There was a minor incident connected with the murder of President Kennedy which was little noted much less remembered. After the shooting, Jackie scrambled back over the trunk of the limo, was met by a Secret Service agent, and returned to her seat. You saw it in the Zapruder film and subsequent stills. That brave lady, said the press and an admiring populace. In that moment of emergency, she sought to insure that agent was safely established on the rear bumper before the dash to Parkland Hospital. She's a heroine.
Lenny Bruce, subsequently using the sequence in his stand-up act, said, if ever your wife or daughter is caught in extreme circumstance, and if she impulsively responds naturally, if she hauls a__to save a__, in other terms, then always Jackie will be held up to her. Jackie succeeded, she will be assured, while you failed. You're no heroine.
And it's all a lie.
In the sixties, troops reporting to Army Basic Combat Training were presented with four General Orders, which they must learn verbatim. They all involved heroism in the event of capture. You'd be confronted while on guard duty by some NCO; "What's your third General Order, troop?" I will stalwartly refuse to cooperate and I'll give my life for my country. It was troubling to the Pentagon that so many POWs in Korea had cooperated, even collaborated, with the enemy. It was hoped, within that eternal mystical sort of daydream authority always engages in, (we were more recently informed by one fool that control of firearms isn't the way to curb massive deaths; that would be accomplished were they to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in schools) that reciting pledges will render heroes. We laughed at the notion at the time.
John McCain is a war hero. In the pursuit of personal glory, and hoping to become an admiral before his daddy or his daddy's daddy, he flew combat missions over North Vietnam. That took bravery. And when he was shot down, wounded, captured, he collaborated with the enemy. That didn't. He forgot those four General Orders. That isn't heroism.
Were I in that circumstance, I would've sold out immediately. (But, then, neither would I have had the chutzpah to run for the nation's highest office on my heroic war record.) I would've said, just like McCain did, if you'll take me to the hospital, I'll tell you secrets. I'm no hero. I have no great urge to validate the so-called judgment of either Nixon or LBJ.
But neither is McCain, according to his own admission, and this Counterpunch article:
One can only wonder when the concierge at the Hanoi Hilton started taking calls from Admiral McCain. Rather quickly, one surmises, for the Vietnamese soon took John Boy McCain to a hospital reserved for Vietnamese officers. Unlike his fellow POWs, he received care from a Soviet doctor.
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For his part, McCain acknowledges that the Vietnamese rushed him to a hospital, but denies he was given any "special medical treatment."
However....two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not "name rank and serial number, or kill me," as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of US pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships.
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So McCain leveraged some details to get some medical attention. That’s not anything too contemptible. And who among us civilians is to judge someone in the position?
On the other hand, according to one source, McCain’s collaboration may have had very real consequences. Retired Army Colonel Earl Hopper, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, contends that the information that McCain divulged [was] classified information North Vietnam used to hone their air defense system.
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According to [...] Hopper, McCain told his North Vietnamese captors, "highly classified information, the most important of which was the package routes, which were routes used to bomb North Vietnam. He gave in detail the altitude they were flying, the direction, if they made a turn... he gave them what primary targets the United States was interested in." Hopper contends that the information McCain provided allowed the North Vietnamese to adjust their air-defenses. As result, Hopper claims, the US lost sixty percent more aircraft and in 1968, "called off the bombing of North Vietnam, because of the information McCain had given to them."
Axis Sally, American citizen caught in Japan by the war, made several propaganda broadcasts for the enemy and was imprisoned for it. William Joyce, one of the Lord Haw-Haws, performed similar service for the Nazis, and was hanged after the war. Ezra Pound did likewise for the Italian fascists and copped a plea to hide out in a psych ward for twelve years to avoid prosecution. John McCain, who not only broadcast propaganda but delivered military secrets to the enemy, is running for president of the US.
I guess the General Orders have lapsed.