President Biden visits the John McCain Memorial in Hanoi

[Tomconroy]

Link to tweet

[Deuxcents]

1. Ty for posting this of our remarkable President

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. I am so glad that Joe Biden is our POTUS

Link to tweet

[SheilaAnn]

3. Such a lovely man, bless him. n/t

[calimary]

7. We're the ones who are blessed - because Biden came our way.

We ALL are blessed. Even those who don't/won't appreciate everything he's done to help our country get back on its feet after trump.

[former9thward]

4. Maybe the Vietnamese should have shown him the cage where they held him.

And tortured him.

[Effete Snob]

10. It's not really a memorial

It is a historical marker simply stating that he crashed there among several planes shot down. Until recently, it used a derogatory term to describe him.

[MyOwnPeace]

5. What a GREAT GENTLEMAN!

Guess he doesn't have a 'problem' with people that were captured.......

[Nanuke]

6. Watching this brought tears to my eyes.

Thank you President Biden for your dignity and caring.

My dad served in the Army for WW2, Korea, and VietNam.

[Rebl2]

12. Same here

They may have had political differences, but know they were friends when it came right down to it.

[treestar]

8. Didn't know that existed

Interesting that there is such a memorial there, in Hanoi.

[Effete Snob]

11. It's not a memorial

https://tedosius.com/the-clean-and-improved-monument-of-john-mccain-in-hanoi-29

The differences are: (1) the correct spelling of McCain’s name; (2) the correct identification of his rank and military branch (USNAF, not USAF); and (3) by dropping TÊN from TÊN PHI CÔNG, which makes the text becomes more formal and fair. TÊN is a classifier for despicable individuals such as enemies, thieves, robbers, cheaters, and rapists.


——-

It’s a little like calling this historical marker a “Bonnie and Clyde Memorial”

[treestar]

18. Oh, I see

Was distracted by the use of the word.

So they are celebrating that they shot him down.

Having trouble reading that Site marker - what did Bonnie and Clyde do there? I read a couple of books about them. That's not where they were finally killed, I think?

[Effete Snob]

19. Bonnie and Clyde got killed there

It is not a “memorial” or a celebration, but just a fact.

I guess people think it is a memorial because of the Christ-like pose of the stylized depiction of a parachuting pilot. But it’s not as if Christian iconography is a big thing in Vietnam.

[kimbutgar]

9. I wonder if Meghan will complain about the visit

Her husband has made her so right wing crazy I wouldn’t put it pass her to criticize the President honoring her late father.

[betsuni]

16. She sure complained when VP Harris visited there.

[BadgerMom]

13. K and R

We all know Trump would never consider such a thing.

[dflprincess]

14. I clicked on the Tweet & the first thing I saw was this Jeff Tiedrich post:

"your reminder that the navy had to hide a ship named The Admiral John McCain so that Donald Trump wouldn't have a tantrum from seeing it"

I had forgotten that snit (there's been so many) but it is one we should all remember.

[progressoid]

17. I forgot about that too.

Like you said, there are so many asinine things he's done, it's hard to remember them all.

[TygrBright]

15. So my first response was "Wait, wut!?"

For two reasons -

First, "a John McCain Memorial?" in HANOI?

Did not compute. Further info assisted with this one. A marker plaque. Initially snarky. Updated by VN government to 'neutral' which is actually about as good as it gets, given the circumstances. We were the aggressors, remember? We were stickybeaking in Cold War proxy conflicts, convinced of our own righteous might, smacking down the country's attempt to decolonize and build its own destiny. Short version: There were many good people fighting on "our side" (including Senator McCain) but we were not the good guys.

War is always more complicated than our narratives would like it to be.

Anyway, so. A marker plaque. Simple identification of a place where something happened. No commentary either way in the current configuration of the plaque. That in itself is actually a conciliatory gesture from the WINNING SIDE in that conflict.

Second: The NVA were not nice people, and they did a lot of shitty things. To Americans they captured. Against all the rules of civilized warfare, etc. (Let's not look too closely at our own treatment of prisoners, though....) Is it appropriate for a US President to acknowledge a former adversary who did such awful things, in any kind of neutral or friendly way, without explicitly making the point that they did shitty things?

My gut, that lived through that time and still has a POW bracelet in my Memory Box, howls "HELL NO!! THOSE BASTARDS! Tell them off! Make them apologize! Remind them of how terrible they were and the crimes they committed! Get some of our own back from them SOMEHOW for all that suffering!"

Thank you, gut. Those are strong feelings, there's a truth in there you are right to feel that way about. It was terrible, you haven't forgotten, those lives mattered then and still matter now.

BUT

My head goes back to other realities - not emotional truths, but historical records, larger viewpoints, and facts, past and present.

We may have thought we were doing the right thing in Vietnam, to a greater extent in the beginning, anyway. We sold ourselves a narrative about 'saving the world from Communism' that had a minimal seed of geopolitical truth in it, but was overlaid by so many quids-pro-quo, military-industrial complex balance sheets, and contemporary culture war issues that in the end that tiny seed died unsprouted. Let us not go into how many ways were were wrong, back then, and acknowledge only that the people we sent to fight and die there were our sacrifices, and we should never lose sight of the price they paid, or the courage with which they paid it.

But that is also true of our quondam adversaries. They tortured prisoners, they used propaganda. We massacred civilians, we used propaganda. If we are going to stand upon a strict accounting for all the evil deeds done in their names or in ours, we will learn the truth of the old saying that "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind."

And so Joe Biden, in today's world, plays the long game to offer our former adversaries an alternative to the threat of Chinese hegemony, and maintain a balance of interests in the region. And in so doing, he takes a moment to acknowledge a particular moment in that terrible past. A moment that involved a personal friend of his, a man he knew and worked with for many years, and respected deeply. In so doing, he also acknowledges that those same former adversaries have marked that moment, with a simple factual marker. There is some symbolism there that can be read in many ways.

Joe Biden, I think, chooses to read that symbolism as an open door.

I will try to see it through your eyes, Joe. You've been not only correct and smart, but compassionate and trustworthy, so far.

Carry on, Sir.

thoughtfully,
Bright