McCAIN ON TORTURE, 1973

By Chris Daly

In doing research today for chapter 11 of my book, I was reading a lot of writings about the war in Vietnam. I came across a powerful and quite moving two-part article that John McCain wrote for U.S. News and World Report in May 1973, shortly after being released after more than 5 years as a POW in Vietnam. (To the best of my knowledge, this is McCain's only venture in journalism, other than op-ed pieces. But if you know of others, please let me know.)

I was reading it in the endlessly useful Library of America anthology called Reporting Vietnam. But I got to wondering... is McCain's article on-line anywhere?

Turns out, although U.S. News does not have a very robust archive, the McCain article from 35 years ago is very accessible from their home page. In a maddeningly terse editor's note, the magazine says only: "It was posted online on January 28, 2008." (Great, but why? At whose initiative? Why in January? What else do you have in your archives?)

The point: McCain observes that conditions in the POW camp in Hanoi improved dramatically in the fall of 1969. He attributes this to the policy of the Nixon administration to publicize reports and photos depicting American military men suffering from horrendous abuse at the hands of the North Vietnamese. In the battle for global approval, the North Vietnamese were embarrassed by the disclosures, and they decided to scale back the abuse.
This is an important point, I believe, but I wish McCain had developed a theme that remains implicit in his account. As I see it, the reason that the U.S. could claim the high ground and attempt to shame the North Vietnamese is that we had comparatively clean hands. Conversely, we can hardly complain about torture and abuse by others if we are doing it ourselves.