It was a tribute to the soldiers who shot him down and captured him. See wiki before they change it.
Trúc Bạch war monument
On October 26, 1967, during the Vietnam War, US Navy aviator John McCain was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile on a mission against a Hanoi power plant and parachuted wounded into Trúc Bạch Lake. He was dragged out of the water, confronted by angry North Vietnamese and turned over to the military as a prisoner of war. A monument commemorating the capture (not, as sometimes claimed, McCain’s detention)[2] was erected in 1985[3] on the western shore on Thanh Niên Road. Its inscription reads:
On 26 October 1967 near Trúc Bạch Lake, citizens and military of the capital Hanoi captured US Navy Air Forces pilot Major [sic] John Sidney McCain, who was flying an A-4 aircraft that crashed near Yên Phụ power station. This was one of ten aircraft shot down that day.
Googling around about the memorial, some things I found:
It said “On 25-10-1967 near Truc Bach lake soldiers and people of Hanoi had captured John Sney Macan major of American Air Force who piloted an A-4 fighter jet which had been shot down near Yen Phu Power Plant. This is one of the 10 jet shot down in the same day.”
This monument shows a pilot, presumably Mccain, raising his hands in surrender. Mccain was referred to by “tên John Sney Macan”. “tên” which is a word used to indicate villain, his name is misspelled (probably unintentionally) and he served in the Navy, not the Air Force.
it’s less of sn embarrassment of him since everyone knows and accepts he’s a bumbling moron. it’s more of an embarrassment on democrats and his supporters.
Of course it’s a monument celebrating McCain’s capture - it was built long before we normalized relations with Vietnam. But since the normalization (which McCain himself played a large role), and particularly after McCain’s death, it has become a memorial to McCain, for both Americans and Vietnamese.
