April 24, 2008
Osama Crashes the Democratic Party
By Froma Harrop
What was so shocking, terrible and unfair about flashing Osama bin Laden's ugly mug on a political advertisement? Hillary Clinton's TV spot was the first Democratic ad to make pictorial reference to the al-Qaida terrorist. It was about time.
How much the ad helped Clinton achieve her impressive victory in the Pennsylvania primary is hard to tell. It was a vague message touting her ability to deal with emergencies and cited a variety of them -- the 1929 stock market crash, the Cuban missile crisis and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
What's clear is that the ad itself wasn't as effective a pitch for Clinton as was the indignant response of Barack Obama's surrogates. An Obama spokesman condemned the spot as "the politics of fear."
If Obama's supporters want to argue that their candidate can better handle these challenges than Clinton, then fine, they should do so. But for some unfathomable reason, they insist on drumming Osama bin Laden out of polite Democratic conversation, such as there is any these days.
The day after Pennsylvania, The New York Times ran a nutty editorial, "The Low Road to Victory," that bashed Clinton for waving "the bloody shirt of 9-11." Oh, is referring to the event that obliterated the World Trade Center -- still a blank in Lower Manhattan -- an irrational demagogic appeal to old grievances? (One suspects that the Times regrets its endorsement of Clinton in the New York primary, especially since she became unfashionable in fancy circles.)
An enduring fear of terrorism may help explain a remarkable SurveyUSA poll that shows Obama virtually tied with McCain in Massachusetts. In super-liberal Massachusetts! The same poll has Clinton leading McCain in that state by a comfortable 55 percent to 42 percent.
Rest assured that the Bay State remains as socially progressive as it ever was. And Obama is right in line with the prevailing sentiment there that the war in Iraq was a dreadful mistake. But his seeming head-in-the-hole stance toward the widely viewed threat from terrorism unsettles many.
The hysterical response to the Clinton ad by some Obama backers doesn't help dispel these concerns. Most unappetizing were the accusations that Clinton had tried to slime Obama the way a Republican ad applied the hatchet to Georgia Democrat Max Cleland in 2002. According to left-wing lore, the Republican ad cruelly linked the senator's picture to bin Laden's, costing Cleland -- a patriot who had lost three limbs fighting in Vietnam -- his re-election. What the ad did was remind Georgia voters that Cleland had repeatedly voted against bills to create the Department of Homeland Security.
Bear in mind that Cleland's objections had merit: The new department would have suspended union rights, and there was no justification for that. But his steadfast opposition reflected a startling tone-deafness toward an electorate scared out of its wits by the recent Sept. 11 attacks and demanding immediate action against terrorism.
No one doubts that McCain worries about terrorism. True, he is intimately linked to the disastrous (and counterproductive) Iraq war. But he's gotten something of a pass by frequently criticizing the war's conduct and the Bush policy on torture. And he offers reassuring promises to restore international cooperation.
McCain is thus free to convince social moderates that he's no right-wing boogey man. His compassion tour recently made stops at the civil-rights landmarks in Selma, Ala., and the hurting factory neighborhoods of Youngstown, Ohio.
Liberals who blast allusions to terrorism as scaredy-cat politics really aren't listening. They're certainly not helping Obama's prospects should he become the Democratic nominee. Bin Laden and friends remain on the loose, and the public has a right to fear them.
fharrop@projo.com
Copyright 2008, Providence Journal Co.Page Printed from: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/04/osama_crashes_the_democratic_p.html at April 24, 2008 - 09:48:31 PM CDT
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Sunday, April 6, 2008
McCain Is Vocal on War, but Silent on Son’s Service
April 6, 2008
McCain Is Vocal on War, but Silent on Son’s Service
By JODI KANTOR
One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and heartfelt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers — soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier.
Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or a retinue. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan’s brother Michael Cleary, a 24-year-old Army first lieutenant killed by an ambush and roadside bomb.
No one mentioned the obvious: in just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that ...” Ms. Flanagan recalled, choking up. “We lost a dear one,” she finished.
Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father’s New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.
In his 71 years, Mr. McCain has confronted war as a pilot, a prisoner and a United States senator, but never before as a father. His son’s departure for Iraq brought him the same worry that every military parent feels, friends say, while the young marine’s experiences there have given him a sustained grunt’s-eye view of the action and private confirmation for his argument that United States strategy in Iraq is working.
While Jimmy McCain’s service is a story all his own — he enlisted at age 17 — it illuminates the beliefs about duty, honor and sacrifice with which family friends say he was raised. Military ideals have defined Mr. McCain as a person and a politician, and he is placing them at the core of his presidential candidacy. Last week, he campaigned at his former stations of duty, explaining how the lessons he learned there would guide his decisions as commander in chief.
“If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy,” as a demerit-prone midshipman, Mr. McCain said Wednesday at the United States Naval Academy, “I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country’s trust.”
With both potential Democratic nominees in favor of withdrawal from Iraq, debate about the war — whether it is winnable, what would happen if the United States withdrew, how much loss the country can endure — is likely to be a dominant issue in the general election. Mr. McCain’s potential opponents are already implying that he is too willing to risk American lives, too committed to stretching an already unpopular war far into the future.
Out of the Public Eye
Mr. McCain has largely maintained a code of silence about his son, now a lance corporal, making only fleeting references to him in public both to protect him from becoming a prize target and avoid exploiting his service for political gain, according to friends. At the few campaign events where Lance Corporal McCain appeared last year, he was not introduced.
The McCains declined to be interviewed for this article, which the campaign requested not be published. “The McCain campaign objects strongly to this intrusion into the privacy of Senator McCain’s son,” Steve Schmidt, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “The children of presidential candidates in this election cycle should be afforded the same respect for their privacy that the children of President Bush and President and Senator Clinton have been afforded.” (To protect Lance Corporal McCain in case he is again deployed to a war zone, The New York Times is not publishing recent photographs of him and has withheld some details of his service).
Born in 1988, the third of John and Cindy McCain’s children, Jimmy inherited his father’s features and slight build, outrageous humor and family tradition of military service that stretches back to the Revolutionary War. His grandfather and great-grandfather were the first parent and son to achieve four-star admiral status in Naval history.
Then there was his father’s ever-growing legend. A hell-raising Navy pilot, John McCain relied on a defiant streak to survive nearly six brutal years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. As Jimmy grew up, his father, first a congressman and then a senator, was always dashing off to speak at military events — a dedication here, a graduation there. Mr. McCain’s reputation was burnished with his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” and its adaptation into a television movie.
Two of Jimmy’s three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war.
The McCain children were not force-fed tales of their father’s bravery, said Orson Swindle, who was imprisoned in Vietnam with Mr. McCain. But “if you’re a man in the public eye, it’s hard for them not to know about it,” Mr. Swindle said in an interview.
Early Ambition
By the time Jimmy was in high school, he was scouting war memorabilia on eBay and playing video games like “Battlefield 1942,” classmates said. He chose sports that simulated combat, like fencing and paintball, and his prized possession was a World War II Army hat.
At Culver Academy, a military-style boarding school in Indiana, he and his friend Nick Moore would fire up “Apocalypse Now” or “Platoon” on a laptop — critiques of war, but never mind — turn the sound down and talk about serving. “The testosterone was flying,” Mr. Moore said in an interview. “He’d say, ‘I’m just going to go in there guns blazing!’ ”
Jimmy wanted to attend the Naval Academy, he told Mr. Moore, and then learn to fly. But how he would get there was uncertain. In interviews, classmates and teachers described him as the kind of kid who contributed impressive thoughts to classroom discussions but did not always turn in assignments, who was always collecting demerits for minor offenses like smoking — descriptions that echo those of his father at the same age. He left Culver after his sophomore year, making it the second school he passed through in two years.
Sometime in the next year, Jimmy enlisted in the Marine Corps. He only called his parents to tell them afterward, according to Lance Cpl. Casey Gardiner, a friend from boot camp. Iraq was tilting toward civil war, with blasts of improvised explosive devices at their highest levels yet. Jimmy McCain was 17, so young that Cindy McCain had to sign consent forms for his medical tests before he could report for duty, according to Gunnery Sgt. Edward Carter, a recruiter in Phoenix who handed her the papers.
By enlisting in the Marines, Jimmy seemed to be giving up his birthright. The Navy is, by reputation, the most aristocratic of the armed forces, the McCains among its most storied families. Now he would hold the lowest rank in a branch known for its grittiness. “The first time I heard he was going to be in the company, I couldn’t believe it,” said First Lt. Sam Bowlby, one of Lance Corporal McCain’s officers in Iraq.
“He didn’t want to be in the shadow of his father,” Lance Corporal Gardiner said.
But the new marine was fulfilling his father’s legacy in at least one way. John McCain had become a hero not for the missions he had flown or the men he had led, but for the privileges he had refused and the hardships he had endured. The North Vietnamese wanted to free Mr. McCain ahead of other captives because he was the son of a Navy admiral and Pacific commander. Mr. McCain refused. Now his son was carving a humble new path that the father, academy-bound since birth, never had.
Jimmy began boot camp on Sept. 11, 2006. He took extra abuse for his last name, said Lance Cpl. Gregory Aalto, a member of his training platoon. Recruits are not even allowed their own eyeglasses, so Jimmy had to wear the standard-issue Marine ones, so unappealing they are known as “birth-control goggles.”
As he completed his training and prepared for deployment, other marines caught only occasional glimpses of his family’s celebrity and wealth, such as when he handed out extra tickets for a Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar De La Hoya boxing match he was attending with his father in Las Vegas. If anyone asked about his family, he had a sarcastic joke at the ready. When a cluster of marines asked how they could help his father’s campaign, Lance Corporal McCain pretended to call him and then passed on a message: they could carry out the contracts the senator had taken out on his rivals’ lives.
“Jimmy was just completely joking,” said Lance Cpl. Johnathan Pebley. “You can kind of tell he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
In July, days from deployment, Lance Corporal McCain, newly engaged to be married, joined his father’s struggling campaign in New Hampshire. He visited the Flanagans and sat unrecognized at campaign events.
At the last stop, a veteran asked for a round of applause for the candidate’s brave Marine son. He did not seem to know that Jimmy McCain was sitting just a few seats away. Almost no one did.
As Father of a Marine
Mr. McCain did not speak publicly about whatever anxiety he may have felt about his son’s deployment, but Mr. Swindle described the experience as difficult. “Anybody who tells you it’s not tough is not being straightforward with you,” he said.
Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, whose son served two tours in Iraq, said he and Mr. McCain privately traded their concerns. “We talked about how it affects the young men over there,” Mr. Bond said. “He’s basically a father, very anxious about what his son’s going to be doing.”
Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, a former presidential contender whose son was serving in Afghanistan, said he and Mr. McCain would update each other at debates. “He knows what his father and grandfather went through as his sons went off to war,” Mr. Hunter said. “So he’s got a model to follow.”
Indeed, John McCain’s own parents were dressing for a dinner party in London when they learned he had been shot down. They went anyway, never telling other guests. Later, Admiral McCain ordered air strikes on Hanoi, where he knew his son was imprisoned.
Just before Jimmy’s departure, Mrs. McCain decided she had to see him one final time, according to Lieutenant Bowlby. With a few well-placed phone calls, she won permission to visit the Air Force base from which his unit would depart. When Lance Corporal McCain found out, he protested. No special favors, he said. Mrs. McCain stayed away.
“God forbid someone gave him something the rest of the marines weren’t entitled to,” Lieutenant Bowlby said.
Lance Corporal McCain and his fellow riflemen had trained for the worst in the spring of 2007, using paintball guns rigged as M-16s to apprehend costume-clad “insurgents” in fake Iraqi villages.
In the real Iraq, they saw little combat. “We were expecting to get shot at all the time,” said Lance Cpl. Justin Murdock, 20. “But 95 percent of the time, nothing was going on.”
The marines were stationed in Anbar Province, where some of the war’s bloodiest battles had been fought. But the fighting had moved on to other areas, and Lance Corporal McCain’s company mostly did security work, which meant keeping an unceasing eye on the locals, poor Sunnis who grew rice and other crops on small plots.
Lance Corporal McCain’s unit performed “soft knocks” — visits to Iraqi homes intended as reassurance as well as surveillance, said Lance Cpl. Jason Case. His platoon hunted for weapons caches and I.E.D.’s, but also distributed school supplies and candy. Relying on interpreters and the bits of Arabic they all seemed to pick up, the 19- and 20-year-old grunts taught Iraqi police officers how to hold and clean weapons, search vehicles and conduct patrols.
The hardest part, said several marines, was enduring tedium while remaining braced for mayhem. There were physical deprivations, too — searing heat, heavy gear, long hours and minimal sleep.
Fifteen marines with whom Lance Corporal McCain trained or served were interviewed for this article, and all praised his performance. He “was just always a hardworking kid,” Lieutenant Bowlby said. “He never bitched about anything,” he said, and always seemed to be laughing. “The humility of him, that’s what blew me away,” he continued.
For much of his tour, Jimmy McCain was cut off from political news. The rented Iraqi home where his platoon bunked did not have Internet service, and the 30-odd men shared one satellite phone with a shaky signal. Some news arrived via word-of-mouth, like the senator’s New Hampshire victory (Mr. McCain recounted the story at a recent Manhattan fund-raiser). Lance Corporal McCain did see his father once. On Thanksgiving, Mr. McCain visited Camp Habbaniya with Senate colleagues, and the two shared the holiday meal in the chow hall, according to several people present. Mr. McCain asked other marines if they saw security improving and seemed heartened when they told him they did.
Lance Corporal McCain and his unit returned home in February. For his father, who believed that United States strategy in Iraq was working, his son’s tour corresponded well. The company had not lost any men, though three from the battalion had died. It had arrived in a stable area and things had only improved from there. “In my seven months there, you would see drastic changes in Iraq,” Lance Cpl. Greg Jumes said.
Lieutenant Bowlby echoed his comments, as did every marine interviewed. “There were some hairy moments, but compared to the past couple of years, it’s 180 degrees,” he said, comparing his first tour in Iraq with his second.
Mixed Events
Two days after Lance Corporal McCain arrived back in the United States, his father shared his account of the war with Republican congressmen. In a private meeting on Capitol Hill, Mr. McCain mentioned the decline in I.E.D.’s that his son witnessed, the soccer balls he gave to Iraqi children. Mr. McCain’s audience responded with a standing ovation, according to a report published by CNN and confirmed by several aides who were present.
In recent weeks, the news from Iraq has been less encouraging. The cease-fire between the leading Shiite militia and American and Iraqi security forces, which overlapped with Lance Corporal McCain’s tour, has frayed. Bombings and sectarian killings have increased. Days after the fifth anniversary of the war’s start, the death toll of American troops crossed the 4,000 mark.
As Mr. McCain enters the general election, some say that his son’s service will underscore the sincerity of his stance on the war. “He has, to use a gambler’s term, skin in the game,” said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator and longtime friend of Mr. McCain. “It’s among the most important things that people want to know about John McCain in trying to decide whether or not to trust him.”
Last month, Mrs. McCain made a similar argument at a campaign event in Houston. “I want him to represent my son at 3 o’clock in the morning,” she said of her husband, referring to an advertisement for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York that boasts of her national security credentials. She wore a blue-star pin, the mark of an American with a family member at war.
Her son is back at Camp Pendleton, where he is using the Jeep he just bought to ferry other marines to the beach. Lately he has been teased about a McCain presidency, according to Lance Cpl. Matt Drake, another company member. “Will we have to go patrolling with Secret Service?” they ask.
“Shut up,” Lance Corporal McCain tells them good-naturedly.
Kitty Bennett contributed research for this report.
McCain Is Vocal on War, but Silent on Son’s Service
By JODI KANTOR
One evening last July, Senator John McCain of Arizona arrived at the New Hampshire home of Erin Flanagan for sandwiches, chocolate-chip cookies and heartfelt talk about Iraq. They had met at a presidential debate, when she asked the candidates what they would do to bring home American soldiers — soldiers like her brother, who had been killed in action a few months earlier.
Mr. McCain did not bring cameras or a retinue. Instead, he brought his youngest son, James McCain, 19, then a private first class in the Marine Corps about to leave for Iraq. Father and son sat down to hear more about Ms. Flanagan’s brother Michael Cleary, a 24-year-old Army first lieutenant killed by an ambush and roadside bomb.
No one mentioned the obvious: in just days, Jimmy McCain could face similar perils. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for them as they were coming to meet with a family that ...” Ms. Flanagan recalled, choking up. “We lost a dear one,” she finished.
Mr. McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee, has staked his candidacy on the promise that American troops can bring stability to Iraq. What he almost never says is that one of them is his own son, who spent seven months patrolling Anbar Province and learned of his father’s New Hampshire victory in January while he was digging a stuck military vehicle out of the mud.
In his 71 years, Mr. McCain has confronted war as a pilot, a prisoner and a United States senator, but never before as a father. His son’s departure for Iraq brought him the same worry that every military parent feels, friends say, while the young marine’s experiences there have given him a sustained grunt’s-eye view of the action and private confirmation for his argument that United States strategy in Iraq is working.
While Jimmy McCain’s service is a story all his own — he enlisted at age 17 — it illuminates the beliefs about duty, honor and sacrifice with which family friends say he was raised. Military ideals have defined Mr. McCain as a person and a politician, and he is placing them at the core of his presidential candidacy. Last week, he campaigned at his former stations of duty, explaining how the lessons he learned there would guide his decisions as commander in chief.
“If I had ignored some of the less important conventions of the Academy,” as a demerit-prone midshipman, Mr. McCain said Wednesday at the United States Naval Academy, “I was careful not to defame its more compelling traditions: the veneration of courage and resilience; the honor code that simply assumed your fidelity to its principles; the homage paid to Americans who had sacrificed greatly for our country; the expectation that you, too, would prove worthy of your country’s trust.”
With both potential Democratic nominees in favor of withdrawal from Iraq, debate about the war — whether it is winnable, what would happen if the United States withdrew, how much loss the country can endure — is likely to be a dominant issue in the general election. Mr. McCain’s potential opponents are already implying that he is too willing to risk American lives, too committed to stretching an already unpopular war far into the future.
Out of the Public Eye
Mr. McCain has largely maintained a code of silence about his son, now a lance corporal, making only fleeting references to him in public both to protect him from becoming a prize target and avoid exploiting his service for political gain, according to friends. At the few campaign events where Lance Corporal McCain appeared last year, he was not introduced.
The McCains declined to be interviewed for this article, which the campaign requested not be published. “The McCain campaign objects strongly to this intrusion into the privacy of Senator McCain’s son,” Steve Schmidt, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “The children of presidential candidates in this election cycle should be afforded the same respect for their privacy that the children of President Bush and President and Senator Clinton have been afforded.” (To protect Lance Corporal McCain in case he is again deployed to a war zone, The New York Times is not publishing recent photographs of him and has withheld some details of his service).
Born in 1988, the third of John and Cindy McCain’s children, Jimmy inherited his father’s features and slight build, outrageous humor and family tradition of military service that stretches back to the Revolutionary War. His grandfather and great-grandfather were the first parent and son to achieve four-star admiral status in Naval history.
Then there was his father’s ever-growing legend. A hell-raising Navy pilot, John McCain relied on a defiant streak to survive nearly six brutal years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. As Jimmy grew up, his father, first a congressman and then a senator, was always dashing off to speak at military events — a dedication here, a graduation there. Mr. McCain’s reputation was burnished with his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers,” and its adaptation into a television movie.
Two of Jimmy’s three older brothers went into the military. Doug McCain, 48, was a Navy pilot. Jack McCain, 21, is to graduate from the Naval Academy next year, raising the chances that his father, if elected, could become the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower with a son at war.
The McCain children were not force-fed tales of their father’s bravery, said Orson Swindle, who was imprisoned in Vietnam with Mr. McCain. But “if you’re a man in the public eye, it’s hard for them not to know about it,” Mr. Swindle said in an interview.
Early Ambition
By the time Jimmy was in high school, he was scouting war memorabilia on eBay and playing video games like “Battlefield 1942,” classmates said. He chose sports that simulated combat, like fencing and paintball, and his prized possession was a World War II Army hat.
At Culver Academy, a military-style boarding school in Indiana, he and his friend Nick Moore would fire up “Apocalypse Now” or “Platoon” on a laptop — critiques of war, but never mind — turn the sound down and talk about serving. “The testosterone was flying,” Mr. Moore said in an interview. “He’d say, ‘I’m just going to go in there guns blazing!’ ”
Jimmy wanted to attend the Naval Academy, he told Mr. Moore, and then learn to fly. But how he would get there was uncertain. In interviews, classmates and teachers described him as the kind of kid who contributed impressive thoughts to classroom discussions but did not always turn in assignments, who was always collecting demerits for minor offenses like smoking — descriptions that echo those of his father at the same age. He left Culver after his sophomore year, making it the second school he passed through in two years.
Sometime in the next year, Jimmy enlisted in the Marine Corps. He only called his parents to tell them afterward, according to Lance Cpl. Casey Gardiner, a friend from boot camp. Iraq was tilting toward civil war, with blasts of improvised explosive devices at their highest levels yet. Jimmy McCain was 17, so young that Cindy McCain had to sign consent forms for his medical tests before he could report for duty, according to Gunnery Sgt. Edward Carter, a recruiter in Phoenix who handed her the papers.
By enlisting in the Marines, Jimmy seemed to be giving up his birthright. The Navy is, by reputation, the most aristocratic of the armed forces, the McCains among its most storied families. Now he would hold the lowest rank in a branch known for its grittiness. “The first time I heard he was going to be in the company, I couldn’t believe it,” said First Lt. Sam Bowlby, one of Lance Corporal McCain’s officers in Iraq.
“He didn’t want to be in the shadow of his father,” Lance Corporal Gardiner said.
But the new marine was fulfilling his father’s legacy in at least one way. John McCain had become a hero not for the missions he had flown or the men he had led, but for the privileges he had refused and the hardships he had endured. The North Vietnamese wanted to free Mr. McCain ahead of other captives because he was the son of a Navy admiral and Pacific commander. Mr. McCain refused. Now his son was carving a humble new path that the father, academy-bound since birth, never had.
Jimmy began boot camp on Sept. 11, 2006. He took extra abuse for his last name, said Lance Cpl. Gregory Aalto, a member of his training platoon. Recruits are not even allowed their own eyeglasses, so Jimmy had to wear the standard-issue Marine ones, so unappealing they are known as “birth-control goggles.”
As he completed his training and prepared for deployment, other marines caught only occasional glimpses of his family’s celebrity and wealth, such as when he handed out extra tickets for a Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Oscar De La Hoya boxing match he was attending with his father in Las Vegas. If anyone asked about his family, he had a sarcastic joke at the ready. When a cluster of marines asked how they could help his father’s campaign, Lance Corporal McCain pretended to call him and then passed on a message: they could carry out the contracts the senator had taken out on his rivals’ lives.
“Jimmy was just completely joking,” said Lance Cpl. Johnathan Pebley. “You can kind of tell he doesn’t want to talk about it.”
In July, days from deployment, Lance Corporal McCain, newly engaged to be married, joined his father’s struggling campaign in New Hampshire. He visited the Flanagans and sat unrecognized at campaign events.
At the last stop, a veteran asked for a round of applause for the candidate’s brave Marine son. He did not seem to know that Jimmy McCain was sitting just a few seats away. Almost no one did.
As Father of a Marine
Mr. McCain did not speak publicly about whatever anxiety he may have felt about his son’s deployment, but Mr. Swindle described the experience as difficult. “Anybody who tells you it’s not tough is not being straightforward with you,” he said.
Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, whose son served two tours in Iraq, said he and Mr. McCain privately traded their concerns. “We talked about how it affects the young men over there,” Mr. Bond said. “He’s basically a father, very anxious about what his son’s going to be doing.”
Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, a former presidential contender whose son was serving in Afghanistan, said he and Mr. McCain would update each other at debates. “He knows what his father and grandfather went through as his sons went off to war,” Mr. Hunter said. “So he’s got a model to follow.”
Indeed, John McCain’s own parents were dressing for a dinner party in London when they learned he had been shot down. They went anyway, never telling other guests. Later, Admiral McCain ordered air strikes on Hanoi, where he knew his son was imprisoned.
Just before Jimmy’s departure, Mrs. McCain decided she had to see him one final time, according to Lieutenant Bowlby. With a few well-placed phone calls, she won permission to visit the Air Force base from which his unit would depart. When Lance Corporal McCain found out, he protested. No special favors, he said. Mrs. McCain stayed away.
“God forbid someone gave him something the rest of the marines weren’t entitled to,” Lieutenant Bowlby said.
Lance Corporal McCain and his fellow riflemen had trained for the worst in the spring of 2007, using paintball guns rigged as M-16s to apprehend costume-clad “insurgents” in fake Iraqi villages.
In the real Iraq, they saw little combat. “We were expecting to get shot at all the time,” said Lance Cpl. Justin Murdock, 20. “But 95 percent of the time, nothing was going on.”
The marines were stationed in Anbar Province, where some of the war’s bloodiest battles had been fought. But the fighting had moved on to other areas, and Lance Corporal McCain’s company mostly did security work, which meant keeping an unceasing eye on the locals, poor Sunnis who grew rice and other crops on small plots.
Lance Corporal McCain’s unit performed “soft knocks” — visits to Iraqi homes intended as reassurance as well as surveillance, said Lance Cpl. Jason Case. His platoon hunted for weapons caches and I.E.D.’s, but also distributed school supplies and candy. Relying on interpreters and the bits of Arabic they all seemed to pick up, the 19- and 20-year-old grunts taught Iraqi police officers how to hold and clean weapons, search vehicles and conduct patrols.
The hardest part, said several marines, was enduring tedium while remaining braced for mayhem. There were physical deprivations, too — searing heat, heavy gear, long hours and minimal sleep.
Fifteen marines with whom Lance Corporal McCain trained or served were interviewed for this article, and all praised his performance. He “was just always a hardworking kid,” Lieutenant Bowlby said. “He never bitched about anything,” he said, and always seemed to be laughing. “The humility of him, that’s what blew me away,” he continued.
For much of his tour, Jimmy McCain was cut off from political news. The rented Iraqi home where his platoon bunked did not have Internet service, and the 30-odd men shared one satellite phone with a shaky signal. Some news arrived via word-of-mouth, like the senator’s New Hampshire victory (Mr. McCain recounted the story at a recent Manhattan fund-raiser). Lance Corporal McCain did see his father once. On Thanksgiving, Mr. McCain visited Camp Habbaniya with Senate colleagues, and the two shared the holiday meal in the chow hall, according to several people present. Mr. McCain asked other marines if they saw security improving and seemed heartened when they told him they did.
Lance Corporal McCain and his unit returned home in February. For his father, who believed that United States strategy in Iraq was working, his son’s tour corresponded well. The company had not lost any men, though three from the battalion had died. It had arrived in a stable area and things had only improved from there. “In my seven months there, you would see drastic changes in Iraq,” Lance Cpl. Greg Jumes said.
Lieutenant Bowlby echoed his comments, as did every marine interviewed. “There were some hairy moments, but compared to the past couple of years, it’s 180 degrees,” he said, comparing his first tour in Iraq with his second.
Mixed Events
Two days after Lance Corporal McCain arrived back in the United States, his father shared his account of the war with Republican congressmen. In a private meeting on Capitol Hill, Mr. McCain mentioned the decline in I.E.D.’s that his son witnessed, the soccer balls he gave to Iraqi children. Mr. McCain’s audience responded with a standing ovation, according to a report published by CNN and confirmed by several aides who were present.
In recent weeks, the news from Iraq has been less encouraging. The cease-fire between the leading Shiite militia and American and Iraqi security forces, which overlapped with Lance Corporal McCain’s tour, has frayed. Bombings and sectarian killings have increased. Days after the fifth anniversary of the war’s start, the death toll of American troops crossed the 4,000 mark.
As Mr. McCain enters the general election, some say that his son’s service will underscore the sincerity of his stance on the war. “He has, to use a gambler’s term, skin in the game,” said Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator and longtime friend of Mr. McCain. “It’s among the most important things that people want to know about John McCain in trying to decide whether or not to trust him.”
Last month, Mrs. McCain made a similar argument at a campaign event in Houston. “I want him to represent my son at 3 o’clock in the morning,” she said of her husband, referring to an advertisement for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York that boasts of her national security credentials. She wore a blue-star pin, the mark of an American with a family member at war.
Her son is back at Camp Pendleton, where he is using the Jeep he just bought to ferry other marines to the beach. Lately he has been teased about a McCain presidency, according to Lance Cpl. Matt Drake, another company member. “Will we have to go patrolling with Secret Service?” they ask.
“Shut up,” Lance Corporal McCain tells them good-naturedly.
Kitty Bennett contributed research for this report.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Campus ‘activism’ redefined
Campus ‘activism’ redefined
By Michael Graham Thursday, April 3, 2008
http://www.bostonherald.com Op-Ed
Oh, to be a campus activist now that spring is here.
“Campus activist” is what the Boston Globe-Democrat calls the students pushing for coed dorm rooms at colleges across the country. Not just coed dorms, floors or even suites. One room, two beds, a boy and a girl.
As Dr. Frankenstein said just before he threw the switch, “What could possibly go wrong?”
More than 30 colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Clark, Brown, and Brandeis have coed dorm room policies. This is part of the academic Left’s commitment to social justice, the battle against heteronormative bias, and a way for guys who look like Michael Moore to get a smokin’ hot roommate.
Not surprisingly, enlightened, socially progressive college males are giving this policy a resounding “Yeah, baby!”
This movement is led by the National Student Genderblind Campaign, which insists that colleges without gender-neutral housing are “heterosexist, oppressive, and anti-affirmative.”
“Heterosexist” means you think men and women are different. “Oppressive” means you won’t leave them alone in a dorm room long enough to prove you right.
“Anti-affirmative?” I think that means you’re not voting for Hillary. Or maybe Barack.
Note that all these schools already have coed dorms. They place very few restrictions on male and female mingling on campus.
But liberal academics aren’t content with coupling. They’re demanding cohabitation to make their point that acknowledging gender differences is, in and of itself, a form of oppression.
What oppression, you ask? Who’s being harmed by a same-sex roommate policy, you wonder? Isn’t this just asking for trouble?
You, sir, are clearly demonstrating misogynist, crypto-fascist tendencies.
Either that, or you have a daughter in college.
To every self-described progressive who blames conservative talk show hosts for making “liberal” a dirty word, I refer you to this story. Liberalism isn’t the victim of the Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy. Its reputation has been ruined by its own loony adherents who promote ideas that fly in the face of common sense.
Seriously, is there any part of this idea that doesn’t scream “stupid” to every grownup who hears it? The campus advocates of this idiocy admit right up front that they believe there is no meaningful difference between the sexes.
“Among millennial students, whether it’s race, gender, or nationality, the borders are coming down,” James Baumann of the Association of College and University Housing Officers told the Globe. “The lines just aren’t there anymore.”
Get it? College kids don’t even notice each other’s sex anymore. That line has been erased, the gender-neutral utopia is here, hallelujah!
Why, if Angelina Jolie walked across the Brown campus naked today, the reaction would be “Who’s the lumpy guy with the big lips?”
Yeah, right.
The Knee Jerk Brigade of the Massachusetts Left want to turn issues like this into a debate over human sexuality. Sexual liberty is the only form of liberty still in vogue among campus liberals. The same people who would happily ban all gun ownership and impose speech codes will fight to the death defending your “right” to carnal knowledge.
But when liberals insist that college kids are going to have sex anyway - roommates or not - they are undermining their own “gender-neutral” nonsense.
Normal people understand that boys and girls are different, and that common sense dictates they be treated differently as a result.
And to quote that great French philosopher, Maurice Chevalier, “Vive le difference!”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1084584
By Michael Graham Thursday, April 3, 2008
http://www.bostonherald.com Op-Ed
Oh, to be a campus activist now that spring is here.
“Campus activist” is what the Boston Globe-Democrat calls the students pushing for coed dorm rooms at colleges across the country. Not just coed dorms, floors or even suites. One room, two beds, a boy and a girl.
As Dr. Frankenstein said just before he threw the switch, “What could possibly go wrong?”
More than 30 colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Clark, Brown, and Brandeis have coed dorm room policies. This is part of the academic Left’s commitment to social justice, the battle against heteronormative bias, and a way for guys who look like Michael Moore to get a smokin’ hot roommate.
Not surprisingly, enlightened, socially progressive college males are giving this policy a resounding “Yeah, baby!”
This movement is led by the National Student Genderblind Campaign, which insists that colleges without gender-neutral housing are “heterosexist, oppressive, and anti-affirmative.”
“Heterosexist” means you think men and women are different. “Oppressive” means you won’t leave them alone in a dorm room long enough to prove you right.
“Anti-affirmative?” I think that means you’re not voting for Hillary. Or maybe Barack.
Note that all these schools already have coed dorms. They place very few restrictions on male and female mingling on campus.
But liberal academics aren’t content with coupling. They’re demanding cohabitation to make their point that acknowledging gender differences is, in and of itself, a form of oppression.
What oppression, you ask? Who’s being harmed by a same-sex roommate policy, you wonder? Isn’t this just asking for trouble?
You, sir, are clearly demonstrating misogynist, crypto-fascist tendencies.
Either that, or you have a daughter in college.
To every self-described progressive who blames conservative talk show hosts for making “liberal” a dirty word, I refer you to this story. Liberalism isn’t the victim of the Vast, Right-Wing Conspiracy. Its reputation has been ruined by its own loony adherents who promote ideas that fly in the face of common sense.
Seriously, is there any part of this idea that doesn’t scream “stupid” to every grownup who hears it? The campus advocates of this idiocy admit right up front that they believe there is no meaningful difference between the sexes.
“Among millennial students, whether it’s race, gender, or nationality, the borders are coming down,” James Baumann of the Association of College and University Housing Officers told the Globe. “The lines just aren’t there anymore.”
Get it? College kids don’t even notice each other’s sex anymore. That line has been erased, the gender-neutral utopia is here, hallelujah!
Why, if Angelina Jolie walked across the Brown campus naked today, the reaction would be “Who’s the lumpy guy with the big lips?”
Yeah, right.
The Knee Jerk Brigade of the Massachusetts Left want to turn issues like this into a debate over human sexuality. Sexual liberty is the only form of liberty still in vogue among campus liberals. The same people who would happily ban all gun ownership and impose speech codes will fight to the death defending your “right” to carnal knowledge.
But when liberals insist that college kids are going to have sex anyway - roommates or not - they are undermining their own “gender-neutral” nonsense.
Normal people understand that boys and girls are different, and that common sense dictates they be treated differently as a result.
And to quote that great French philosopher, Maurice Chevalier, “Vive le difference!”
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1084584
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