Tha above photo isn't Christopher Brownfield.
In an open letter to John McCain, an Iraq vet questions the Senator’s military record—and says he failed the country on torture.
Dear Senator McCain,
From my earliest days at the Naval Academy, I wanted you to become president. Despite the 40 years that separated us, I felt as if I knew you.
Maybe it was the adventurous chronicles of your naval exploits or our timeless sense of pride in service to country. Then again, maybe it was just my roommate, who bore an uncanny resemblance to you. John also wanted to be an aviator. Like you, my John was a maverick who got into trouble, kept his hair too long for the academy’s comfort, and spotted free beer like a well-tuned radar gun. My John was an honorable man whose grades ranked fifth from the bottom—exactly like you. But strangely, while you graduated, landing a competitive spot in flight school, my John was jettisoned for “mediocrity.” He didn’t fail to make grades or exhibit conduct unbecoming of a gentleman: My John was denied the thrill of shaking President Bush’s hand, barred from naval service, and slapped with a retroactive tuition bill for his marginal performance.
As a 17-year-old midshipman, I envied your audacious style, senator. Dating a Brazilian fashion model and taking a fighter jet for a weekend “training flight” to another girlfriend’s house showed panache worthy of a Top Gun cameo. Your swaggering social life as commodore of the base “yacht club”—infamous for gilded bathtubs full of brandy and mattress-padded toga parties—was the stuff of adolescent dreams, according to Robert Timberg’s congratulatory account in The Nightingale’s Song. And it goes without saying that your tales of torture at the hands of the Vietcong sent shivers down my spine.
But now, as a 28-year-old Iraq vet and former nuclear submariner, I feel like a believer who saw the truth behind your curtain. Years after you lost the 2000 nomination, I witnessed you quietly sell your soul for the sake of regaining political support, shaking my faith in your ability to lead and forcing me to question whether mediocrity and self-promotion have been the real hallmarks of your career.
In your autobiography, you described misconduct at Annapolis that nearly caused your expulsion, but classmates took the bullets for you. Thinking back on your aviator escapades, I now wonder whether flying a gas-guzzling warplane to the Army-Navy football game was the best use of American tax dollars (especially since you crashed on the way home). And the yacht club? The child in me celebrates your liberal sense of adventure, but what exactly was your definition of overboard?
I’ve never crashed an airplane, but my submarine crashed in an embarrassing accident that resulted in the summary firing of our chain of command. But according to published accounts, you had already crashed three airplanes under your solo control by the time you were my age—two after “engine trouble” and another after snagging power lines during a low-flying stunt. My captain and commodore took nosedives for their water-landing, but somehow you, the yacht club commodore, remained upwardly mobile, unscathed by what the Navy characterized as “routine ejection.”
Off the coast of Vietnam, a shipboard catastrophe cut short your chances to soar in combat. While preparing for takeoff from the USS Forrestal, another plane’s missile malfunctioned, shooting into your A4 Skyhawk. “It felt like my plane exploded,” you wrote, but fortunately, the impact just knocked your bombs into a lake of burning fuel. You shut down your engines, popped the canopy, and leapt through a wall of flame before “running as fast as [you] could” away from the fire—just how pilots are trained to respond. Enlisted sailors raced toward the inferno, brandishing extinguishers like knives in a gunfight. Seconds later, a thousand-pound bomb cooked off, obliterating the firefighters, blowing you back, and shredding your plane...
I know that politics is a blood sport, senator, but your strong survival instinct needs to evolve. After September 11, 2001, much more was at stake in the international arena than your presidential dream. While terrorism is real, our paranoid, legalistic response has only endangered America more—an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And just as your experiences in Vietnam made you an unlikely hero, America’s corrupt, inhumane, and often homicidal treatment of human beings who have yet to see their day in court has undoubtedly dignified the cause of real terrorists. In this way, your self-promoting, sanctimonious, and resoundingly mediocre compromise pushed those who hate America to shout in defiance, rallied insurgents in condemnation of our injustice, and handed extremists a pure, unfiltered reason to continue their jihad.
America deserves better than this.
As a Naval Academy graduate who made the grade, an Iraq veteran who risked his life, and an officer who swore “to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” my concerns have earned their day in court.
Now, if you please, Senator McCain, in the spirit of habeas corpus, show me the body.
SOURCES:
Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain and Mark Salter, Random House, 1999
The Nightingale’s Song, by Robert Timberg, Simon & Schuster, 1995
The New York Times, July 31, 1967 (front page)
Taxi to the Dark Side, Jigsaw Productions / Think Film, 2007, directed by Alex Gibney
Meet the Press Interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, September 14th, 2001
For Full Letter:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-07/why-my-former-hero-shouldnrsquot-be-president/#
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