The late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was a complicated man like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., his former Senate colleague. Coincidentally, they both died of brain cancer and both on the same day, Aug. 25, Kennedy nine years earlier than McCain’s Saturday death.
We could spend time excoriating President Donald Trump about his lengthy and unnecessary feud with the former Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war, or lambasting as hypocritical those on the left who had only harsh and hateful things to say about him when he ran for president in 2008 against then-candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., but now praise him only because of their hatred for Trump.
But we prefer, instead, to remember McCain for his expertise at what he trained for and what was in his blood (with his father and grandfather as four-star Navy admirals) – the military.
Harry J. Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, enumerated some of those stances in a Fox News tribute.
The Arizona senator, like Hillary Clinton and other senators on both sides of the aisle, voted in 2002 to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Later, he called that invasion a mistake, but he supported President George W. Bush’s “surge” to help bring hostilities to a close. Many Democrats ridiculed the strategy – to increase troops in the by-then unpopular war – but it proved to do the job.