Jim Webb is the latest Democrat to take aim at John McCain, but his
comments show perhaps an higher degree of chutzpah than Wesley
Clark's:
Mr. Webb, a Virginia Democrat who is often
mentioned as a possible running mate for Mr. Obama, said Mr. McCain
should "calm down" about his military record. "Don't be standing up
and uttering your political views and implying that all the people
in the military support them, because they don't," he said on
MSNBC.
A Marine who served in Vietnam -- a fact he mentioned often as
he campaigned for the Senate, occasionally while wearing his son's
desert combat boots -- Mr. Webb said "we need to make sure that we
take politics out of service."
It's pretty clear that Webb owes his Senate seat to the fact that
he used his military service, as well as his son's service in Iraq,
to give added credence to his anti-war views. Here is Webb in a
debate with George Allen on
Meet the Press on Sept. 17, 2006:
I know what it's like to be on the ground. I know
what it's like to fight a war like this. And there's -- there are
limits to what the military can do. Eventually, this is going to
have to move into a diplomatic environment. Now, that's where this
administration seems to have blinders. They're not talking to
Syria, they're not talking to Iran. And there are ways that we can
do this, move this forward....
One of the, one of the great problems we have right now in, in,
in discussing this war is that very few people who have brought us
this war have served and very, very few of the children of these
people who have brought us this war have served. And if you have to
wake up every morning wondering about a loved one, you will look
at, at words like this much differently.
I've never heard McCain argue that Obama opposes the war because he
doesn't know what it's like to be on the ground. And McCain did
have a son serving in Iraq, but, unlike Webb, only talked about it
on the rare occasion when somebody else brought it up, and
certainly never used it to bolster his arguments on Iraq.
The only person who needs to calm down here is Jim Webb.
topics:
John McCain, Environment, Military, Iraq, Iran
