McCain Owes an Apology of His Own

SAN DIEGO -- Donald Trump should apologize for saying that John McCain is considered a hero only "because he was captured" during the Vietnam War.

But while we're on the subject of atoning for mistakes, the Arizona senator owes an apology to a group of voters for something that has not been particularly heroic: his rightward lurch on a hot-button issue.

The reason McCain is a war hero has nothing to do with the fact that the former naval aviator was captured by the North Vietnamese, after being shot down in 1967. The heroism came in how McCain conducted himself as a prisoner of war. His captors repeatedly tortured him, even placing him in solitary confinement for two years. They beat him and broke his bones, leaving him disabled. Because he was the son of the U.S. Navy commander in the Pacific at the time, McCain knew that offers of an early release were propaganda gestures, and so he refused to leave the "Hanoi Hilton" -- that's right, refused to leave -- until other Americans captured before him were set free. His reward: more torture until he was released in 1973.

Trump seems to think that the fact that McCain fell into enemy hands is some sort of character flaw.

This argument is especially, well, rich coming from someone who stayed out of Vietnam by receiving four student deferments as well as a medical deferment. The 2016 GOP presidential candidate recently told reporters that he didn't miss participating because "I was not a big fan of the Vietnam War."

Not a big fan, eh? No doubt, the same was true for thousands of brave young men and women who went to Southeast Asia, many of whom never came home.

McCain said that he doesn't want a personal apology from Trump, but that American veterans are due one.

I think the real estate tycoon should apologize to McCain -- man to man, or, in this case, mouth to man.

Having said that, McCain should also apologize to Hispanics -- especially those in his home state of Arizona -- for his ham-handed and regrettable treatment in recent years of another issue that figures into the current presidential campaign: immigration.

McCain never caved into the goons who tortured him in North Vietnam. But he showed considerably less character by giving in to the nativists who have bullied him in the last decade.

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