McCain and Abel, Pt. II

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John McCain used to drop big, sophisticated bombs from weapons platforms off of large mobile airfields called aircraft carriers on North Vietnam during the United States' military action there. He was never tried in court for those bombings, even though many considered them illegal actions.

Mr. McCain is now leading the charge to try the Boston bombers who used knapsack bombs as "enemy combatants". However, is it not Mr. McCain and company who daily delivered high doses of explosives on a nation with which we had not declared war who should have been tried as the "enemy combatant"? The North Vietnamese goverment has films of the U.S. dropping 250, 500 and 1,000 pound bombs blasting their country's civilian as well as military targets. Is McCain less culpable of civilian death because he wore a flight helmet and not a backwards baseball cap?

The U.S. military operated in Vietnam without an act of war or a United Nations mandate. From the NVN perspective, the U.S. soldiers were illegal enemy combatants subject to the rules of military tribunals and execution for their actions.

Can Mr. McCain not see the hypocrisy behind his call for military tribunals for these small-time bombers, while he delivered orders of magnitude more devastating destructions to the civilians of another nation under the auspices of a killing machine called the U.S. military while he himself did not face a military tribunal?

The U.S. did not asked to be bombed in New York City or Boston any more than did the Vietnamese people. We will not begin to understand the phenomenon of terrorism until we are able to view our own part in perpetrating and perpetuating the dance of death.

Somewhere, a Predator drone is launching with Hellfire missiles hanging from the fuselage, and somehow we believe that this is legally, emotionally or humanly different than the bombs that were detonated in Boston; perhaps the pilots even wear hoodies and backwards baseball caps in their down time.

Perhaps it all comes down to which country you are in when the ox gets gored, from which country you originate and to which country you return, and how good your cover and protection is.