a Senate hearing whereformer US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was speaking, McCain ordered that they be scorted out of the hall by police and condemned the activists as "low-life scum".
He was also a dedicated supporter of Israel and was quick to U.S President Donald Trump's decision to move the U.S embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (This despite their noted personal disagreements.)
"I have long believed that Jerusalem is the true capital of Israel," he wrote in a statement on his website after the announcement.https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/12/mccain-on-president-trump-s-decision-to-recognize-jerusalem-as-capital-of-israel
The support extended to Irael's numerous offensives against Palestinian including the 2014 bombardment of Gaza, which killed more than 2,20 residents of the besieged territory, the vast majority of them civilians.
Then in his own backyard while he was defense Secretary,showed his contempt for the indigenous people of America whom he had previously supported when he inserted language into a defense bill which opened up land sacred to the Apache of Arizona to mining,this act of utter betrayal shows the ruthlessness of his spirit and his rather contradictory nature.
A hero, yes, it seems to many, and other places have shown him in a more kinder light, and we should honor the dead, but neither should we forget those lost in Vietnam, Iraq, and countless wars the world over, that he and his government helped displace, injure or kill. Surely all their lives matter too. R.I.P. Lets all continue to try and keep working towards a world without war.
