John McCain passes away at 81

[Retired AF Guy]

Just days after saying he will refuse any further treatment for his brain cancer, John McCain, US Senator and war hero, has passed away. From the Washington Post:

John McCain, ‘maverick’ of the Senate and former POW, dies at 81

August 25 at 8:21 PM

U.S. Sen. John S. McCain, the son and grandson of four-star admirals, was bred for combat. He endured more than five years of imprisonment and torture by the North Vietnamese as a young naval officer and went on to battle foes on the left and the right in Washington, driven throughout by a code of honor that both defined and haunted him.

Sen. McCain, 81, died Aug. 25 at his ranch near Sedona, Ariz., his office announced in a statement. The senator was diagnosed last July with a brain tumor, and his family announced this week that he was discontinuing medical treatment.

During three decades of representing Arizona in the Senate, he ran twice unsuccessfully for president. He lost a bitter primary campaign to George W. Bush and the Republican establishment in 2000. He then came back to win the nomination in 2008, only to be defeated in the general election by Barack Obama, a charismatic Illinois Democrat who had served less than one term as a senator.

A man who seemed his truest self when outraged, Sen. McCain reveled in going up against orthodoxy. The word “maverick” practically became a part of his name.

Sen. McCain regularly struck at the canons of his party. He ran against the GOP grain by advocating campaign finance reform, liberalized immigration laws and a ban on the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” — widely condemned as torture — against terrorism suspects.

To win his most recent reelection battle in 2016, for a sixth term, he positioned himself as a more conventional Republican, unsettling many in his political fan base. But in the era of President Trump, he again became an outlier.

The terms of engagement between the two had been defined shortly after Trump became a presidential candidate and Sen. McCain commented that the celebrity real estate magnate had “fired up the crazies.” At a rally in July 2015, Trump — who avoided the Vietnam draft with five deferments — spoke scornfully of Sen. McCain’s military bona fides: “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Once Trump was in office, Sen. McCain was among his most vocal Republican critics, saying that the president had weakened the United States’ standing in the world. He also warned that the spreading investigation over Trump’s ties to Russia was “reaching the point where it’s of Watergate-size and scale.”

Sen. McCain arrives in the Capitol to vote against a GOP plan to replace the Affordable Care Act in July 2017, less than two weeks after surgery to remove a blood clot from above his left eye and days after his office announced he was diagnosed with brain cancer. The vote marked a spectacular break with President Trump. (Oliver Contreras for The Washington Post).

Rest of article here.

 

[FJAG]

A big loss for the States. I din't always agree with his positions but believed that he always had the country at heart and that he was one of an ever decreasing minority of Republicans that would work hard to achieve bipartisan support.

Regretfully there are far too few John McCains left in Congress. I think his influence will be missed more than Americans realize right now.

 

[tomahawk6]

My sympathies to his family.I guess he will be buried at the Naval Academy a genuine hero.I wouldn't be surprised if he will lie in state at the Capitol he deserves the honor. 


http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/26/mccains-body-arrives-in-phoenix-crowd-gathers-to-pay-respects.html 

 

[CBH99]

A big loss for the States. I din't always agree with his positions but believed that he always had the country at heart and that he was one of an ever decreasing minority of Republicans that would work hard to achieve bipartisan support.

Regretfully there are far to few John McCains left in Congress. I think his influence will be missed more than Americans realize right now.

Couldn't agree more, and was going to write something similar but I think you nailed it.

That man did more for the United States throughout his life than almost anybody else, and worked very hard to keep the gigantic & often times messy machine of the US military on track on the political/financial side.

A true statesman & one of the very few left. 

 

[observor 69]

Former President Barack Obama, who defeated McCain in the 2008 election, issued a statement Saturday night praising McCain for viewing public service as a "patriotic obligation:"

After the death of 2008 presidential candidate and United States Senator John McCain Saturday, the man who defeated him in the race for the Oval Office released a statement mourning his passing.

"John McCain and i were members of different generations, came from completely different backgrounds, and competed at the highest level of politics. But we shared, for all our differences, a fidelity to something higher-the ideals for which generations of Americans and immigrants alike have fought, marched, and sacrificed. We saw our political battles, even, as a privilege, something noble, an opportunity to serve as stewards of those high ideals at home, and to advance them around the world. We saw this country as a place where anything is possible - and citizenship as our patriotic obligation to ensure it forever remains that way.

"Few of us have been tested the way John once was, or required to show the kind of courage that he did. But all of us can aspire to the courage to put the greater good above our own. At John's best, he showed us what that means. And for that, we are all in his debt. Michelle and I send our heartfelt condolences to Cindy and their family."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/25/17782666/barack-obama-statement-mccain-joe-biden

 

[tomahawk6]

FYI McCain was a retired USN Captain with a Silver Star. He has a son who is a LT. and carries on the family naval tradition.

 

[daftandbarmy]

Obituary: John McCain

The navy pilot, senator and presidential candidate, died on August 25th, aged 81

He did not want Vietnam to define his career, but inevitably it did. (Neither did he want to be called a hero, but inevitably he was.) Vietnam brought the best moment of his life, when he refused early release from prison and gained, for the first time in his self-indulgent life up till then, a serious sense of a shared purpose larger than himself. And Vietnam brought the worst moment, when he signed a forced confession admitting that he was a “black criminal”. He never quite got over the disgrace of that.

Also looming over him were the straight-backed shadows of his grandfather and father, both admirals, both steeped in duty, honour, country. When he felt proud of himself, it was also on their behalf. When he was ashamed it was because he had also let them down. By 1981, when he knew he would never make full admiral and had wrecked his first marriage with affairs, old political ambitions resurfaced, as another sort of national service into which he could plunge himself.

Discipline was the hard part. He had always struggled with it, whether at Annapolis, where his cheeky behaviour led to graduation fifth from the bottom of his class, or in flight training, where he drank, chased tail and had a good time generally. But his worst failing was his temper, his sheer rapid-fire, finger-jabbing rage against the jerks who frustrated him. He excused it as impatience, especially at the crawling way Congress worked and the failure of parties to work across the aisle. (Democrats made great partners: he teamed up with Russ Feingold for his greatest legislative achievement, campaign-finance reform, with Joe Lieberman on cap-and-trade bills, with Ted Kennedy on immigration reform.) Or he called his temper passion, especially for curbing pork-barrel spending—and if it ever went away, he was ready for the old soldier’s home.

Truth and principles. Those were his watchwords, though political life made them tricky. On his national campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, he chatted candidly to the press, but in the vain hope that they would lay off him. In Congress he took dogged stands against Big Tobacco, global warming and over-regulation, but swerved on health-care reform and balanced budgets, as well as immigration in the end. This, and his openness to Democrats, earned him a maverick reputation. He preferred to think he was an honest free agent, still conservative most of the time, but not in thrall to the hard-right Republican base. That principle was dented whenever he ran for higher office—most famously when, in 2008, he made a naked appeal to the base by picking the ludicrously unqualified Sarah Palin as his running-mate.

The need for war

His greatest consistency lay in urging wars abroad, wherever winnable, and for him both Afghanistan and Iraq fell under that head. America had a duty to spread freedom and democracy, by force of arms if necessary. He longed to go into Syria to support the rebels, to send heavy weapons to Ukraine and to “bomb, bomb, bomb” Iran, as he sang once. When it came to wars, he suspended his usual backing for tax cuts and balanced budgets. Even Vietnam, he thought, should have been winnable, if those idiot civilian commanders had bombed enough.

That said, the gung-ho approach of Donald Trump left him cold. They might share a party, but he had nothing to do with him and the half-baked nationalism he promoted. The brain-cancer diagnosis in July 2017 freed his tongue, and tested his mettle, in all the ways he relished. The talk was never straighter, the stance never more upright, than when he called on his fellow-Republicans not just to endure, but to resist.

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2018/08/26/obituary-john-mccain

 

[Good2Golf]

I have incredible respect for any man or woman who can endure years of captivity in trying conditions, but what I respect the most about Sen. McCain was his ability to admit when he was wrong, and how he should have done things in retrospect - not perfect, but reputable and honourable.

RIP, sir.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Interesting Washington Post article on Vietnams reactions on hearing of McCains death

How Vietnam has reacted to the death of John McCain


By Adam Taylor Reporter August 27 at 10:51 AM

Among the tributes for the late U.S. senator John McCain, a number came from the country that, for better or worse, formed an integral part of his life story: Vietnam.

“When I learnt about his death early this morning, I feel very sad,” retired Vietnamese Col. Tran Trong Duyet was quoted as saying Sunday by Vietnam News.

During the Vietnam War, Duyet ran the Hoa Lo Prison, dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton" by American POWs. McCain, a Navy pilot, spent 5 ½ years in the prison after being shot down over Hanoi on a bombing mission in 1967.

The future senator would spend nearly half of those years in solitary confinement; the beatings he endured in the prison left him with physical problems that stayed with him for the rest of his life.
“I had a lot of time meeting him when he was kept in the prison," Duyet was quoted as saying after McCain’s death. “At that time I liked him personally for his toughness and strong stance."

Duyet also told Agence France-Presse that he admired McCain’s stubbornness and enjoyed arguing with him. “Out of working hours, we considered each other friends,” he said, adding that McCain had helped teach him English.

During a visit to Vietnam in 2000, McCain said that he could not yet forgive the guards who kept him at Hoa Lo Prison. “I still bear them ill will, not because of what they did to me, but because of what they did to some of my friends,” McCain said.

But despite this, McCain became one of the most vocal supporters of normalizing relations with the Communist-led Vietnam. In 1994, he co-sponsored a bill with then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) that called for ending economic sanctions against the country.

He would go on to make more than 20 visits to Vietnam in later years. During one trip in 2014, he noted that he received a warm welcome in the city where he had been held prisoner so long ago.

    Landed in #Hanoi, where people always greet me in the most incredibly friendly manner #Vietnam
    — John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) August 7, 2014

After McCain’s death Saturday at age 81, state-run outlets such as Vietnam News released articles that praised McCain for his work toward improving U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

On Monday, Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh visited the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi and offered his own tribute to the late senator, calling him a “a symbol of his generation of senators, and of the veterans of the Vietnam war” in a message in a condolence book.

    On behalf of the Vietnamese Government, today I went to the US Embassy to extend condolences over the passing of Senator John McCain, a symbol of the Viet Nam-US reconciliation process pic.twitter.com/VymV0zrWiR
    — PhamBinhMinh (@FMPhamBinhMinh) August 27, 2018

Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States Ha Kim Ngoc also praised McCain, telling Vietnam News that he could remember meeting the senator in the 1990s as he was working to improve relations with Vietnam.

“McCain deserves credit for promoting the Vietnam-U.S. relations and later, the comprehensive partnership between the two countries,” Ngoc was quoted as saying. The ambassador added that even during his illness, McCain paid attention to Vietnam-related issues.

At Hanoi’s Truc Bach Lake, a monument marks McCain’s capture there on Oct. 27, 1967. Over the past couple of days, a number of Vietnamese well-wishers and foreigners have visited the spot to pay their respects to the late senator, leaving flowers and incense at a makeshift shrine.

“Although he was once our enemy, he did a lot to help restore relations between the U.S. and Vietnam,” 60-year-old Hoang Manh Cuong told Bloomberg News. “That helped open the economy and improved our lives dramatically. We owe him for that.”

Article Link

 

[dapaterson]

John McCain's favourite poem was "The Cremation of Sam McGee".

https://www.weeklystandard.com/andrew-ferguson/reagan-mccain-and-sam-mcgee

I like the discussion of Ronald Reagan hitting it off with the Queen Mother over a shared love of "The Shooting of Dan McGee"

In his book he describes a state dinner with the Queen Mother on one side of him and Pierre Trudeau, the insufferable pseud who served interminably as premier of Canada, on the other. Trudeau said he'd heard that Reagan could recite "Dan McGrew" from memory and challenged him to do so. The Queen Mother urged him on, saying she was a great fan of the poem's central character, "the lady that's known as Lou." Reagan obliged, unburdening himself of all 11 stanzas, with the Queen Mother chiming in at each mention of Lou. When they were finished, according to Reagan's account anyway, the table erupted in applause -- probably excepting Trudeau, that snot.

 

[daftandbarmy]

John McCain's favourite poem was "The Cremation of Sam McGee".

https://www.weeklystandard.com/andrew-ferguson/reagan-mccain-and-sam-mcgee

I like the discussion of Ronald Reagan hitting it off with the Queen Mother over a shared love of "The Shooting of Dan McGee"

It's 'Dan McGrew' of course, but we'll let it go as we Canadians are so polite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shooting_of_Dan_McGrew

 

[brihard]

It's 'Dan McGrew' of course, but we'll let it go as we Canadians are so polite

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shooting_of_Dan_McGrew

The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and The Cremation of Sam McGee are two separate poems, both by Robert Service.

My three years in Yukon would be wasted if i weren’t able to Kool-Aid guy my way through the wall into this thread to make that clarification.

 

[Petard]

What's even more impressive is why McCain knew and memorized the poem, and that he chose to stay there with his fellow prisoners when he had an out

 

[tomahawk6]

On the way into the Arizona statehouse the casket was almost dropped by a pall bearer but he caught it before it hit the ground. Embarassing moment caught on video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSJ8N4_jwNE

 

[mariomike]

On the way into the Arizona statehouse the casket was almost dropped by a pall bearer but he caught it before it hit the ground. Embarassing moment caught on video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSJ8N4_jwNE

Lifting and carrying people can be awkward when partners vary in height.

Interestingly, they seemed to have the most difficulty at ( what appeared to be ) the foot end.

QUOTE

"Stronger officers stand at the head of the coffin, which is heavier than the opposite end: Most of the body’s weight is contained between the head and waist."

Men in Blue, Bearing a Brother They Didn’t Know

"A major and very practical factor for an officer’s selection is height."
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/nyregion/for-nypd-officers-hours-of-preparing-to-perform-grim-task.html

END QUOTE

 

[tomahawk6]

The pall bearers might not have had much experience but at first I thought they might have been from the 3d Infantry Honor Guard they do see a lot of funerals and would not have made this error. Good point M.

 

[mariomike]

The pall bearers might not have had much experience but at first I thought they might have been from the 3d Infantry Honor Guard they do see a lot of funerals and would not have made this error. Good point M.

This may be of interest,

QUOTE

The Requirements of the Army Honor Guard
June 25, 2018

Males must be between 5 feet, 10 inches and 6 feet, 4 inches tall in order to be in the Honor Guard, while females must be between 5 feet, 8 inches and 6 feet, 2 inches tall.

END QUOTE

 

[Blackadder1916]

Interestingly, they seemed to have the most difficulty at ( what appeared to be ) the foot end.

I noticed the opposite.  Caskets (even in US military) are always carried feet first.  The canton, or union, of the flag (the stars) is placed to align with the left head and shoulder of the deceased.  It was the bearers at the head who appeared to have the most difficulty.  They may have appeared to be awkward because (unlike Canadian drill) they kept in a normal cadence step, i.e. left, right. left . . . ; if they had done it our way,  . . . inside foot, outside, inside . . . it is not as jerky and makes the carry a little easier.  Still not a bad showing for the Arizona National Guard.  But Senator McCain's naval career was a bumpy ride, he may have been amused that his final trip wasn't picture perfect.  It seems to fit the man.

A great loss.

 

[mariomike]

I noticed the opposite.  The canton, or union, of the flag (the stars) is placed to align with the left head and shoulder of the deceased. 

True. I didn't notice that.

"Proper Draping on a Casket. The flag code specifies that when a casket is closed, the flag must be draped across the casket so that the "field" of stars covers the head and over the deceased's left shoulder."
https://www.google.com/search?q=flag+draped+casket&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-CA:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&rlz=1I7GGHP_en-GBCA592&gws_rd=ssl

 

[tomahawk6]

I was surprised that the Navy didn't dispatch a pall bearer or two as McCain was Navy. When my dad died a full burial party came from Ft Knox.Local vets get an Honor Guard from the American Legion.Anyway burial for McCain is Sunday and I look forward to the burial at Annapolis.The entire brigade of middies may turn out.