His resistance to his captors as he was tortured, kept in solitary confinement and given clumsy medical care was how he became recognized and revered by Americans. He walked with a limp when the Americans were released in 1973, and he never regained full mobility of his arms.<\/p>\n
Yet, when it came time for the U.S. to finally engage with the Vietnamese in trade, educational and cultural endeavors, McCain joined with Secretary of State John Kerry to give weight to those introductory meetings.<\/p>\n
As a senator, McCain worked to make the world a safer place, to either deflect looming warfare or to end it. He made innumerable trips to the Middle East, the eastern end of the Mediterranean and Africa to try to convince foreign leaders that solutions to whatever they wanted or objected to could be reached peaceably. Human rights, freedom and justice were always a part of whatever he advocated.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, it was the interrogations carried out by Americans after Sept. 11 that he found most objectionable. What went on at secret locations in foreign countries, and at Guantanamo, reflected poorly on America, he said.<\/p>\n
Those interrogations, which included physical and psychological pressures, gained only limited amounts of information from terrorists and suspected terrorists, but undercut America\u2019s moral standing in the world.<\/p>\n
In \u201cThe Restless Wave,\u201d by McCain and Mark Salter, McCain described what gave Americans prisoners value:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy fellow POWs and I could work up very intense hatred for the people who tortured us. We cussed them, made up degrading names for them, swore we would get back at them someday. That kind of resistance, angry and pugnacious, can only carry you so far when your enemy holds the cards and hasn\u2019t any scruples. \u2026 Eventually, you won\u2019t cuss them. You won\u2019t refuse to bow \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the heart of what he believed: \u201cStill, they can\u2019t make you surrender what they really want from you, your assent to their supremacy. No, you don\u2019t have to give them that, not in your heart. And your last resistance, the one that sticks, the one that makes the victim superior to the torturer, is the belief that were the positions reversed you wouldn\u2019t treat them as they have treated you. The ultimate victim to torture is the torturer, the one who inflicts pain and suffering at the cost of their humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n
McCain was a tireless advocate for America and what he thought would give people everywhere better lives. We all wonder if we could resist as a prisoner as he did, and then serve so successfully in public office.<\/p>\n
Had he led this country at the time, the extreme techniques at Guantanamo and the distant interrogations would not have taken place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
resistance to his captors as he was tortured, kept in solitary confinement and given clumsy medical care was how he became recognized and revered by Americans. He walked with a limp when the Americans were released in 1973, and he never regained full mobility of his arms. Yet, when it came time for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5821,5819],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-96960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorials","category-opinion","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96960"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=96960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}