HE WAS A WAR CRIMINAL and DEFENDER of WALL STREET
Just because you’re not the best friend of the other criminal, Donald Trump, doesn’t make you a hero.
Senator John McCain was a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War— a war that took the lives of 3 million Vietnamese and 57,000 U.S. GI’s. The U.S. dropped 7 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. It destroyed village after village. Many of the bombs dropped Agent Orange and napalm, chemical warfare that destroyed crops, forests, fields, rice paddies and tortured any human being hit by it. Decades after the bombing, Vietnamese and U.S. soldiers developed cancer and other illnesses from agent orange which took the Pentagon and U.S. government decades to admit.
McCain vigorously supported Bush’s war against Iraq and more recently backed the Saudi fascist government in their genocidal war on Yemen which both bombs and starves the people. Joining all presidents, Republican and Democrat, who do not view the lives of other people as important, McCain embraced every war waged by the US imperialist state. During his 2008 campaign for President, McCain sang the song “Bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.
Domestic Policy
The Children’s Defense Fund called McCain the worst Senator in Congress for children. Running against Obama in 2008, McCain promised to balance the budget by cutting social security, Medicare and Medicaid. He also supported spending billions on the profit-making domestic surveillance and homeland security. McCain was firmly against taxing big business. During 5 terms as Senator his record on labor rights, women, LGBTQ, racial equality, women’s rights and consumer rights was terrible.
And we cannot forget he chose Sarah Palin, a maniac far right racist as his vice-presidential running mate. Not that he ever made much of an attempt to conceal his own racism: this is a man who in 1983 voted against the establishment of MLK Day. The same man who in 2000 said, “I hate the g**ks… I will hate them as long as I live.”
McCain swayed in the political wind. At one point he supported a path for citizenship for immigrants. Then when running for President he endorsed the plan of the Arizona Cattlemen’s Association (giant ranchers on stolen land) to deploy armored tanks to the border and deprive immigrants of water in the desert. He accused immigrants of intentionally causing car crashes to collect money from insurance companies.
It’s understandable that the big business media would follow the script of this “great man” nonsense. But there is no excuse when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic Socialist of America member and Democratic Party Primary winner for Congress from New York, chimes in: “John McCain’s legacy represents an unparalleled example of human decency and American service.”
Clearly, the multi-millionaire McCain, whose father and grand-father were navy Admirals, lived a life of pandering to the rich, bombing other countries, and trying to destroy social programs. No great man, no hero, not even close.