Oh, Mister Webb.
By Moe Lane Posted in Democrats — Comments (21) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
What's a neocon RiNO to do?
I mean, once upon a time, you wrote this:
Of course, many of those who voted with Stratton were not only seeking to provide opportunities for women where appropriate to the military's unique mission and operational circumstances, but were actively interested in undoing its historic culture. For those other than the quasi-revolutionaries who took delight in the chaos into which our country had fallen, the summer of 1975 in Washington was a bleak time. Following the embarrassment of our withdrawal from Vietnam, respect for military leadership was at its historic nadir. A year before, President Nixon had resigned in disgrace, and his resignation helped elect the so-called Watergate Congress, 76 Democratic freshmen in the House and eight in the Senate, with a surprising number of activists elected from formerly safe Republican districts. A majority of them had run almost solely on anti-military and antiwar themes. One of the first acts of the Watergate Congress was to vote down a supplementary appropriation for the beleaguered South Vietnamese military, virtually guaranteeing the collapse that occurred three months later when a refurbished North Vietnamese army launched a major offensive. All things military had become targets gleefully fired on.
Even with the restoration of American respect
for the military in the 1980s, the effort to destroy the military culture from the outside has continued unabated, frequently through the use of "wedge" issues involving women. Major changes in female military roles often have been instituted either against the advice of the senior military or without their substantive input.
(H/T The Opinionator)
By the way, while I agree with the bits about what we did to South Vietnam, I am significantly more willing to entertain the possibility of allowing women to serve in combat. Horrible of me, I'm sure; just chalk it up to me being an ex-Democrat.
Read on.
You then went on to write this:
As an example of the far-reaching impact of Jacoby's observation, consider Harvard. In World War II, 691 Harvard alumni were killed in action, but of the 12,595 who graduated from Harvard College in the years 1962 to 1972, only 12 died in Vietnam (and this even though ROTC units were in place at Harvard for most of the war). The so-called best and brightest from all the elite schools, whose predecessors had led the way in other wars, stayed home and went to graduate school as their peers marched off to suffer 58,000 dead. The dynamic of their collective but unspoken feeling of guilt, and its transference into a persistent diminution of military service, has never been fully aired in our national discussion, since those high achievers who did not serve soon moved into dominant positions in academia, publishing, film, and the media.
These important social forces came together with a vengeance following the Vietnam war. In its drive for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, the feminist movement saw the military as its optimal "peripheral" battle. To win on the issue of women in combat, the most quintessentially male obligation in any society, would moot all other debates regarding female roles. For many males who did not serve, particularly the high achievers who wished no blemish on their reputations, the "demasculinization" of the military was a natural deterrent to any attack on their manhood as their youthful actions came to be viewed in retrospect.
Others who recognized the illogic of this social experiment, including numerous conservative icons, remained silent, for to speak out could be self- defeating. Given the nasty tenor of any such debate, their lack of military service would certainly be used against them -- not by veterans and military officials, who would have welcomed their support, but by those who wished to stifle dissent.
(All bolding mine)
Written in 1997; but now it's 2006, and you're enlisting the help of the faction of the Democratic Party that considers 'chickenhawk' the epitome of reasoned debate. Wow. We neocons must have seriously annoyed you, or something. Odd that you picked up your ball and went over to the folks that would bristle at the sort of thing that you wrote nine years ago, but if you've explained your epiphany to them... oh, dear.
So. Four questions:
1). Do you still hold the opinions that women shouldn't serve in combat situations, and that liberal anti-military sentiment is the result of deep-seated insecurities about the metaphorical size of their (and I can't believe that I actually have to write this) penises?
2). If you haven't changed your mind, are you prepared to tell your new friends that?
3). If you have changed your mind, can you point us to a different reason than because you recently scored the Democratic nomination for Senator?
And, of course...
4). Do you ever wake up at 3 AM sometimes and wonder what the heck happened to you? Not yet, huh?
Well, give it time.
Moe
PS: Since edited lightly.
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Oh, Mister Webb. 21 Comments (0 topical, 21 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Do you still believe that women should not be allowed to attend the Service Academies (Annapolis, West Point, etc)?
I know he once did because he wrote an excellent article stating so back in the early 80s. Back in the days before instant access on the web, I had a copy of it in my files.
One of the first acts of the Watergate Congress was to vote down a supplementary appropriation for the beleaguered South Vietnamese military, virtually guaranteeing the collapse that occurred three months later when a refurbished North Vietnamese army launched a major offensive.
Wasn't Teddy one of the leaders of this Congress, one of its strongest voices?
Should be an interesting election season.
The exact title of the article is "Women Can't Fight" and it was published in the Washingtonian Magazine in the Fall of 1979.
The premise of the article is based on his own attendance at USNA and his subsequent service as a platoon leader in Vietnam. Webb's thesis in the article is that the Service Academies exist to produce Combat Arms or Navy Line officers and women have no place in those billets.
Webb from what I observe is a populist. He is really starting to remind me of Ross Perot. I think he's a little unbalanced and the rigors of the Senate campaign will make him self destruct.
a very good left-Democrat? Well of course he's not.
...cyrus. I'm not upset at all; just doing my bit to remind the Democratic Party faithful that, once again, their leaders have decided to oppose the Republican in a race by getting their own Republican.
Unless, of course, he's changed his mind on these and other issues; but if so, why hasn't he said so?
but if you deserted the Democrats because they were irresponsible, insofar as they were too beholden to their lunatic fringe, isn't this the sort of thing you should be applauding? You may disagree with him over Iraq, but Webb is no peacenik or isolationist. Aren't you the one who used to argue that we needed a responsible Democratic party?
may indeed be a "mainstream, logical position," in the sense of being a eminently defensible position shared by a solid majority of Americans; but it is a manifestly an opinion, in the view of our media elite, indicative of a deep backwardness.
Has any prominent GOP politician even so much as worried out loud about the role of women in our military since the beginning of the WoT? Not that I can recall. The issue is dead -- the Left has triumphed fully: so fully that if I were to voice my own reactionary opinion, namely, that only a very sick nation sends its wives and sisters to war, I would expect, unless I err, to find myself in narrow and proscribed minority even here at a website called Redstate.
...has reset crookedly, all the band-aids in the world won't straighten it out. You have to rebreak the arm.
So, you can take this as part of my ongoing argument that we need a responsible Democratic Party; the fact that it also helps us re-elect a Republican Senator from VA is merely a sign that the universe smiles upon us all.
and I suspect that it is only fear of being thought un-PC that makes so many just slavishly say it is OK.
topics at all. The point is that if he actually ran as a Republican, he would never have made it past the primary. The Republican Party has turned (almost completely) into a full-employment scheme for incumbents. Even the most egregious RINO can get re-elected time and again, crushing one conservative opponent after another in the primaries.
As has been stated before, the current Democratic Party is bereft of ideas and drifting. They want power, but they don't know what the want to really accomplish. The far left is out-of-touch and creates positions that are poison in general elections.
So they grab a figure like Webb and are willing to accept his right-wing positions because he is centrist enough to actually win. First of all, that shows how shallow and inept the Dems really are. Second, it also shows that Republicans are likely to start shedding people like Webb whose core issues are not only not being addressed, but likely never will be addressed.
As Paul Cella stated, the issue of women in the military is dead. Both sides have embraced it. That is only one small victory that has been handed to the far left by the Republican Party which has no stomach for a real fight on multiple issues.
So that is the dilemma isn't it? If you're a Webb-type, you can challenge an incumbent Republican in the primary and get destroyed, or you switch over to the Democratic Party, blow past a typical leftist hack, and then be competitive in the general election because your predominantly right-wing views are very in-tune with the majority of the American people.
I don't know if this is going to work, or if it is even worth it. What I do know is that I watched from the inside as President Bush and the Republican establishment put the boot down on Bill McCollum on behalf of Martinez down here in Florida. Bill got over it, and stayed in the party, but I can understand why a politician would go over-the-hill to exploit a vacuum on the otherside rather than get smashed up in a primary by the powers-that-be.
"He probably hasn't changed his mind about these
topics at all."
So when do you think that he'll say so?
here. For all I know, he went to bed one night and woke up dreaming about Barney Frank and is now a Democrat out of deep longing for Teddy Kennedy's friendship. I don't know James Webb, and I don't live in VA so I'm not going to follow the race very closely.
What I have seen from his positions on issues is a mixed-bag. His position on immigration and some aspects of foreign policy look good. His education and infrastructure proposals look like warmed-over statism, but they aren't anything out-of-line from a Frist-style Republican either.
He appears to be completely silent on social issues. I don't know if that trend will continue now that he is past the Dem Primary. I would hope not, but I have no way to know that for sure.
Perhaps I should clarify my earlier comments. The fact that he is now running as a Dem does not mean that he is running away from his earlier positions on social issues. In fact, it can mean the exact opposite, as I stated. He could, in fact, be using the giant sucking vacuum on the Democratic side as a vehicle for pursuing his own vision of social conservatism.
I don't know if this is the case with this guy or not. For all I know, he's a sell-out, but the mere fact of his running on the Democratic ticket doesn't mean that in and of itself.
I'd like to think he would come out with some strong cultural issues stands as he approaches the primary election, but I have seen way too many politicians disappoint to actually have any hope that that is the case.
that minority.
Women do not belong in combat, nor in any peripheral support positions where they may be involved in action.
Allen polishes the floor with him - wins by 12 to 15%.
Webb has not been completely silent on social issues. He opposes the upcoming Virginia Marriage Amendment, and he openly supports civil unions. I know some conservatives support civil unions, but I for one would balk at the idea that support for civil unions is a conservative position, especially when its really marriage in all but name. The next logical question to more clearly pin down Webb's position is whether or not he thinks the state or federal Constitution REQUIRES the recognition (i.e. 'living constitution' nonsense) of at least civil unions, and if so, then if he supports a judicial imposition of them against the will of Virginians, and the people in most other states.
That question will never be asked by anyone in the mainstream media. It wasn't asked of John Kerry in 04, even though the collision and conflict between his and the Dem party's phony 'let the states decide' approach and their preferred type of activist, living constitution justice is apparent to anyone who has ever put significant thought into it.
Webb is on the record as being pro-choice and pro-Roe. Being pro-choice is one thing, but being pro-Roe tells us something about his judicial philosophy, and what it tells us is not good. Again, it indicates support for the ridiculous 'living Constitution' philosophy, which of course places virtually no bounds on the power of judges to make law and reshape society.
Admirably, Webb has spoken out against affirmative action (i.e. racial preferences) on 'diversity' grounds, but he does support them for black Americans to redress past discrimination. Again, it would be nice to see him (and ALL politicians for that matter who hedges on this issue) pressed on this. For example, what would he say about a situation where two equally poor, equally disadvantaged kids -- one white, one black -- are vying for the same slot in a university admission? Still, for a Democrat (and a Republican too -- how sad is that???) its commendable that he rejects the 'diversity' rationale for preferences, because it potentially places all non-white immigrants, and more importantly their children and grandchildren, above native whites in all sorts of public considerations. That this little nugget has been ignored in the immigration debate is a disgrace, but its not surprising. And no disrespect for Webb, but I would bet that he would come to embrace the 'diversity' rationale if elected, because afterall, it is the only way to include groups not institutionally discriminated against in the past, and the Democrats need that as part of their vote-buying/GOP-demonizing package for immigrant communities. Of course, it would be hard to fault Webb if he did cave on this, because our own 'conservative' Republican party has done nothing about this insane situation.
Webb has defended the military's warrior culture from leftist/feminist assaults (and so far it seems, he has not caved on women in ground combat units), and that stands as his greatest credit as a social/cultural conservative. But all in all, I don't think it can be said that he is a social/cultural conservative. Yes, he has written admirably of the Scot-Irish, and defended their cultural conservatism, but it appears that for the most part, he does not share it.
It is not yet a total victory for the far Left, as the infantry, armored, artillery, and special forces combat units still do not admit women. And so long as the careers of officers are safe from retribution from the likes of Senators Clinton and Boxer, I think the military itself will try to maintain this common-sense policy.
Until such a time that the true experts (i.e. those with experience in combat units) supports this radical change, it should not even be considered. Yet the Left will not be content until there are women in Delta Force hunting Al Qaeda in the mtns of Afghanistan, and in the front-line infantry units kicking down doors in Iraq. That those things are not yet so, means that the Left has not triumphed completely.
It seems to me that the Left is actually a bit more restrained in its loony pursuits in this matter while there is actual fighting in actual wars going on. Its in peace time, when the consequences of their ideas won't be fully felt, that they are most dangerous.
It says a lot about how far left the Democrats have gone when Webb's beliefs that women should not serve in ground combat units, and that affirmative action should be based on ecnomic need, were actually views he had to defend, as if there is anything wrong with such mainstream, logical positions. I mean, you may believe that such units should be open to women, but surely you'd agree that the onus is on those seeking that change to justify it, rather than on those seeking to maintain the successful status quo, right?
But anyway, Webb's already given in a bit on affirmative action/racial preferences, but seeing as how he has the nomination, his views on women in combat will likely not come up again.