This past Saturday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Bill Clinton was speaking about Nelson Mandela and then suddenly he weaves the mental status of former prisoners of war into his comments.
In describing his discussion with Mandela about his years of imprisonment and his feelings toward his captors, Clinton relayed:
[Mandella] said, 'I felt anger and hatred and fear. And I realized that if I kept hating them once I got in that car and got through the gate I would still be in prison. So I let it go 'cause I wanted to be free.'
There is a... Every living soul on the planet has some often highly-justified anger. Everybody. And just learning that you have to... And by the way, I said this at his birthday, I'm probably one of the few people who's actually seen him mad on more than one occasion.
You know, it's just like if you know anybody who was ever a P.O.W. for any length of time, you will see that you go along for months or maybe even years and then something will happen that will trigger all those bad dreams and they'll come back, and it may not last 30 seconds... That's the thing that makes his life so monumental. It's not like all that stuff just went away. But he disciplined himself and his mind and his heart and his spirit to always work to constantly overcome it every day.
Today, John McCain was asked about Clinton's comments.
From FOX News:
John McCain on Tuesday questioned Bill Clinton’s credentials to discuss the mental health of prisoners of war after the former president told an audience in Aspen that it’s just a matter of time before a former POW snaps and relives the nightmare of his imprisonment.
McCain spent five and a half years in Hanoi as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.
“I don’t know where he gets his expertise,” the presumptive Republican presidential candidate told FOX News, adding that his fellow prisoners have been some of the strongest people he knows.
...McCain on Tuesday brushed off the latest remarks by Clinton.
“I don’t know how to respond to that except to say that some of the greatest moments of my life was I had the great honor of serving in the company of heroes and observing a thousand acts of courage and compassion and love, and those that I know best and love most are those that I had the honor of being led by and served with, who inspired me to do things I never would have been capable of,” said McCain, adding that Americans are more interested in the economy, jobs, housing and education.
“Whatever they want to do is fine,” he added of Obama’s backers.
It's wise for McCain to brush off remarks about the mental status of former prisoners of war and highlight their status as heroes.
It makes those questioning McCain's stability because he was a prisoner of war for five years seem very small.
I think it's sort of funny that McCain, by being a nice guy, actually diminishes the stature of Obama's surrogates and supporters.
McCain's "whatever they want to do is fine" comment really makes it seem like he considers their idiotic attacks to be so silly that they're irrelevant.
That reaction stands in stark contrast to Barack Obama's style. Obama gets angry.
He refuses to allow his middle name to be mentioned, questions about his patriotism are off limits, and no one can criticize his wife.
That's hardly a "whatever they want to do is fine" attitude.
It seems like Obama, with no record of military service whatsoever, is the one more at risk of snapping without warning.
1 comment:
Excellent point
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