A whole flurry of people are suddenly trying to poke holes in McCain’s ‘Cross story’ all of a sudden. I think this is a mistake and will either have no effect or slightly backfire. Here is my thinking.
A whole flurry of people are suddenly trying to poke holes in McCain’s ‘Cross story’ all of a sudden. I think this is a mistake and will either have no effect or slightly backfire. Here is my thinking.
- You can’t prove it’s not true. Unlike the whole Hillary in Bosnia story, there are only two witnesses to this event; McCain and the guard. Many of the details – such as McCain being tied the way he describes – are well documented. It’s not a complicated story with a lot of details that can be investigated. Things like if the guard used his sandal or a stick to draw the cross are hardly very substantive.
- The fact that something similar happened to Solzhenitsyn is not surprising. The Soviet Union and Vietnam were both communist dictatorships that repressed Christianity. This is not at all dissimilar to the early roots of Christian faith where the Romans were doing the same thing. During those times, Christians would often scratch an Ichthys (more commonly known today as a ‘Jesus fish’) in the sand to indicate their faith to other believers as it wasn’t safe to talk of it out loud. I find it quite likely that Christians in communist countries would have heard those stories – they would be able to relate to them and take faith in them.
- All this does is continue to focus the spotlight on McCain’s POW experience – the strongest part of his biography. Again, so much of this is provable – him not taking early release, him being appointed the Chaplin by his small group, him being tortured – is that really what the Obama campaign wants to be talking about?
I’m sure people here will flog this story until the election – I’ve seen enough to know it will become part of the cannon. But it’s going to backfire quite badly if anyone important tries to push this line in the MSM.