I remember not long ago when Republican U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona was known as a maverick who was not unwilling to stand up against his party to stand for what he believed was right. I remember John McCain the fighter pilot, war hero, and deal maker, but the days of John McCain the maverick, of the man who would put “country first,” are clearly dead.
On same day the U.S Senate voted to end our military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, Sen. McCain took to the floor of the Senate to rail against the repeal, a repeal McCain in 2006 said he’d support if military leaders told him they supported repealing it, McCain also voted against the Dream Act, legislation he initially sponsored. On Tuesday, McCain voted against ending debate on the anti-proliferation START treaty, and just yesterday it was revealed McCain, who doesn’t seem to be content to be the U.S. Senate’s “cranky old guy” but instead seems hell-bent on earning a new reputation as a cold, heartless bastard, blocking funding for a suicide prevention outreach program for veterans returning to the U.S. from Iraq and Afghanistan.
I’d love to hear someone defend John McCain on this one…
I can’t believe I used to look up to this man.
He’s like so many others of his party, they bang the drum to “support our troops” but when it comes down to actually supporting the men and women in the military, by providing for their care once they’re home from the wars, they don’t want to do it.
These ‘American Conservative Heroes’ stall, they cancel big chunks of spending for things like mental health while we continue to spend it all on weaponry. Because don’t you know, you sol’jers should just buck up and stop thinkin’ about yerselves all the damn time! Or hey…facial reconstruction for guys whose faces were burned off by IED’s, physical therapy for amputees, respiratory therapy for guys with scorched lungs. Those people are all just a bunch of pussies.
I’m a liberal and care about our troops. I might be against the war and what it stands for, always have been. But I want to pay for their care both during and after their military service and not for some weaponry.
This hits extremely close to home for me, because not only have I had relatives in WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam with them becoming essed up because of it, but I had a good friend go into Iraq and not come back right. When I saw him shouting at me in Arabic, speaking in military code and giving me his rank while asking if I was a civilian? Exactly.
I will admit that the Veterans Administration has been trying to take extraordinary measures to locate and treat PTSD patients in recent years but they still have a long way to go. Sadly the VA doesn’t handle active soldiers, so the active medical service needs to do much more.
It’s disgusting that he has to go outside of the military and use his own money from the organization that put him in this situation, and it should be a support system or at least pay so that he could see proper therapy if he chooses to go to a private therapist. So this typical sweep the problems under the rug instead of actually acknowledging them makes me furious. Most of us don’t know what they’ve been through, and that includes the very same conservatives who beat the drum and ignoring their issues. Especially them.
Nicely said, T.
To think I looked up to Sen. McCain for the same reasons you did, and mostly because I thought he cared for our troops, unlike GWB. Boy was I wrong.
Yeah, gone are the days when Sen. McCain could claim to be a supporter of our military forces.