You absolutely should be able to do that, but discussing his contributions to AIDS care without anyone being able to mention that he's a war criminal seems severely misguided.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
John McCain will stop receiving care for his brain cancer, entering his final days
- Thread starter BAD
- Start date
- Status
You absolutely should be able to do that, but discussing his contributions to AIDS care without anyone being able to mention that he's a war criminal seems severely misguided.
We'll in this hypothetical topic I would assume it goes without saying considering everyone else is going to be pointing that out.
After some users mentioned his military career I decided to find some photos of a younger McCain and some of the accompanying quotes are crazy.
Source: Business Insider
Source: Business Insider
After some users mentioned his military career I decided to find some photos of a younger McCain and some of the accompanying quotes are crazy.
Source: Business Insider
Can't even imagine being a prisoner of war like that for years, not just physically, but emotionally i would be completely crippled
Muhammad Ali? Che Guevara? Malcom X? Churchill? Gandhi? Will we now dismiss these controversial figures as "too problematic", say they have automatically become "role models" because we remember their positive impacts and therefore we must dismiss everything they have contributed? Do we claim that any praise of them is automatically conflated with "whitewashing"?
Or do we respectfully remember their positive legacy while acknowledging that they were also controversial?
McCain is nowhere near a racist. He is not a murdering sociopath. He is not a criminal. He's not a white supremacist or a Nazi. Why people are being attacked for saying they respect him in a thread about his terminal illness is beyond me, and I have yet to receive one PM for anyone's reason why.
This is not that difficult, nor does it need to be.
Are you applying the above judgments to Vietnam War veterans, in general, or are they somehow specific to John McCain.
In general, yes. I am of the opinion the Vietnam war was disgusting and illegal and if you want I can post some excerpts from servicemen who can attest to the atrocities that were committed there. I do not respect veterans of the Vietnam war, especially those who actually volunteered to go like McCain.
Calling Vietnamese people gooks is pretty fucking racist, dude.
You didn't answer the question. Are you are saying all Vietnam vets, including those who were drafted are "deeply evil human beings"
I do acknowledge him standing out among his kind even if he didn't go as far as many of us would hope. It was exciting to watch him say NO to his peers last year. He plays the game most of the time but I'll give him credit for the times he got it right, and I appreciate the opposition he has displayed during the current administration. Every inch helps.
His legacy may be mixed, but in the context of the Republican party, he's had way more class than most. I wish more Republicans could talk about their opponents as respectfully and honestly as he did. I may have disagreed with many of his political decisions but I'll give him the same respect he showed his opponents when talking about him. And in the context of his military career he was a tough motherfucker.
The sacks of shit over on T_D are celebrating his deterioration right now which tells you enough. I hope his final days are comfortable and satisfying for him and his family.
His legacy may be mixed, but in the context of the Republican party, he's had way more class than most. I wish more Republicans could talk about their opponents as respectfully and honestly as he did. I may have disagreed with many of his political decisions but I'll give him the same respect he showed his opponents when talking about him. And in the context of his military career he was a tough motherfucker.
The sacks of shit over on T_D are celebrating his deterioration right now which tells you enough. I hope his final days are comfortable and satisfying for him and his family.
Last edited:
did your brainwashing not take or something? servicepeople are immune to judgment of their character which is why chris kyle is a hero and not a serial killing psychopath
I did answer, I said yes? You're trying to trap me in some gotcha when actually I do think Vietnam War vets are straight up evil. Ones who volunteered more so than ones who were drafted. Brutality from US Soldiers was a common fact of life in Vietnam but don't take my (or my family who actually lived through the fucking war and fled the country avoid getting raped or murdered by US soldiers) word for it.
These are excerpts from an extremely good novel, Kill anything that moves.
How can you even think any of the soldiers who went to Vietnam were Honorable or good when you read things like this? When I myself have heard personal family stories of close encounters with the US army.
Are the servicemen from that war evil by virture of their participation?
Is John Kerry evil?
Edit: your response noting an alleged "gotcha trap" is refreshing. It's trying to understand if there's nuance in your position. Your admission that there isn't nuance is uncommon in its honesty.
No you said the war was disgusting and illegal and singled out McCain but thank you for answering.
Yeah, straight up. Why is this so hard to understand for you people? I think you posted this without reading the excerpts I posted up above but I don't and will never put "The Troops" on a pedestal the same way you do mainly because they actually caused my family to become refugees.
Asking a victim of the Vietnam war if they think all the soldiers are evil like it's some kind of genius gotcha question is some amazing cosmic-brain radical centrist shit.
User warned: antagonizing another member, condescension
No one is saying that the good parts don't exist. They're saying that the bad parts outweigh the good ones and they're upset that we're being told to not talk about the bad parts.
I was just pointing out some of these people didn't get to choose whether they got drug off to a war zone. I would classify them as victims who were given no choice in the matter.
As has been pointed out there is a time and place for such discussions. That time is probably not when the man is dying from cancer.
Yeah that's why I singled out volunteers like McCain, but rest assured, out of all the victims, none suffered more than the Vietnamese people who were napalamed, subjected to Agent Orange, subjected to brutal rape on a daily basis. To even invite the comparison that soldiers "also had it bad because they had no choice in murdering this village of civilians" is frankly a bit insulting.
You are welcome to be critical of his record, without cheering his death or saying you're glad he's dying. It shouldn't be too much to ask that we not treat his death the same way the alt right is.
No one is denying the atrocities that were committed in Vietnam. I merely stated that many people who fought and died in this war didn't choose to be there and I'm not comfortable with calling them evil monsters, the same way I wouldn't call a child soldier a monster.
#NotAllVets #NotAllTroops
I don't blame any victim of the Vietnam War for calling the US on their bullshit when it comes to it. We absolutely fucked up big time during that window and there are definitely people that should absolutely be in jail for what happened during that period.
Also don't blame anyone like the Onion for the instant savagery right off the back. The things this man said and did doesn't paint him positive at all in my book. There are plenty of other service members, or just people in general, I would worship before I even consider McCain.
It's unfortunate when anyone's life is cut short due to cancer. Just because you're old already doesn't make it any easier. I hope he goes peacefully and painlessly. No matter what bad stuff he's done or said, he's a human and he deserves that much at least.
The fact that they didn't choose to be there is separate from the choice to rape and kill children. These weren't children that were conscripted; they were old enough to know that you shouldn't rape women and kill children. Comparing them to child soldiers is really fucked up.
McCain described Rod Parsley as his "spiritual guide". A man who said that America was founded with a divine purpose, in part, to destroy Islam. Yes, McCain distanced himself once he started getting bad headlines about it but these were views that Parsley didn't exactly keep hidden. McCain must have known his views when he went to Parsley to seek his endorsement, it only became a problem once the press found out.
Let's take Jerry Falwell, a man who described Islam and 'satanic' and called Muhammad a terrorist. In 2000 McCain called him an 'agent of intolerance'. Fast forward a few years and he's cosying up to Falwell, delivering a commencement speech at Falwell's university.
When he lost the primaries to Bush he decried the Christian right, when he ran for President again he was courting the same Christian right that was loudly demonising all of Islam.
Oh and let's not forget the time McCain endorsed and campaigned on behalf of George Wallace in Alabama in 2005. George Wallace Jr. who, just a few months earlier, had kicked off the opening day of a conference of the Council of Conservative Christians, a literal white supremacist organisation.
Or when he hired Richard Quinn as a campaign manager. A man who edited a neo-confederate magazine, described Martin Luther King as a man "whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul." and wrote "What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?"
Totes the actions of a decent, honourable, not-at-all-racist man.
McCain gave nice quotes and that's why the press are happy to whitewash his career but we shouldn't be so eager to do the same.
Point made. I was more pointing out the incredibly broad bush he was passing over every US soldier in the conflict. I'm just not comfortable labeling every one of them monsters.
It's only fair to paint with such a broad brush since anyone in certain areas was automatically designated Vietcong and A-OK to bomb from the sky.
Let's put this in more perspective. Neither you nor your family were victims or made refugees because of it.
One of my neighbors is a Vietnam vet with a purple heart. He and his wife are super nice people, but I'm sure he had no problem gunning down gooks, VC, and Charlie. I have lots of friends that are here because of that war and I can't help but wonder if he killed family members of my friends. I'm Chinese. If I was working the farm somewhere in Vietnam, would he have gunned down me, my kids, and raped my wife? THAT'S discomfort; not the labeling of people that should know better as monsters.
Either way, I'm dine with this derail. Maybe a mod can chime in on when we can start getting real with McCain.
...that's the disagreement being had.
That's not all that is being asked if you look around.
Gotta agree with you there. In the same vein as the "enemy combatents" term. Those brushes in involved alot more than hurts feelings or breaks in decorum.
Policing thoughts is weird af. One can praise someone without being dismissed and reminded "ya but did you forget he voted against MLK day!"
You can't please everyone with your actions. Whatever good or bad he did (remember the good, and learn from the bad), I hope his final days are with family and loved ones and at peace.
Everyone deserves peace.
You can't please everyone with your actions. Whatever good or bad he did (remember the good, and learn from the bad), I hope his final days are with family and loved ones and at peace.
Everyone deserves peace.
I don't think McCain ever did learn from the (massive) amounts of bad he did. You're just lowering his "actions" to just words and difference of opinion rather than actively murdering people.
Everyone deserves peace, which makes it awfully sad that he neglected to give it to the burning Vietnamese children he napalmed. They didn't get to spend their final days with their families and loved ones at peace but since they're not American, it's okay I guess.
I mean you have people in here saying that we shouldn't speak about anything negative he did, which I would certainly think of as policing.
You can say whatever positive thing you want, but if somebody makes a claim as bold as "he isn't even slightly racist" then I am going to refute that with evidence.
Imagine if he had been elected two terms and not Obama. He would've just got out of office and had to immediately fight for his life.
This kind of dismissive, enabling nonsense is why these threads need to talk about the negative parts of his legacy. People obviously need to hear it.
Whatever his politics, I sincerely hope his last days are comfortable in equal measure to his leadership. One thing he was not was unprincipled, much as I disagreed with him. Many of his colleagues couldn't honestly claim the same, and I especially doubt they'd be able to survive a torture scenario. Platitude though it may be, I dearly hope he can pass with as much dignity and respect now as he held in his long life of valorous conduct and public service, and leave an example for all men, but Republicans especially, to follow.
Thats not what is happening in here and you know it. You are free to make whatever thread you want and talk all the shit you want. Hell I will join you. You just can't come into a thread about him being on his deathbed where people are trying to say a few kind words about him or his family and start telling everyone they are wrong and derailing the thread with how awful you think he is and that you don't care that he is dying.
Hence the mod post.
McCain on voting against MLK Day over a decade ago: "We can be slow as well to give greatness its due, a mistake I myself made long ago when I voted against a federal holiday in memory of Dr. King. I was wrong. I was wrong, and eventually realized it in time to give full support — full support — for a state holiday in my home state of Arizona. I'd remind you that we can all be a little late sometimes in doing the right thing, and Dr. King understood this about his fellow Americans."
- Status