Is it any wonder why Christians don’t want to bake a cake for this s***?

Then there is a “classical” sense, according to Wiki, and my school teachers, wherein the sense becomes somewhat divorced from any notion of altruistic benevolence or the preservation of the folk and their ways, and focuses instead on someone warring persistently for fame and honor and celebrity and achieving it.

Wiki:

“A classical hero is considered to be a “warrior who lives and dies in the pursuit of honor” and asserts their greatness by “the brilliancy and efficiency with which they kill”. Each classical hero’s life focuses on fighting, which occurs in war or during an epic quest. Classical heroes are commonly semi-divine and extraordinarily gifted, like Achilles, evolving into heroic characters through their perilous circumstances. While these heroes are incredibly resourceful and skilled, they are often foolhardy, court disaster, risk their followers’ lives for trivial matters, and behave arrogantly in a childlike manner.”

There is a good deal in the description above which obviously fits either McCain’s image of himself as “semi-divine … gifted … resourceful and skilled”; or, his actual behavior, ” .. lives and dies in the pursuit of honor … foolhardy, court[s] disaster, risk[s] … followers’ lives [or liberties] for trivial matters, and behave[s] arrogantly in a childlike manner.”

And as his departing comment to a political world which suffered his presence not too gladly, McCain rode out on the age’s most notorious anthem to egotism and vainglory: “My Way”; which even Sinatra, later in his life, cringed over.

“At the end of Thursday’s memorial service for Sen. John McCain, Frank Sinatra’s recording of “My Way” played as the casket was carried out of North Phoenix Baptist Church. “

As C.S. Lewis famously stated,

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. “

So, I suppose that one can admit that a particular person meets some of the criteria of the traditional literary definition of “hero”, and still shrug at the smug, self-aggrandizing bastard’s, demise.

Whatever McCain was fighting for, it was not a republic of law and liberty.

Politicians make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and Bush had a trilemma: leave the sanctions on (which Big Consciences were assuring us were generating a 6-figure count of excess deaths each year), remove the sanctions and allow Iraq to do what it felt like, or eject the government. The costs of the latter are palpable to you because that is the tack we took.

There was no relevant uncertainty in the Iraq decision: Either Iraq would switch off enforcement by proving it was compliant as mandated with the UNSCR 660 series or trigger enforcement by remaining noncompliant, ie, in “material breach” (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire. The Gulf War ceasefire terms defined the Saddam regime’s outstanding threat with diagnostic measurements cum prescriptive measures for Iraq’s aggression, terrorism, WMD, conventional armament, and human rights violations. Iraq’s ceasefire violations were confirmed as categorical.

Iraq’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441) in 2002-2003 was a pellucid, straightforward pass/fail test. Unfortunately, Saddam chose to fail Iraq’s mandated compliance test again for the “final” time, with the complicity of sitting members of the Security Council, consistent with Iraq’s preceding decade+ of “continued violations of its obligations” (UNSCR 1441). In the end, the Saddam regime failed to take even the 1st step of the principal step of proving the mandated compliance that was required to switch off enforcement: a complete verified account of its proscribed WMD-related program per UNSCR 1441 pursuant to UNSCR 687. The principal trigger for OIF was Hans Blix and UNMOVIC’s final UNSCR 1441 report to the Security Council on 07MAR03 of “about 100 unresolved disarmament issues … grouped into 29 “clusters” and presented by discipline: missiles, munitions, chemical and biological”: see http://www.un.org/depts/unmovic/new/documents/cluster_document.pdf .

Re “remove the sanctions and allow Iraq to do what it felt like”, excerpt from the OIF FAQ answer to “Why did Bush leave the ‘containment’ (status quo)“:

A prevalent assumption in the politics is the ISG finding, “In addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD as soon as sanctions were lifted,” means Saddam had not undertaken to resume WMD because the UNSC had not yet officially lifted the UNSCR 660-series sanctions. However, ISG reported Saddam’s position on the sanctions was “We have said with certainty that the embargo will not be lifted by a Security Council resolution, but will corrode by itself.” ISG findings confirm Saddam’s “end-run strategy” was to lift the sanctions by undermining them for “the de facto elimination of sanctions” rather than to lift the sanctions by UNSC decree through compliance with “the formal and open Security Council process”. From Saddam’s perspective, he was lifting the sanctions long before the 2002-2003 “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441):

By 2000-2001, Saddam had managed to mitigate many of the effects of sanctions and undermine their international support. Iraq was within striking distance of a de facto end to the sanctions regime, both in terms of oil exports and the trade embargo, by the end of 1999.
… As UN sanctions eroded there was a concomitant expansion of activities that could support full WMD reactivation. [ISG]

In fact, by the time of President Bush’s September 2002 speech to the UN General Assembly, Iraq had undertaken conventional and WMD-related armament activity in violation of UNSCR 687 for years. Reconstitution of Saddam’s WMD program was underway. The Regime Finance and Procurement section of the Iraq Survey Group Duelfer report details the Saddam regime’s nearly completed defeat of the sanctions and ‘containment’ that was averted with OIF.

The post-Operation Desert Fox (1998) ad hoc sanctions-based ‘containment’ of Iraq was broken by 2000-2001, if it ever worked at all – again, with the complicity of sitting members of the Security Council. As such, by 2001-2002, the US president’s power to “remove the sanctions” on Iraq was already, in effect, deleveraged. Saddam was practically uncontained and moving ahead with his inimical ambitions.

With the post-ODF ad hoc ‘containment’ no longer an effective option with Iraq, the President’s choices with the Saddam problem were limited to compromise the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441) to let noncompliant Saddam contravene the categorical set of essential international norms that defined the baseline American-led international law enforcement of the post-Cold War, or step up resolutely to effectually enforce Iraq’s mandated compliance in Iraq’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441) – even if such principled leadership necessitated regime change in order to bring Iraq into its mandated compliance. The hope was that in the end, facing a credible threat of regime change, Saddam would comply as mandated and as Iraq had agreed. But like he did against the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement throughout, Saddam chose to call our bluff again in 2003, like he did in 1990-1991 to cause the Gulf War.

Re “The costs of the latter are palpable to you because that is the tack we took”, it should be noted that alongside Saddam’s reconstitution of Iraq’s UNSCR 687-proscribed armament, his UNSCR 687-proscribed “regional and global terrorism” (Iraqi Perspectives Project), which included “considerable operational overlap” (IPP) with al Qaeda, and domestic rule by “widespread terror (UNCHR) were found to be “far worse” (UNCHR) than was known before OIF. Notably, Iraqi ex-pats were taken aback by how much the Saddam regime had virulently corrupted Iraqi society since the Iran-Iraq War, including with radical sectarianism.

As IPP report author Jim Lacey observed, knowing what we know now, the Iraqi regime change came “not a moment too soon”. Invading Iraq was akin to a surgery on a cancer patient that finds the cancer is far more metastatic than had been diagnosed, requiring radical adjustment to the treatment. Knowing what we know now, the terrorist insurgency that broke down the initial “light footprint” post-war plan, until we adjusted with the counterinsurgency “Surge”, was a product of the Saddam regime, not an effect of deposing the Saddam regime.

Delaying resolution of the Saddam problem any longer would not have solved the worsening Saddam problem. Letting Saddam free of Iraq’s Gulf War ceasefire obligations certainly would not have solved the Saddam cancer.

Bush didn’t go in to Iraq simply to bring democracy.

Correct.

Setting aside that post-war nation-building is common sense for securing the long-term peace subsequent to war and it’s been standard practice for American leadership of the free world since WW2, the peace operations with Iraq were also part and parcel with the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement. Casus belli was Iraq’s evidential, categorical “continued violations of its obligations” (UNSCR 1441) per the UNSCR 660 series, ie, “material breach” (UNSCR 1441) of the Gulf War ceasefire terms. The Saddam regime’s UNSCR 660-series violations included human rights violations per UNSCR 688, which the US had invasively enforced since 1991 with Iraq. The 2003 regime change was in fact an essential compliance enforcement measure, including for the human rights mandates, once the Saddam regime failed its “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441). President Bush’s decisions with Iraq, including the post-war peace operations, tracked the UN mandates enforced per US law re Iraq.

The law and policy, fact basis of the UNSCR 660-series compliance enforcement and peace operations with Iraq is explained at https://operationiraqifreedomfaq.blogspot.com/ – excerpt from the preface:

Here is my latest attempt to set the record straight on Operation Iraqi Freedom by synthesizing the primary sources of the mission, including the Gulf War ceasefire UN Security Council resolutions that set the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441), the US law and policy to “bring Iraq into compliance with its international obligations” (P.L. 105-235), the conditions and precedents that set the stage for OIF, and the determinative fact findings of Iraq’s breach of ceasefire that triggered enforcement, to explain the law and policy, fact basis – i.e., the why – of the decision for OIF.

Re your comment, note especially the OIF FAQ answers to “”was Operation Iraqi Freedom about WMD or democracy” and “Was Operation Iraqi Freedom a strategic blunder or a strategic victory”.

Once the actual why of the Iraq intervention is clarified with the operative law and facts, it’s demonstrable and plain that President Bush and Senator McCain et al, and the US and our allies, were right on Iraq in the 1st place. By the same token, when the Iraq issue is thusly clarified, it’s readily apparent which leaders and pundits have misinformed the public on Iraq contra the operative law and facts.

McCain’s objectionable healthcare vote occurred after Trump was already president.

Perhaps you’re projecting your own touchiness onto others. You wrote, as a starter:

NEO’s “short version: I would call him a hero”
My short version: That’s total nonsense.

Not a great way to start a discussion, I’d say: the all-CAPS for my name, and the opening salvo of “total nonsense.”

My reply to you (and I reproduce it in its entirety) was this:

By calling him a hero I was referring to his Vietnam war years, and you can only understand why I called him a hero, and in what sense I called him a hero, if you followed the link in the post to the words “my own opinion.” This is the link.

Note that I was completely polite. My suggestion that people couldn’t understand why I had called McCain a hero unless those people followed the link I had already given (and gave again) was merely an attempt to be helpful, in case you hadn’t already read the link (people often don’t, I’ve discovered). So I provided the link again to spare you the trouble of going back to the post to find it, in case you hadn’t read the link before.

Here’s your response:

Oh, NEO, you get a bit touchy when disagreed with, huh?! That’s not very heroic of you. In any event, the word ‘hero’ is by definition subjective and, yes, NEO, I had already thoroughly read your ‘opinion’ before I posted my own – which, bluntly, I consider more qualified than your rather pathetic wiki and Tampa news citations and professed personal expertise on ‘heroism’.

Who’s the touchy one?

I have no professed personal expertise on heroism. If you really did read the post I wrote on McCain and heroism, you would see that I claim no special expertise.

But I do have an opinion, as do you. My blog is a vehicle for my opinions. And I don’t aim to provide a vehicle for trolls.

“….Denton was most famous for spending seven years and seven months as a Vietnam War POW after his plane was shot down during a bombing mission from the aircraft carrier USS Independence in 1965. Imprisoned in brutal conditions in and around Hanoi, Denton encouraged fellow American prisoners to resist their North Vietnamese captors.
American POWs were sometimes paraded in propaganda films and in 1966, the captive Denton was interviewed for such a film – it later aired on U.S. television – apparently in the hope that he would denounce the U.S. war policy.
“Well, I don’t know what is happening,” he told his interviewer. “But, whatever the position of my government is, I support it fully. And whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it – yes, sir. I’m a member of that government and it is my job to support it. And I will as long as I live.”
During the interview, he pretended to have light sensitivity that caused him to blink his eyes. What he was actually doing was blinking in Morse Code to spell out “t-o-r-t-u-r-e.”
Denton said later his torture increased after the interview was aired. He spent four years in solitary confinement, including two years in a cell the size of a refrigerator. He was 41 when he was captured and 48 when released……
He was among the first U.S. POWs released by the North Vietnamese in February 1973 under the Paris Peace Accords.
‘PROFOUNDLY GRATEFUL’
“We are honored to have had the opportunity to serve our country under difficult circumstances,” Denton said after he stepped off the first plane to arrive at a U.S. base in the Philippines. “We are profoundly grateful to our commander in chief and to our nation for this day. God bless America.”
………. John McCain of Arizona, another former Vietnam War POW who went on to leave his mark in U.S. politics, recalled Denton as “my friend and mentor.”
“As a senior ranking officer in prison, Admiral Denton’s leadership inspired us to persevere, and to resist our captors, in ways we never would have on our own. He endured unspeakable pain and suffering because of his steadfast adherence to our code of conduct,” McCain said in a statement on Friday.
Yes, almost unbelievably, John McCain – the guy who signed/filmed a “confession to war crimes” – describes himself as “INSPIRED”. What a complete and shameless phony John McCain was.

“Be careful not to perform your righteous acts before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

I am not a Christian but even I know his heroism has long been exhausted when he had been using that to advance his political career for so long.

Personally, I don’t think he was a nice person. He discarded his first wife rather easily, after a string of extramarital flings, then marrying his second wife, who was younger and much, much wealthier.

He wasn’t so much of a “maverick” as a contrarian A Hole, appearing to vote, at times, out of spite and/or revenge, for maximum effect. A drama Queen.

His funeral, which I understand, he planned much of, really diminished his brand and those who performed in this display of anti-Trump vitriol.

It’s over, may he rest in peace.