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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: epicure who wrote (142177)	8/9/2010 10:16:53 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (3) of 540872

In defense of McCain (shudder), the word "gook" was almost universally used by in country GIs to describe not the Vietnamese people but rather the guys who were shooting at Americans. That's not to say that many soldiers didn't lump all Vietnamese, or maybe even all Southeast Asians, together but many didn't. I'm sure that McCain and his fellow prisoners used the term "gook" to refer to their captors but that alone does not indicate that they held racist views toward the people of an entire nation. I'm not saying it was the thing to do but you'd have had a hard time living through that experience without internalizing the shorthand language of that war. So maybe that difference in definition could explain what McCain meant. I seem to recall that he was instrumental, along with Kerry, in restoring relations with Vietnam. Most of us got past such usages but I can see that there would be times, especially from a guy who lived through what McCain did, where vivid memories would bring back old feelings and the words that went with them. Ed

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