John
McCain’s death has inspired a slew of whitewashed obituaries,
cringeworthy plaudits and declarations of love from both sides of the
political divide — but as historical revisionism goes, his funeral
was a step too far.
If there
is anyone who owns the right to whitewash John McCain’s legacy, it
is his daughter, Meghan McCain. In her hour of grief, we can permit
her to rewrite her father’s personal history, to cast him as a hero
among men. That much is to be expected — and few would take much
issue with it.
But we
cannot permit her to stand in front of the world, on the huge
platform that she has been given, to rewrite and whitewash the
Vietnam War — and that is exactly what she attempted to do at her
father’s funeral.
It gives
me no pleasure to be writing something like this about a person who
has just died, or to take aim at a grieving daughter — but this is
bigger than the McCain family and their hurt feelings. This is about
a historical revisionism at its most disgusting and unacceptable.
As
Meghan McCain spoke, even the most willing sycophants must have been
discreetly raising their eyebrows and shifting uncomfortably in their
pews. Standing before a cathedral packed to the rafters with
politicians and high ranking military figures, she recast Vietnam,
America’s most brutal and barbaric war, as a noble fight “for
the life and liberty of other people’s in other lands”.
In her
tribute to her father’s service, McCain reminded her audience, with
a noticeable hint of venom in her voice that Vietnam was a “most
distant and hostile corner of the world” in which to fight.
Perhaps, she too shares her father’s well-known distaste for the
Vietnamese, about whom he once wrote: "I hate the gooks. I
will hate them as long as I live.”
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