For Senator John McCain to call Ambassador Susan Rice ignorant or incompetent is a disgusting betrayal, coming from a onetime graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy whose test scores were among the lowest in his graduating class of 1958. Ambassador Rice, a graduate of Stanford University and Oxford, is a scholar of enormous ability, who has served the United States with great distinction in Africa, Washington and at the United Nations.
It is about time to shine the light on those who would dare to praise McCain's judgment and reputation as a foreign policy expert, which is not true. It is undeserving and stems from his years as a tortured prisoner of war in North Vietnam after being shot down having bombed targets in the greater Hanoi area. Dozens of Vietnamese civilians reportedly were killed while he was attacking military targets in the region which may account for the film of angry Vietnamese attacking him and other captured American pilots as they were marched through the streets of Hanoi en route to their imprisonment. McCain clearly was the victim of mistreatment, having been denied necessary medical care to relieve him of the painful wounds and injuries he suffered when his U.S. Navy Skyraider jet was shot out of the skies by North Vietnamese anti-aircraft.
The fact that the senator's father was Admiral John S. McCain, an outspoken advocate of U.S. policy during the Vietnam War when he was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is almost beside the point. But it is worth noting that the McCains have been always identified with the hawkish views of American policy makers. Nothing suggests that Senator McCain is any different, but that does not qualify him to be regarded as a foreign policy expert.
Moreover, consider the Senator's judgment in having selected Sarah Palin as his running mate in the campaign for the presidency in 2000.
What McCain and the horde of GOP critics of Ambassador Rice, including Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) and his colleagues in the House and Senate demonstrate is their ignorance of the nation's demographic changes and more maturing attitudes toward African Americans and women of distinction. They owe a nationwide apology for their insults of an honorable representative of the United States.