How is John McCain like John Kerry?
Hint: Members of the POW community -- ex-prisoners, their families and the families of those still unaccounted for -- have issues with him.
By Mark Benjamin
Read more: Republican Party, John McCain, Politics, Veterans, Vietnam, News, Mark Benjamin, 2008 election
AP Photo/John Duricka
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., left, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., meet reporters in Washington, on Jan. 27, 1994, after the Senate voted to urge the Clinton administration to lift the 19-year-old trade embargo against Vietnam.
Jan. 29, 2008 | Prior to the South Carolina Republican primary earlier this month, a group calling itself the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain launched a dubious attack on McCain's behavior as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Led by an activist named Jerry Kiley, the group alleged, with little factual basis, and with no effect on the primary, which McCain won, that the Arizona senator had collaborated with the enemy when he was a prisoner, and that he had been turned into a "Manchurian Candidate" during his captivity.
Kiley, who once tried to throw red wine on Phan Van Khai, the then-prime minister of Vietnam, has a history of extremism. And his South Carolina leaflet was reflective of similar attacks on John McCain's war record over the years, launched by a minority of POW activists who believe American POWs may still be alive in Southeast Asia. At first glance, one might assume that Kiley et al. are the exceptions, and that the mainstream of the POW community -- former POWs, their families and the families of those missing-in-action (MIA) -- would hold John McCain in high regard. After all, the man spent five-and-a-half years in a Vietnamese prison and despite being the son of a Navy admiral refused offers of early release unless his fellow prisoners were set free as well.
But, ironically, even setting aside fringe characters like Kiley, McCain has an icy relationship with the POW/MIA community. One longtime activist who has known McCain for decades described "real antipathy" toward the senator among families of the MIAs. And activists say that is not because of any widespread belief that POWs are still being held hostage. (Clydie Morgan, the national adjutant of American Ex-Prisoners of War, which released a statement condemning the anti-McCain leaflets, says that most members of her organization do not believe that any POWs are still alive in Southeast Asia.) On closer examination, the paradoxical story of McCain and the POW/MIA issue seems as complex as the American struggle with the legacy of the Vietnam War itself -- and fraught with the same raw emotion.
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Some of the hard feelings were sparked by the senator's stance on relations with Vietnam after the war ended. They were exacerbated by his choice of allies in pushing that agenda forward. And even some levelheaded government officials worry that McCain's policy positions over the years have made it harder to determine the ultimate disposition of those Americans still unaccounted for in Southeast Asia.
McCain's first sin was being a very early proponent of normalizing relations with the government of Vietnam, or resuming official political and economic ties cut off after the conflict ended. McCain's efforts in this realm infuriated some veterans still stinging from the American experience there. "Some people just can't let go of their hate," explained Rick Weidman, director of government relations at Vietnam Veterans of America.
For example, as a congressman from Arizona in the early 1980s, McCain and Tom Ridge, then a congressman from western Pennsylvania, supported legislation that would have created a U.S. Interests Section in Vietnam, a low-grade version of an embassy and a signal of warming relations between the two nations. That touched a nerve for some veterans.
During this period, the Reagan administration had launched new and serious efforts to get information about Americans missing in Southeast Asia. But the Vietnamese held all the information -- access to crash sites, prison records, aircraft shoot-down reports. And the administration's strategy was to take incremental steps toward normalization, but only in return for serious cooperation from the Vietnamese on the disposition of unaccounted-for Americans. The concern was that people like McCain would give away the carrot. Among some veterans, McCain wasn't making any new friends. "'Enemies' is probably not the right word," remembered Richard Childress, a Vietnam veteran who as director of Asian affairs at the National Security Council during the Reagan administration worked on POW issues. "But some questioned his judgment because he tried to move so hard and so fast," he said. "Even informed people on the issue thought he was going too far."
Then during the administration of George H.W. Bush, McCain served on a Senate committee aimed at figuring out whether any American POWs might still be alive in Southeast Asia. The final report, issued in January 1993, concluded that "there is, at this time, no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia." It added that "the question arises as to whether it is fair to say that American POWs were knowingly abandoned in Southeast Asia after the war. The answer to that question is clearly no."