REMEMBER PLEASE

Posted at 7:10 a.m. ET

Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

One of those witnessing the surrender ceremony was Admiral John Sidney McCain Sr., the grandfather of Senator John S. McCain, this year's Republican candidate for president. 

Admiral McCain's son, and Senator McCain's father, was Admiral John Sidney "Jack" McCain Jr., who commanded our forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam War, while Senator McCain was a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. 

Newsweek magazine is carrying a pretty reasonable portrait of Senator McCain - I recommend it - and it contains this quote from his father, Jack McCain:

"It's one of the most forgotten, then relearned foreign-policy axioms in history. If you keep backing away because you're afraid of what might happen to you—and you keep backing away and backing away—what you were afraid of in the first place is going to happen to you."

That is the wisdom with which Senator McCain was brought up.  It reflects the most profound difference between him and the appeasing, talk-to-everyone-unconditionally Barack Obama.

It is that idea that was the central theme of our resistance to Soviet expansionism during the Cold War.  The fact that Senator McCain accepts that concept, and practices it in his policy views, is one of the most important reasons to vote for him in November, and to keep his opponent out of the White House.

September 2, 2008.