by John McCain
The uniforms we wore in prison consisted of a blue short-sleeved shirt, trousers that looked like pajama trousers, and rubber sandals that were made out of automobile tires. I recommend them highly; one pair lasted my entire stay.
As part of the change in treatment, the Vietnamese allowed some prisoners to receive packages from home. In some packages were handkerchiefs, scarves, and other items of clothing. Mike got himself a piece of white cloth and a piece of red cloth and fashioned a bamboo needle. Over a period of a couple months, he sewed the American flag on the inside of his shirt.
Every afternoon, before we had a bowl of soup, we would hang Mike’s shirt on the wall of our cell and say the Pledge of Allegiance. I know that saying the Pledge of Allegiance might not seem the most important or meaningful part of our day now, but I can assure you that for the men in that stark prison cell, it was, indeed, the most important and meaningful event of our day.
One day, the Vietnamese searched our cell and discovered Mike’s shirt with the flag sewn inside and removed it. That evening they returned, opened the door of the cell, called for Mike Christian to come out, closed the door of the cell and, for the benefit of all of us, beat Mike Christian severely for the next couple of hours. Then they opened the door of the cell and threw him back inside.
He was not in good shape. We tried to comfort and take care of him as well as we could. The cell in which we lived had a concrete slab in the middle on which we slept and four naked light bulbs in each corner of the room.
After things quieted down, I went to lie down to go to sleep. As I did, I happened to look in the corner of the room. Sitting there, beneath that dim light bulb, with a piece of white cloth, a piece of red cloth, another shirt and his bamboo needle, his eyes almost shut from the beating, was my friend, Mike Christian, sewing another American flag.
He wasn’t doing it because it made him feel better. He was making that flag because he knew how important it was for us to be able to pledge our allegiance to our flag and country.
It seems that I won’t be returning to Afghanistan anytime soon. I regret that very much. I think we have all had over the last year or so reason to wonder about the direction of our country and some of the people leading it. I would like to be again in the company of Americans who embody our nation’s greatness, and who know it is something more profound and dearer than a politician’s campaign slogan.
CHAPTER FIVE
* * *
Arab Spring
MOHAMED BOUAZIZI WAS BORN POOR and without rights, and he died in the same condition. He lived his entire life in Sidi Bouzid, a city in central Tunisia. He had worked as a street vendor since he was a child to help support his family. He sold produce from a wheelbarrow. He was routinely harassed by the city’s notoriously corrupt police for bribes he could not afford to pay, and his goods were frequently confiscated. He was accosted by a female municipal official on the morning of December 17, 2010, purportedly for not possessing a vending permit. His vegetables and weighing scales were confiscated. The woman is alleged to have slapped Bouazizi in the face, humiliating him. He went to the provincial government headquarters to file a complaint and ask that his scales be returned to him. He was turned away. He returned a short while later with a can of gasoline, drenched himself in it outside the building’s entrance, and lit himself on fire. He would die of his burns eighteen days later. He was twenty-six years old.
That evening, Bouazizi’s mother demonstrated outside the government building where he had staged his fatal protest. A relative posted a videotape of the grieving woman on Facebook. Al Jazeera picked it up and aired it that evening. Outraged protesters, fed up with the endemic corruption, lack of opportunity, and oppression under Tunisia’s autocratic president, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, took to the streets. The police attempted to confront the protesters, who rioted in response. Word of the protests in Sidi Bouzid spread rapidly through social media, and Tunisians in other cities, predominantly young men and women, started protests. After Bouazizi died and five thousand people marched in his funeral procession, the protests spread nationwide and to other autocratic regimes in the Middle East. The Arab Spring had begun.
Democratic internationalists had predicted for years that the autocracies of the Middle East would come undone when generations of young people without jobs, without hope, and without recourse had finally had enough and revolted. And in early 2011 that’s exactly what seemed to be happening. Ten days after Bouazizi’s death, the Tunisian military refused to crack down on the protests and Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, where he was given asylum. Mass protests began in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on January 25. Seventeen days later, on February 11, Hosni Mubarak, who had ruled Egypt for more than three decades, was forced out of office when Egypt’s armed forces, like Tunisia’s, refused to intervene to save him. Protests against Muammar Qaddafi’s regime began in Libya four days later, and quickly triggered a civil war when the regime tried to suppress them. Within a few days, regime opponents were in control of Benghazi. By March, the United States and its NATO allies had intervened militarily on the side of the rebels. Widespread protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh erupted in Yemen in mid-January, and confrontations with the regime turned immediately violent. The majority Shia population of Bahrain demonstrated against the Sunni monarchy in mid-February, and within a month the king had declared martial law and Saudi Arabia and the Emirates had dispatched troops to violently suppress the protests. The first big protests in Syria began outside the capital of Damascus and other major urban areas in March, but soon spread everywhere. The response from Bashar al-Assad’s regime was so brutal it started one of the most barbarous, destabilizing civil wars in living memory, a shocking humanitarian crisis that persists to this day. In all but Tunisia, winter would follow spring, and another Middle East generation desperate for change would see their hopes lost to a restoration of despotism or worse.
As some of the ancien régimes under duress, in particular Tunisia, Bahrain, and especially Egypt, were U.S. allies, the Obama administration’s response to the regional wave of democratic uprisings would be tugged in different directions by the demands of security interests and the moral appeal of political ideals. That conflict was complicated by the fact that in many of these oppressed societies, Islamists provided the most potent opposition, particularly where the Muslim Brotherhood, accustomed to decades of persecution, had the organizing skills and cunning to dominate the politics of the revolution, if not in the first sudden explosion of exuberant youthful rebellion, then in the complex maneuvering and militancy that followed.
I would criticize many of the administration’s decisions concerning these revolutions, but I recognized what a daunting array of challenges the Arab Spring presented to American policymakers. I thought it right to support the protests, and urge a peaceful transition of power and the creation of new political processes that welcomed the participation of all parties committed to democratic principles and the rule of law. I thought that welcome would have to include parties that were expressly Islamist if their democratic commitment was not just to one or two free elections or however many it took for them to come to power, and their commitment to justice applied the protections of the law equally to all. Middle Eastern societies, misruled and corrupted decade after decade, where political, religious, and personal differences are often violently prosecuted, have pathologies that aren’t easily tamed. But I don’t believe there is any way to get rid of them other than to open those societies to democratic political habits that in time lead to a broader distribution of economic opportunity, equal justice, and the government’s accountability to the governed.
Joe Lieberman and I made plans to travel to the Middle East in February 2011. We would meet in Tunisia, before traveling on to Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and finally to Egypt. We arrived on different flights, and rendezvoused at a cemetery on the Mediterranean to pay our respects to the Americans killed in North Africa in World War II. It is a beautiful and serene place, one of the
most beautiful of the many plots of land in all the far-flung foreign locations where Americans rest who gave their lives for their country and someone else’s.
Following Ben Ali’s exile, Tunisia entered a protracted period of political uncertainty. The prime minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, had formed a caretaker government with holdovers from Ben Ali’s party, as well as opposition representatives, although no one from Ennahda, the main Islamist party, which had been banned by Ben Ali, had been included. We met with the prime minister and his defense minister. They would both be out of office the next week. Protest rallies had continued across the country and had intensified in recent days. Ghannouchi was forced to resign on February 27.
The most interesting exchanges we had were with civil society activists, mostly young idealists, who were guiding the revolution on the streets and online. We had dinner with them at the ambassador’s residence. To an old geezer, they seemed impossibly young and energetic, and to an old cynic, very self-assured. But they fascinated me. We told them we admired their courage, and we hoped they might be the start of the Arab world’s transformation. I sensed that their ambitions weren’t quite that grand. They wanted an accountable government and economic opportunities. But of such desires sweeping revolutions can be made. They explained how they had used social media to communicate and coordinate their protests. The Internet was heavily censored by Ben Ali’s government, but not, curiously, Facebook, which became their main communication platform. I asked what assistance we could provide them and if there was anyone in the U.S. they wanted to speak to that we might be able to connect them with. It was unanimous. Mark Zuckerberg was their man. “If it wasn’t for Facebook,” one of them said, “there would’ve been no revolution.” They wanted to invite Zuckerberg to come to Tunisia, and asked me to intercede on their behalf. I told them I’d try to get in touch with him when I was back in the States. I did, too. I put in a call to him right after I returned, and told him that he was a hero to a group of extraordinary kids who were trying to change the Middle East, and were using his creation to do it. They wanted very much for him to come to Tunis, and I offered to put him in touch with some of them if he was so inclined. Alas, he didn’t appear to be, and I didn’t hear from him again.
The other fascinating encounter we had was with a Tunisian businessman, Mondher Ben Ayed, whom we had been advised was one of the shrewdest, best-connected people in the country. He did have an insightful view, given the confusing scene it appeared to us, of where Tunisia was headed. A period of instability would continue until a new constitution was drafted, but he believed the prospects were good for Tunisia’s successful transition to a modern representative democracy as long as the economy along with the political system was opened to ordinary Tunisians. Economic reforms were essential to ensuring the success of political reforms. He also seemed rather sure that Ennahda would figure prominently in that transition, and would not, as some in the West feared, subvert it.
That is what happened. Ennahda was sort of the Tunisian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, but it is more committed to the conviction that democracy and Islam are compatible. Ennahda won the most seats in parliamentary elections in October, though not an outright majority, and governed in a coalition with secular parties. A longtime dissident who’d been living in exile, Moncef Marzouki, was selected president in December, and he appointed the leader of Ennahda, Hamadi Jebali, prime minister. Some months before the election, Jebali came to Washington under the auspices of an organization that promoted democratic norms in Islamist political movements, and met with Joe and me to assure us of his party’s commitment to democracy. Ennahda is everything that democratic internationalists ask of religious parties. They reject sharia law and accept the secular character of government, which alienated the more militant Islamists in Tunisia. Although analogies to American political models aren’t really apt, if we explained Ennahda’s issue positioning using our references, we would probably describe them as socially centrist and economically liberal. The next time we saw Mr. Ayed, on a subsequent visit to Tunisia in 2012, he was a senior advisor to Prime Minister Jebali.
We traveled to Lebanon after our stop in Tunis, and from Lebanon to Jordan. It was on our flight to Amman that Joe and I discussed whether we should call for the U.S. and our NATO allies to intervene militarily in Libya. The uprising against the regime began in Benghazi, and Qaddafi’s security forces had cracked down as soon as the first protesters had taken to the streets. Six demonstrators were killed in Benghazi on the second day of protests. Opposition groups called for a “Day of Revolt” the following day. Police snipers and helicopter gunships had fired into the crowd. Demonstrators marched in cities across eastern Libya, and were met with violence. The first protests in Tripoli started on February 20. By then, hundreds of demonstrators had been killed in Benghazi, but the opposition was now in control of most of the city, and some military units stationed in eastern Libya began changing sides. Prominent Libyan diplomats defected and called on the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on the regime. They would soon be joined by Libya’s ambassador to the U.N., who had defended the regime for more than a week before breaking with it in an emotional speech. “They are asking for their freedom,” he said, referring to the protests. “They are asking for their rights. They did not throw a single stone and they were killed. I tell my brother, Qaddafi, leave the Libyans alone.”
Violence was now general everywhere in the country including the capital. A civil war was under way. Rebels were in control of most of eastern Libya, but Qaddafi still held most of the rest of the country. Claiming he had “brought glory” to Libyans, he refused to relinquish power, and threatened a Tiananmen-like response. He called on supporters to attack the “cockroaches” opposing him and promised to “cleanse Libya house by house.” Libyan air and naval power bombed and shelled rebels, defecting army units, and civilians. The opposition beseeched the West for help. Joe and I discussed the pros and cons of endorsing the request. The situation was confused and fast-moving, and we wondered if, for all his vitriol, Qaddafi wasn’t just days away from fleeing the country. We were also mindful about getting too far out ahead of the U.S. and allied governments, but by the time we landed we had decided to take Qaddafi at his word, that the threat of wholesale slaughter at the hands of a dying tyranny was too great to ignore. We issued a statement that day. We were the first members of Congress to take a public stand for intervention. “We are appalled by what appear to be crimes against humanity occurring in Libya,” we declared. “The Qaddafi regime’s ongoing slaughter and oppression is deplorable and must end.” We called on other Libyan government and military officials to break with the regime, and for the international community to intervene.
There is an array of measures that the United States and our global partners, including the European Union and African Union, should immediately pursue. Some Libyan diplomats have bravely called for a no-fly zone to stop the Qaddafi regime’s use of airpower to attack Libyan civilians. We support this course of action.
After Jordan we spent Shabbat in Israel and flew to Egypt Saturday night. The crowds in Tahrir Square had thinned by then, and the place was cleared of debris after the nearly three-week protest had achieved its principal aim. Mubarak was gone and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had assumed temporary control of the government. We walked through the square. There were still protesters there but in reduced numbers. The streets were mostly quiet, and there were tanks on every corner. We had one full day in country and it was a busy one. We met with the head of the Supreme Council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, whom I had known for decades, and with the foreign minister and prime minister. We talked with Amr Moussa, the longtime Arab League secretary-general, who had stepped down presumably to run in Egypt’s presidential election. It was Sunday, so I indulged my regular Sunday habit. I did an interview with Meet the Press from Tahrir Square, where I repeated our call for a no-fly zone in Libya. Qaddafi was “using airpower and helicopters to con
tinue these massacres,” I noted. “We’ve got to get tough.” I made clear that I wasn’t advocating U.S. ground troops, but using U.S. and allied airpower to stop Qaddafi from murdering his own people. “Qaddafi’s days are numbered,” I contended. “The question is how many [people] are going to be massacred before he goes.”
Again, our most interesting encounter was with the mostly young people who had been in the vanguard of the revolution. They were part of a group of opposition leaders the U.S. ambassador had convened to talk with us. We were no doubt regarded by the assembly, as most American politicians would’ve been, as patrons of the Mubarak regime. That was understandable. A close relationship with Mubarak had long been considered an essential instrument of U.S. interests in the Middle East. Joe and I had met numerous times with the deposed Egyptian president. But we also had an open-door policy for meeting Egyptian dissidents, and regularly stressed with Egyptian officials the need for political reform. I had given a speech at the Munich Conference in 2005 urging regimes in the Arab world, particularly Egypt’s, to liberalize. We had co-sponsored in 2010 a resolution offered by Russ Feingold that called on Mubarak to allow international observers to monitor the presidential election scheduled for the following year. We were informed by Egypt’s ambassador that we had hurt the president’s feelings. The people raising concerns about the election, the ambassador insisted, “are all terrorists. President Mubarak values your friendship, and is shocked you signed on to this misguided resolution.” Mubarak was deep in the bunker then.