Senator John McCain: Messages of courage for BiH

Who is John McCain, an American senator who visited BiH and sent very positive and encouraging messages?

Senator McCain is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain's father and grandfather were both four-star admirals with the United States Navy. John McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958 and became a naval aviator. During the Vietnam War, he was almost killed in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire. During an air operation he was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. As a prisoner of war until 1973, McCain experienced episodes of ruthless torture. One of the proofs of his great courage and loyalty is the fact that he refused an early repatriation offer as he did not want to leave his fellow soldiers behind. He was released in 1973 following the Paris Peace Agreement.

He retired from the Navy in 1981 and entered politics as a Republican. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1986, winning re-election five times.

McCain won the Republican nomination for presidential elections in 2008 but was defeated by Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

He is a key figure in the Senate and the US political scene. He is also known for his role in ending the war against Bosnia and Herzegovina. American requests for military strikes on Serb artillery around towns were always blocked by the British politics. That, however, changed in 1995 when the UK ended up the only European country with such position regarding Bosnian war. The British politics was regularly rejecting proposals for strikes on the Serb artillery position and the proposal to lift the UN embargo on arms – the request of the famous senator Bob Dole to launch an operation as part of newly adopted American policy 'Lift and Strike', which Bill Clinton adopted in 1992.

In the beginning of the Bosnian war, John McCain was sceptic about the US military intervention. However, by 1993, when world media started broadcasting pictures of killed civilians, McCain began to advocate for an active participation of the United States in resolving and stopping Bosnian tragedy. He often reproached Europeans for observation of Bosnian calvary from distance.

Then British defense minister, Malcolm Rifkind was among the most reluctant to accept American proposal to end Bosnian agony. Rifkind said to Bob Dole: 'You Americans have no clue what war horrors are.' Unfortunately, he said that to a man who had lost his arm in a war. Such tone could not pass John McCain. During negotiations between the US and British teams concerning Bosnia, famous publicist Brendan Simms in his book Unfinest Hour cited one of the negotiation team members who told him that 'it looked like visibly irritated John McCain was about to strike Rifkind'.  

Late diplomat Richard Holbrooke wrote in his memoirs that McCain's 'courage and integrity were unequalled in the Senate'.

In addition to his military honors and decorations, senator McCain has been granted a number of civilian awards and honors.