When your back is against the wall and your fundamental beliefs are challenged, just what do you do? McCain and the other residents of the Hanoi Hilton showed rare courage:
“There were many times I didn’t pray for another day and I didn’t pray for another hour — I prayed for another minute to keep going,” said McCain, who was brought up Episcopalian but now worships at North Phoenix Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church. “There’s no doubt that my faith was strengthened and reinforced and tested, because sometimes you have a tendency to say, ‘Why am I here?’ “…
…The prisoners decided that every Sunday, after they had eaten their rice, the highest-ranking officer would cough loudly and say the letter ‘c’ for church. The prisoners would then say the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. The psalm was said in plural: “Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death we will fear no evil.”
Prisoners used diarrhea pills mixed with cigarette ash—or charcoal or dirt—to write lines of Scripture and surreptitiously share them.
The church riot erupted after U.S. Special Forces raided a site about 40 miles from Hanoi trying to rescue prisoners who, it turned out, were no longer there. The Vietnamese, fearing more such raids, rounded up American POWs and moved them from other outlying camps into Hanoi. That meant an end to isolation, as dozens of prisoners were packed together.
“We agreed that we were going to have a church service and told the Vietnamese, and they said no,” recalled fellow prisoner Bud Day. But on Feb. 12, 1970, the prisoners went ahead anyway, holding a service and singing songs.
“The Vietnamese broke in and seized the people who were standing against the wall doing the service,” Day said. “They marched them out of the room at gunpoint. So I stood up and started singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ ‘God Bless America,’ ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ and every song we could think of.”
The Vietnamese stormed back in, putting a definitive end to the service.
“We wanted to actually just have a chance to do what we felt was a fundamental human right … and we got spiritual comfort from being able to worship together,” McCain said. “We thought, look, if we’re going to be together, then we’re going to stand up. … They’d done so many bad things that we weren’t nearly as afraid of them as maybe we would have been if a lot of us hadn’t gone through what we’d gone through.”
There are some people who think that the act of saying something - like, for instance, giving an obscure speech against liberating Iraq - is an act of courage…but a real act of courage is when you do or say something which can put you in immediate risk of life and limb. John McCain has done this before, and so we can rely upon it that when its time to speak the truth and act upon it - regardless of how harsh - McCain will know that the worst thing that can happen to him, won’t happen. It already did. Character really does count in a President - all the intellect in the world is worthless if it isn’t joined with the simple courage to take a stand.
Tags: Acts of Courage, Hanoi Hilton
August 15th, 2008
Very clearly laying out what is at stake:
The challenge in the period ahead is to consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists’ defeat. We have learned through hard experience what happens when we pull our forces back too fast — the terrorists and extremists step in, they fill vacuums, establish safe havens, and use them to spread chaos and carnage. General Petraeus has warned that too fast a drawdown could result in such an unraveling — with al Qaeda and insurgents and militia extremists regaining lost ground and increasing violence.
Men and women of the Armed Forces: Having come so far, and achieved so much, we’re not going to let this to happen.
Next month, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker will come to Washington to testify before Congress. I will await their recommendations before making decisions on our troop levels in Iraq. Any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders — and they must not jeopardize the hard-fought gains our troops and civilians have made over the past year.
The successes we are seeing in Iraq are undeniable — yet some in Washington still call for retreat. War critics can no longer credibly argue that we’re losing in Iraq — so now they argue the war costs too much. In recent months we’ve heard exaggerated estimates of the costs of this war. No one would argue that this war has not come at a high cost in lives and treasure — but those costs are necessary when we consider the cost of a strategic victory for our enemies in Iraq.
If we were to allow our enemies to prevail in Iraq, the violence that is now declining would accelerate — and Iraq would descend into chaos. Al Qaeda would regain its lost sanctuaries and establish new ones — fomenting violence and terror that could spread beyond Iraq’s borders, with serious consequences for the world’s economy.
Out of such chaos in Iraq, the terrorist movement could emerge emboldened — with new recruits, new resources, and an even greater determination to dominate the region and harm America. An emboldened al Qaeda with access to Iraq’s oil resources could pursue its ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction to attack America and other free nations. Iran would be emboldened as well — with a renewed determination to develop nuclear weapons and impose its brand of hegemony across the Middle East. Our enemies would see an America — an American failure in Iraq as evidence of weakness and a lack of resolve.
To allow this to happen would be to ignore the lessons of September the 11th and make it more likely that America would suffer another attack like the one we experienced that day…
That is pretty much all there is about Iraq - it is win there, or lose everywhere. In war, there is no substitute for victory - and there is also no explaining away defeat. With President Bush, we have a President who will keep at it until victory; under a President McCain, we’ll have that same sort of leadership - the sort of leadership which brings into the battle such men as President Bush noted in his speech:
One of these brave Americans is a Marine Gunnery Sergeant named William “Spanky” Gibson. In May of 2006 in Ramadi, a terrorist sniper’s bullet ripped through his left knee — doctors then amputated his leg. After months of difficult rehabilitation, Spanky was not only walking — he was training for triathlons.
Last year, at the “Escape from Alcatraz” swim near San Francisco, he met Marine General James Mattis, who asked if there’s anything he could do for him. Spanky had just one request: He asked to re-deploy to Iraq. Today he’s serving in Fallujah — the first full-leg amputee to return to the front lines. Here’s what he says about his decision to return: The Iraqis are where we were 232 years ago as a nation. Now they’re starting a new nation, and that’s one of my big reasons for coming back here. I wanted to tell the people of this country that I’m back to help wherever I can.
When Americans like Spanky Gibson serve on our side, the enemy in Iraq doesn’t got a chance.
Friends, you can bet on the terrorists and the varied Islamists, or you can bet on Sgt. Gibson - you can say a few thousand ragged murderers can beat us, or say that no such rabble will ever stop the United States armed forces.
I’m betting on Sgt. Gibson, the armed forces of the United States - and that certainty of victory which comes when you are in the right battle, at the right time, against the right enemy.
Tags: Acts of Courage, Iraq Campaign
March 19th, 2008
First, a quote:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. - Theodore Roosevelt, Paris, France, April 23, 1910
Victor Davis Hanson speaks of three mavericks who are standing tall in the face of the critics - three people who are in the arena, daring greatly. They are President Sarkozy of France, General Petraeus in Iraq, and Hirsi Ali, the female activist challenging Islam to the core on its intolerance and oppressiveness. President Sarkozy is staring down the unions which have crippled France’s ability to compete in the world; Petraeus is winning in Iraq in spite of the critics who called him a liar; Ali faces death at the hands of Islamo-fascists for daring to be a woman unfraid.
Never let anyone tell you that you can’t make a difference - with courage and a healthy contempt for timid naysayers, a person can do marvelous deeds…or, at worst, fail after making a noble effort the critics will never understand. To Hanson’s trio I’ll add one more person - President Bush. He, too, has been the man in the arena, daring greatly while much smaller people nip at his heels with their petty complaints, their cruel slanders, their cowardly fears.
The type of people we need in this world are the Reagans, the Thatchers, the John Paul IIs…and the Sarkozys, the Petraeus’, the Alis and the President Bushs. Let us be grateful that in our day and age which combines cowardice and cruelty such as not seen since the degeneration of ancient Rome we are still able to raise up such men and women - the men and women who will light a path to a bright future.
Tags: Acts of Courage, role models
November 29th, 2007
