Two "Girlfriends" Sporting The Samuel Jackson Look(berets)

Recently, I was hanging out at a Marin County (California) StarBucks and had just finished reading the New York Times. I offered it to a guy who sat across from me. He said something like, "No way would I read that left of left rag." Can you believe a guy from California said this? And, to think I was going to share with him some thoughts on a great article I had read.

A couple of weeks ago, the Sunday New York Times Magazine, had an article entitled McCain's Doctrines, written by Matt Bai. Bai's words absolutely mirror the conversation and joking that the "girlfriends"(platonic men friends who hang out) have been doing about the Air Force/Navy pilots in combat and what it means to be a soldier on the ground at war.

US Navy

The article points out the camaraderie between John McCain and the other combat vets in the senate-past and present. It makes a distinction in what it means to be in combat: flying above the fray and down smelling the blood ain't the same.

The other three combat vets featured were Chuck Hagel, Jim Webb, and John Kerry and former Senator, Max Cleland. Of all the combat vets, John McCain is the only one to champion the Iraq war.

The article suggests that one reason McCain supports the war and the others are against it may be because of the different way they each experienced the Vietnam war.

AP/Chicago Tribune/William B. Rood

According to the piece by Bai(impressive and I think objective), John McCain's prison years were years of isolation from the Vietnam war itself and also the societal dysfunctions of the time.

While Hagel, Webb, Kerry, and former Senator Max Cleland experienced the disillusionment and the emotional trauma of coming home to ridicule, John McCain was suffering a different kind of existence as a POW. (Bai is very careful not to denigrate McCain's POW suffering, merely pointing out how different it was from his combat senate friends and how each have been shaped by their experience.)

Max Cleland

I love this statement by Max Cleland, "I think you learn something fighting on the ground. This objective of(winning) hearts and minds? Well, hello! You didn't know which heart and mind was going to blow you up.

I have seen this movie before (Iraq), and I know how it ends ... with thousands dead and tens of thousand more injured, and years later you ask yourself what you were doing there..."

One of the "girlfriends" made this comment which I thought was great. "It is always about boots on the ground, not wings in the air. The fly boys have declared the grunts obsolete so many times; that, if I had a nickel for every instance they did, I would be richer than Teflon Buddha. (One of the other girlfriends)!"-this applies for any airforce, anywhere, any country.