From A Naval Academy Graduate To Senator Webb

An essay from an active duty officer with more than 25 years of service, addressed to his fellow USNA alum, Senator James Webb.

Why did the new Democratic majority select Senator James Webb (D-VA) to give the Democratic response to the president’s State of the Union Address? Since when does this privilege fall to a freshman, even a freshman senator? It’s seems that despite the bad experience with nominating John Kerry to be their standard bearer in 2004, the Democrats have learned nothing. At least they recognize that they have a serious national security credibility problem but the leadership and the base simply cannot get beyond Vietnam. Hence, they asked a US Marine officer turned novelist, turned Navy Secretary, turned Democrat to present their--well, their opposition to all things Bush, because one certainly did not hear ANY tangible plans. Senator Webb is a graduate of my alma mater, the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. He is a highly decorated Marine from Vietnam who unlike Senator Kerry actually and definitively earned his commendations for bravery and valor in combat. His novels have sold very well because he is a very talented writer. But on close inspection, something about Senator Webb is very disturbing. Perhaps it harkens all the way back to his midshipman days in Annapolis and a simple boxing match lost. You see, James Webb lost a boxing match to a man he clearly despises, Oliver North. Webb, as chronicled by Robert Timberg in his best-selling book, The Nightingale’s Song, was heavily favored to beat North in the Brigade boxing championships but lost. Timberg claims that Webb believed he was intentionally denied the title by poor preparation from his coach, or more accurately the boxing coach made sure Ollie was better prepared to beat him! Regardless, Webb believes he was wronged and today we can see this streak of vengeance in him. More on this later.

Senator Webb, representing the only Democratic senator with any credibility on national security policy (gained while a Republican serving as Navy Secretary for Ronald Reagan), took the president to task for his performance in office. But what exactly did he say? By the second paragraph of his speech, Webb made a gratuitous reference to the devastation of New Orleans. Now since Mr. Webb began his speech by reminding us that we are celebrating the 400 year anniversary of Jamestown, one should assume that this Virginian also knows a bit about James Madison and particularly Federalist 51 and the concept of federalism. Senator, New Orleans is a city of a state in our federated republic. The citizens of that city had a mayor whose responsibility it was to administer competently the levers of power in his city. The state of Louisiana has a chief executive known as a governor with whom resides the responsibility for the competent administration of her state. Both of these public officials, both Democrats, as New Orleans mayors and Louisiana governors long have been, showed how completely incompetent they were in the face of a predicted natural disaster. Everyone who is not blinded by Bush hatred knows that there are serious issues about the performance of local levee boards, the mayor and the governor. However, as a novelist and one further infected with get-the-presidentitis, the senator simply cannot let the facts get in the way of a good story whose fictional title is Katrina was Bush’s Fault.

When giving a nationally televised speech, politicians should learn from Senator Biden’s lessons about pilfering others’ ideas. The two Americas allegory has already been spoken for by former Senator John Edwards, Mr. Webb. One could explore the simplistic populism and allegory of evil CEOs but that might ask Mr. Webb to think about what economic populism has done for Loiusiana, Cuba, or any other place it’s been tried. Perhaps an even deeper intellectual trait revealed by Mr. Webb’s demonizing of corporate America is treating the 21st century as if it is the beginning of the 20th century. Does he know that more Americans today are part of the investing class than at any time in our history and that the number is growing? Corporate earnings, due in part to sound management by those overpaid CEOs, are defying gravity and hence so too are government revenues which siphon off a significant portion of those profits. Governor Spitzer of New York and your colleague and fellow Democrat in the Senate, Charles Schumer, have learned this as they are proposing less restrictive regulation of firms. New Labor in Britain has learned much the same lesson about the past century…but not Mr. Webb? His nostalgia for ideas that have been tested and found wanting also informs his protectionism, lamenting the “dismantling of our manufacturing base” and hence “good American jobs.” Senator Webb, the world has changed a bit since this was in vogue. America leads the world in the creation of wealth. How? We have adapted. The brick and mortar jobs you seem to long for have been transformed into information age jobs. Yes we produce automobiles and refrigerators but we have changed to creators of computer codes that create operating systems and dramatically improve people’s lives while increasing productivity.

What we are witnessing today is the return of the worst hits of the Democratic Party. Going back to the American Civil War, Democrats were against THAT war and tried mightily to undermine President Lincoln. Those Democrats became known as Copperheads or Peace Democrats and, these were labels of which they were proud. They wanted the president to negotiate a peace with the Confederates and put an end to a far more bloody war than the war in Iraq when things were going so very wrong for the Union. So there is a long history of this behavior in the Democratic Party. There was a time they could only envision defeat, not victory. This was NOT true during WW I or WW II, but now the Democrats love to bring up Vietnam and the loss suffered there, and it remains for them the measuring stick against which all US military action MUST be compared. James Webb is a product of that policy failure and he is clearly embittered by it.

I was struck by his demeanor. One announcer called him smooth. Another referred to him as cool. What I saw was a simmering cauldron of arrogance, anger and resentment. His eyes were not the eyes of a serious thinker but those of a man who is clearly very, very angry and his words bear this out. For Senator Webb this war has been mismanaged. I challenge him or any other dissenter to show me the war in history that has not at some time been mismanaged either by the military commanders or the civilians. Thucydides points out in his History of the Peloponnesian War how terribly Athens managed its war with Sparta after the death of Pericles. We can look to the American Civil War and how awfully the Union generals performed until President Lincoln fired enough of them to find General Grant. World War I was one tragic mistake after another from Germany’s decision to weaken the right wing of Schlieffen’s Plan to the failure of France and England to recognize that the machine gun and barbed wire had overcome the offensive. When one couples that with the civilian leadership’s abdication of its responsibility for grand strategy and supreme command it was a disaster. World War II saw more than its share of folly. Hitler failed to learn what Napoleon learned in Russia. He attacked Russia on the very same day! The Americans failed to recognize that Japan had every reason and intention to attack Pearl Harbor but the military failed to act appropriately. The Battle of the Bulge? The list goes on and on and on. Does mismanagement of some aspect of a war make the war wrong? Was Lincoln wrong to fight the South? Should England and France have capitulated during WW I and WW II? Could Athens have won? Could the US have won in Vietnam? Senator Webb uses history to defend his position, but he’s a bit too cute. He invokes President Eisenhower’s success in Korea but he ignores that all Ike did was return the Korean peninsula to the status quo ante, a previously divided state that the North Koreans violated. Using Webb’s calculus, Korea was not a vital national interest and General MacArthur NEVER would have been authorized to land at Inchon. Frankly, MacArthur would never have even been brought out of retirement and Korea would be ruled today by the Great Leader.

Webb invokes his opinion and those of others who were against entering into Iraq in 2002 and 2003. They made their arguments but they were not compelling and were predicated on managing the threat by containing Saddam - but all of that changed at the World Trade Center. We were brutally attacked and most of us expected further equally violent and destructive attacks. The president took the best information he had from numerous intelligence agencies, our own and those of our allies, regarding WMD and made the tough choice. Hindsight is perfect but given what the president AND Congress HONESTLY BELIEVED to be the threat, the accusation of recklessness is a cheap shot unworthy of a former warrior. Mr. Webb opines that we have lost opportunities to defeat the forces of international terrorism. Where? When? How many plots must we foil before the Democrats will admit that we are winning the overall war on terror and Iraq is but ONE theater in that larger war? I challenge Mr. Webb to be more specific. He is long on general accusations but they cannot survive serious critical thinking and examination – at least not to support the charge that the president was incompetent or reckless. Reasonable people can disagree about American Grand Strategy in the post 9/11 world, but the senator did not offer reasonable disagreements. Thus, he resorted to the recent Democratic ploy of finding one or two generals to counter what the president has done, and adopting them as oracles. The problem is that all generals are not cut from the same cloth. ALL generals are not competent warriors. Too many reach their lofty positions by being good administrators. Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of School of Advanced International Studies has chronicled this in his recent book Supreme Command. Abraham Lincoln faced this with George McClellan; FDR faced it with Admiral Husband E.Kimmel; Truman ultimately was forced to fire MacArthur and George W. Bush has apparently faced it with Generals John Abizaid and Casey. Now he seems to have found his US Grant in General Petraeus but the Democrats don’t want to give the general or president’s new strategy a chance.

Finally, Senator Webb says in one paragraph that he does not want a precipitous withdrawal but wants our troops gone in short order. Are these weasel words Senator? You are a writer. The written word is your craft. Please explain for the public the difference between precipitous withdrawal and short order. Additionally, he argues that “the majority of our military” are against the way the war is being executed. What has the senator been reading? Whence comes this information? Please share your data with the country. The Democrats showed once again last night why they cannot be trusted with national security. They hauled out a freshman senator who was supposed to have national security bona fides and he was found wanting. He now plays the part of General McClellan turned politician, running against Lincoln in 1864. That did not turn out too well for McClellan, and it was a dangerous moment for America. Similarly, the senator should accept that Vietnam is over. Senator, you finally beat Ollie. You have the Senate seat he could not win. I wish you could let that go as well and turn your many talents and experiences toward a more constructive purpose for America in these times that try men’s souls.

Not only that Webb's assessment was also militarily incompetent. His claims of "many missed opportunities" represents a complete stategic incompetence on his part. Funny this level of incompetence from someone sold to the people of Virginia as both Democrat and Warrior.

Why Iraq

One of the really infuriating things in modern politics is the level of disinformation, misinformation, demagoguery and out right lying going on about the mission in Iraq. Democrats have spent the last 3+ years lying about Iraq out of a political calculation. The assumption is that the natural isolationist mindset of the average American voter, linked to the inherent Anti Americanism (what is misnamed the "Anti War movement") of the more feverish Democrat activists (especially those running the US's National "News" media) would restore them to national political dominance. The truth is the Democrat Party Leadership has simply lacked the courage to speak truth to whiners. The truth is that even if Al Gore won the 2000 election and 09-11 still happened we would be doing the EXACT same things in Iraq we are doing now.

Based on the political situation in the region left over from the 1991 Gulf War plus the domestic political consensus built up in BOTH parties since 1991 as well as fundamental military strategic laws, there was NO viable strategic choice for the US but to take out Iraq after finishing the initial operations in Afghanistan.

To start with Saddam's Iraq was our most immediate threat. We could NOT commit significant military forces to another battle with Saddam hovering undefeated on our flank nor could we leave significant forces watching Saddam. The political containment of Iraq was breaking down. That what Oil for Food was all about. Oil for Food was an attempt by Iraq to break out of it's diplomatic isolation and slip the shackles the UN Sanctions put on it's military. There there was the US Strategic position to consider.

The War on Islamic Fascism is different sort of war. in facing this Asymmetrical threat, we have a hidden foe, spread out across a geographically diverse area, with covert sources of supply. Since we cannot go everywhere they hide out, in fact often cannot even locate them until the engage us, we need to draw them out of hiding into a kill zone.

Iraq is that kill zone. That is the true brilliance of the Iraq strategy. We draw the terrorists out of their world wide hiding places onto a battlefield they have to fight on for political reasons (The "Holy" soil of the Arabian peninsula) where they have to pit their weakest ability (Conventional Military combat power) against our greatest strength (ability to call down unbelievable amounts of firepower) where they will primarily have to fight other forces (the Iraqi Security forces) in a battlefield that is mostly neutral in terms of guerrilla warfare. (Iraqi-mostly open terrain as opposed to guerrilla friendly areas like the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of SE Asia).

Did any of the critics of liberating Iraq ever look at a map? Iraq, for which we had the political, legal and moral justifications to attack, is the strategic high ground of the Middle East. A Geographic barrier that severs ground communication between Iran and Syria apart as well as providing another front of attack in either state or into Saudi Arabia if needed.

There were other reasons to do Iraq but here is the strategic military reason we are in Iraq. We have taken, an maintain the initiative from the Terrorists. They are playing OUR game on ground of OUR choosing.

Problem is Counter Insurgency is SLOW and painful. Often a case of 3 steps forward, two steps back. One has to wonder if the American people have either the emotional maturity, nor the intellect" to understand. It's so much easier to spew made for TV slogans like "No Blood for Oil" or "We support the Troops, bring them home" or dumbest of all "We are creating terrorists" then to actually THINK.

Westerners in general, and the US citizens in particular seem to have trouble grasping the fundamental fact of this foe. These Islamic Fascists have NO desire to co-exist with them. The extremists see all this PC posturing by the Hysteric Left as a sign that we are weak. Since they want us dead, weakness encourages them. There is simply no way to coexist with people who completely believe their "god" will reward them for killing us.

So we can covert to Islam, die or kill them. Iraq is about killing enough of them to make the rest of the Jihadists realize we are serious. They same way killing enough Germans, Italians and Japanese eliminated the ideologies of Nazism, Fascism and Bushido.

Americans need to understand how Bin Laden and his ilk view us. In the Arab world the USA is considered a big wimp. We have run away so many times. Lebanon, the Kurds, the Iraqis in 1991, the Iranians, Somalia, Clinton all thru the 1990s etc etc etc. The Jihadists think we will run again. In fact they are counting on it. That way they can run around screaming "We beat the American just like the Russians, come join us in Jihad" and recruit the next round of "holy warriors". Iraq is also a show place where we show the Muslim world that there are a lines they cannot cross. On 9-11-01 they crossed that line and we can, and will, destroy them for it

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