Neither Hero nor Renegade

Stop calling him a hero … or a renegade

Yes, dictionaries define heroic as highly courageous, but the word has become trite when we apply it to everyone from movie stars to the latest kid who scored the winning goal. To make the word meaningful I insist that a hero is one who offers up his own life to save others.

In John McCain I don't see a hero, I see an ordinary guy who did then and does now whatever he can to keep himself alive. A hero sacrifices his life for somebody else. McCain has never done that. In Vietnam he did whatever he could to keep himself alive, including in the end "breaking" and making a false confession in support of the enemy. Many of us were Air Force, Army, and Navy ROTC cadets at the same time he was at Annapolis and we took to heart the same Military Code of Conduct. Don't get me wrong: it took tremendous personal courage to break that code in order to save his own life and I might or might not have done the same. But I'm left wondering how many other POW's did give up their lives rather than break that sacred code. We'll never know, but like the "Unknown Soldier" they would be heroes in my book, unlike John McCain.

More heroic than John McCain:
· The firemen who raced up the stairs of the Twin Towers without thinking twice about it.
· The wives who've lost their husbands in Iraq and Afghanistan and now have to support their children on their own every day in a minimally supportive system in a bad economy.
· Carol McCain, his wife who waited for him, suffered injuries far worse than his, and got dumped by the glorious John McCain.

When McCain flew his (several) aircraft over Vietnam he was a cocky young pilot having the time of his life, but he was no hero. When he got shot down, his reality changed in a flash and he did what he could to stay alive … including saying things that weren't true.

Fast forward to today: Different field, same game.

A renegade? Maybe. He has been cantankerous in the Senate. A poll taken among his fellows in Congress revealed that every one of them had been insulted by McCain. Maybe he has opposed his fellow Republicans a few times. But when you've voted with George Bush over 90% of the time, can you really call yourself a "renegade"? And, if you're a Senator or Congressman, how likely are you to want to work with a guy in trying to solve America's problems when "The Renegade" has just kicked you in the butt (regardless your party) for no good reason?

Fast forward to today: Different field, same game?