[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 54 (Thursday, March 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4521-S4522]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ACCOLADES TO SENATOR McCAIN

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise to make a very brief statement and 
ask for a speech to be printed in the Record. I attended the National 
Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention and heard a speech delivered by one 
of our colleagues that I think is one of the finest speeches I have 
ever heard any of our colleagues deliver, although it was not on the 
Senate floor. It was delivered before several thousand veterans of 
foreign wars.
  It was delivered by our colleague, John McCain, from the State of 
Arizona, in response to being the recipient of Legislator of the Year, 
picked by the veterans, the VFW.
  I strongly commend it to my colleagues, because it is the most 
articulate statement I have ever heard, and I believe one of the most 
articulate they will ever read, about what it means to serve one's 
country.
  I will say now what I said to John McCain after he delivered that 
speech, after listening to him: That is the John McCain that I knew 20 
years ago. I am glad to see it is still the same John McCain.
  I ask unanimous consent that the address by our colleague, Senator 
John McCain, at the National Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention, March 
7, 1995, be printed in the Record at this point.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

 Address by Senator John McCain, Before the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 
                             March 7, 1995

       Thank you. I fear I cannot adequately express my deep 
     gratitude for the great honor you have done me by giving me 
     this award. As often as we are the targets of public abuse, 
     politicians also often find we are the recipients of 
     undeserved acclaim. After a while, one learns to keep both 
     scorn and praise in perspective. They come with the job.
       Tonight is different. I am deeply moved to be recognized 
     for some small service by you who have distinguished 
     yourselves by your service to our country in war. For most of 
     us, it has been many years since we wore the uniform. But it 
     is still the opinion of those who wore the uniform that 
     matters most to us. I want to thank you very much for 
     choosing me to receive the VFW's Congressional Award. It is 
     an honor I will long cherish.
       I will also long remember the honor the people of Arizona 
     have bestowed upon me by trusting me to represent their 
     interests in Congress. I believe they would understand, 
     however, when I say that I once knew a greater honor. It is 
     an honor I share with all of you, an honor we learned about 
     in America, but experienced in someone else's country. It is 
     the great honor of knowing your duty and ransoming your life 
     to its accomplishment.
       I was blessed to have been born into a family who made 
     their living at sea in defense of their country's cause. My 
     grandfather was a naval aviator; my father a submariner. They 
     were my first heroes, and their respect for me has been the 
     most lasting ambition of my life. It was nearly pre-ordained 
     that I would someday find a place in my family's profession, 
     and that my fate would carry me to war.
       Such was not the case for most of you. Your ambitions did 
     not lead you to war; the honors you first sought were not 
     kept hidden on battlefields. Most of you were citizen-
     soldiers. You answered the call when it came; took up arms 
     for your country's sake; and fought to the limit of your 
     ability because you believed your country's welfare was as 
     much your responsibility as it was the professional 
     soldier's.
       I did what I had been prepared for most of my life to do. 
     You did what I did but without the advantages of training and 
     experience that I possessed. You were kids when you saw 
     combat. I was thirty years old. I believe you outranked me.
       I do not mean to dismiss the virtues of the professional 
     soldier. I consider my inclusion in their ranks to be the 
     great honor of my life. The Navy was and yet remains the 
     world I know best and love most. The Navy took me to war.
       Unless you are a veteran you might find it odd that I would 
     be indebted to the Navy for sending me to war. You might 
     mistakenly conclude that the secret veterans' share is that 
     they enjoyed war.
       We do share a secret, but it is not a romantic remembrance 
     of war. War is awful. When nations seek to resolve their 
     differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. 
     Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the 
     nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is 
     wretched beyond description. Whatever gains are secured by 
     war, it is loss that the veteran remembers. Only a fool or a 
     fraud sentimentalizes the cruel and merciless reality of war.
       Neither do we share a nostalgia for the exhilaration of 
     combat. That exhilaration, after all, is really the sensation 
     of choking back fear. I think we are all proud to have once 
     overcome the paralysis of terror. But few of us are so 
     removed from the memory of that terror to mistake it today 
     for a welcome thrill.
       What we share is something harder to explain. It is in part 
     a pride for having sacrificed together for a cause greater 
     than our individual pursuits; pride for having your courage 
     and honor tested and affirmed in a fearsome moment of 
     history; pride for having replaced comfort and security with 
     misery and deprivation and not been broken by the experience.
       We also share--and this is harder to explain--the 
     survivors' humility. That's a provocative statement, I know, 
     and the non-veteran may easily mistake its meaning. I am not 
     talking about shame. I know of no shame in surviving combat. 
     But every combat veteran remembers those comrades whose 
     sacrifice was eternal. Their loss taught us everything about 
     tragedy and everything about duty.
       I suspect that at one time or another almost everyone in 
     this room has been called a hero for having done their duty. 
     It is at that moment that we feel most keenly the memory of 
     our comrades who did not return with us to the country we 
     love so dearly. I cannot help but wince a little when heroism 
     is ascribed to me. For I once watched men pay a much higher 
     price for that honor than was asked of me.
       I am grateful, as we all are, to have come home alive. I 
     prayed daily for deliverance from war. No one of my 
     acquaintance ever chose death over homecoming. But I 
     witnessed some men choose death over dishonor. The memory of 
     them, of what they bore for country and honor helped me to 
     see the virtue in my own humility.
       It is in that humility--and only in that humility--that the 
     memory of almost all human experiences--love and hate, loss 
     and redemption, joy and despair, suffering and release, 
     regret and gratitude--reside. In the end, that is the secret 
     that veterans share.
       It is a surpassing irony that war, for all its unspeakable 
     horrors, provides the combatant with every conceivable human 
     experience. Experiences that usually take a lifetime to know 
     are all felt--and felt intensely--in one brief moment of 
     life. Anyone who loses a loved one knows what great loss 
     feels like. Anyone who gives life to a child knows what great 
     joy feels like. The veteran knows what great joy and great 
     loss feel like when they occur in the same moment, in the 
     same experience.
       That is why when we are asked about our time at war, we 
     often offer the contradictory response that it was an 
     experience that, if given the choice, we would neither trade 
     nor repeat. The meaning behind that response is powerful, and 
     I fear that my own powers of expression have failed to 
     explain it clearly. But you know what I am talking about, and 
     in gratitude for the honor you have bestowed on me, I wanted 
     to this evening talk about things I more often leave 
     unexpressed.
       Perhaps, I should talk about the veterans issues before the 
     104th Congress. But no doubt you have by this point in your 
     convention heard from both Congress and the Administration a 
     great many promises to protect and advance the interests of 
     American veterans. For my part, I would simply affirm that 
     the sacrifices borne by veterans deserve to be memoralized in 
     something more lasting than marble or bronze or in the 
     fleeting effect of a politician's speech. Your valor and your 
     devotion to duty have earned your country's abiding concern 
     for your well-being. I am, I assure you, committed to 
     honoring that debt.
       I suspect you already knew that or you would not have 
     honored me with this award. 
     [[Page S4522]] And, as I said, I wanted to talk of other 
     things as well tonight, of the experiences we share and the 
     memory that holds us to one another.
       Let me talk now of what you gave your country, the 
     contribution for which the nation is in your debt. It is more 
     than the battles you won. More than Iwo Jima or Midway or the 
     Battle of the Bulge. More than the Chosin Reservoir or 
     Inchon. More than flights over that most heavily defended 
     enemy capital, Hanoi. More than Khe San or the I Drang.
       All these battles, all these grim tests of courage and 
     character have made a legend of the American fighting man's 
     devotion to duty in every community in America. And it is the 
     lesson of your courage that will help instruct those who will
      defend our country tomorrow in their duty. For they will 
     seek to immortalize in their own devotion to duty your 
     valor and the long and noble history of a free people's 
     defense of their liberty. Their character will be derived 
     in part from their appreciation of your character.
       You know, as well as I, that the world in which they 
     shoulder their responsibilities is an uncertain one. Our 
     familiarity with man's inhumanity to man assures us that 
     Americans will be asked someday to again bear sacrifices that 
     only the brave can endure. That burden will be their honor, 
     as it was once ours.
       I have memories of that honor that caution me to this day 
     to be careful when asking such sacrifices of others. But I 
     fear that the day will come when my caution is overcome by 
     necessity.
       Last June, the free world celebrated one of the greatest 
     battles in the long struggle against tyranny--the invasion of 
     Normandy. President Clinton, quite appropriately, 
     memorialized the occasion by recognizing the profound debt 
     the world owes to the veterans of D Day. In the President's 
     words: ``they saved the world.''
       Our world, then and now, is indeed the consequence of their 
     suffering on killing grounds that were once and are again 
     quiet beaches in a peaceful corner of the free world. But the 
     memory of their sacrifice, and the memories of sacrifice that 
     are held by all of you, caution us always to never assume 
     that peace is the normal state of world affairs.
       I have memories of a place so far removed from the comforts 
     of this blessed country that I have forgotten some of the 
     anguish it once brought me. But my happiness these last 
     twenty years has not let me forget the friends who did not 
     come home with me. The memory of them, of what they bore for 
     honor and country, causes me to look in every prospective 
     conflict for the shadow of Vietnam.
       I do not let that shadow hold me in fear from my duty as I 
     have been given light to see that duty. Yet, it no longer 
     falls to me to bear arms in my country's defense. It falls to 
     our children, and our children's children. I pray that if the 
     time comes for them to answer a call to arms, the battle will 
     be necessary and the field well chosen. But that will not be 
     their responsibility. As it once was for us, their honor is 
     in their answer, not their summons.
       I trust in their willingness and ability to answer the call 
     faithfully. I hold that trust in deference to memories of 
     brave men lost long ago. I hold that trust in deference to 
     you and the courage with which you came of age during a 
     moment of violence and terror. I know that the cause which 
     you defended will not suffer in our children's hands. They 
     are born into the same traditions, with the same values that 
     empowered us.
       I know that on some fitting, distant occasion, young men 
     and women will be instructed in their duty by recalling our 
     children's and our grandchildren's example. And on a quiet 
     beach somewhere, many years from now, the liberated will 
     again gather to pay tribute to the liberators, look upon 
     their seasoned faces and say: they were warriors once and 
     very brave. You and I know how great an honor that is.
       Thank you for this award. I will always try to remain 
     worthy of the honor. Good night and God bless you.
     

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