True the war veteran and now Senator Jim Webb offers himself up as once uniformed window dressing when Harry Reid wants to talk. And there are the requisite quotes from the Senate floor, if you dig them up.
Sen. James Webb, D-Va., took issue with that assertion in a floor speech following Stevens’.
“Many Republicans seem to be implying that we must support all of this administration’s actions or by inference we don’t support the troops,” Webb said. “The issue … is not whether we support the troops. It’s whether we agree on the political issues to which they’re being put.” Webb said politicians should be careful when speaking for the troops.
“Poll after poll shows that our troops are just as concerned about this policy as is the public at large,” he said. “I believe it is inappropriate for the other party to use our military people in a way that might insulate them from criticism over the woeful failure of this administration’s policy.”
Webb knows better than anyone that the troop polls we've seen were a joke. But my real issue with Webb has to do with this via Kim Priestap at Wizbang. Read it all. Webb ranted against the efforts to cut off funding and relinquish Vietnam to the communists. Now, decades later, his party is preparing to do the very same thing to Iraq and turn it over to an even more insidious and evil enemy. The man is either myopic - focused only on Southeast Asia, three decades behind the times, or not the independent man of principle he would allege.
Can you identify the person who wrote this?
The rhetoric of the antiwar Left during these debates was filled with condemnation of America's war-torn allies, and promises of a better life for them under the Communism that was sure to follow. Then-Congressman Christopher Dodd typified the hopeless naivete of his peers when he intoned that "calling the Lon Nol regime an ally is to debase the word.... The greatest gift our country can give to the Cambodian people is peace, not guns....
Indeed, let's be frank. How secretly humiliating to stare into the face of a disabled veteran, or to watch the valedictory speech of the latest Vietnamese-American kid whose late father fought alongside the Americans in a cause they openly mocked, derided, and despised. And what a shame that the system of government that allowed that student to be so quickly successful here is not in place in the country of her origin.
I can guess who wrote it. If it's Webb, sear it into his mind. Wait.. make that ass. He's lost his mind.
Take the first phrase out of the last paragraph and blow the rest up to billboard size and stick it everywhere across this country.
Posted by: Phoenix | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 12:28 AM
How secretly humiliating to look upon 600,000 dead Cambodians after we bombed the shit out of that country.
Posted by: scarshapedstar | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 01:03 AM
"How secretly humiliating to look upon 600,000 dead Cambodians after we bombed the shit out of that country."
Cut the shit. You know very well what areas we bombed, and there weren't any Cambodians there.
Posted by: Purple Avenger | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 01:27 AM
You know very well what areas we bombed
Why would you assume he knows anything he comments about?
Posted by: Dan Riehl | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 02:09 AM
Scar, who killed all those Cambodians? And why were they able to? Because of help from loons like you. Funny how the left not only refused to own up to their role, they again tried to blame it all on America.
That's what happened thanks to the Dems. Now they want to do it again, but we're the idiots for trying to stop it? So much for the Dems being compassionate or caring about the downtrodden.
Posted by: Hard Right | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 05:50 AM
Here come the flat-earth Switboat Heros. Keep smearing - 6 more years of the anti-macaca. Stay the course!!
Posted by: BobInStamford | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 07:25 AM
"You know very well what areas we bombed, and there weren't any Cambodians there."
Yeah, those precision GPS-guided silverfish were really incredibly accurate, back in the 70s.
Posted by: scarshapedstar | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 07:56 AM
BIS
How is it a smear to point out what Webb said about withdrawal from Nam?
Posted by: Terry Gain | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 08:23 AM
OMGz!!!on11one! You mean, Webb, with the benefit of decades of additional expereince, has a different perspective on military matters now, than he did when he was a young man serving in combat?!
That's some hard-hitting work, Riehl.
Posted by: Legalize | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 10:33 AM
That's not the point, Legalize. Are you capable of analytical thought.
He is saying now to do the exact opposite thing he avowed as 'a gospel truth' thirty years ago. He knows what happened when that gospel truth was ignored. Genocide.
Oh god, you are so stupid it is beyond belief.
Posted by: Phoenix | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 12:16 PM
"That's not the point, Legalize. Are you capable of analytical thought.'
It's the point you are avoiding, because it is terribly inconvenient.
"He is saying now to do the exact opposite thing he avowed as 'a gospel truth' thirty years ago. He knows what happened when that gospel truth was ignored. Genocide.
Oh god, you are so stupid it is beyond belief."
Firstly, one who asserts that another is "stupid beyond belief" might want to include a question mark after a purported question.
Secondly - Oh, really? Fears of "genocide" is the new rationale behind no longer supporting this war with lives and dollars? Genocide of whom? By whom? I thought that the Suni and Shi'ia were going to live with each other in harmony; wait, I thought they already were since there's no ACTUAL "civil war" going on. Iraq has been "liberated" and has held free elections. How is it possible that a "genocide" will follow from that, what with all the good news that doesn't get reported from Iraq. I also thought that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam.
I swear; you people will invent any rationale under the stars to avoid admitting that you've been wrong about every step of this fiasco.
Posted by: Legalize | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 01:17 PM
Here is the unvarnished truth about Iraq:
If we leave, it will fall apart. Regardless of the "election" that lead a Shiite government to power.
I'm willing to admit that trying to stand up a (puppet) government before we killed off the majority of the most influential crazies and disarmed/imprisoned/killed the virulent preachers of inter-religious violence was a mistake.
Nevertheless, if we ever want to see that government successful, as well securing our access to the oil in Iraq, we need to keep the population of that nation very much under our thumbs, and systematically kill off the crazies until they finally let those who wish to leave peacefully, live in peace.
And that means either surging up to about 600,000 or 750,000 troops, or methodically nuking or deploying FAEs/cluster munitions/daisy cutters over the worst parts of the resisting territories; that, and give the Kurds carte blanche to conduct raids where they see fit, against positively ID'd terrorist/Islamist sympathizers.
Posted by: seekeronos | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 02:42 PM
Why is it you right wingers don't like comparing Iraq to Vietnam but then you make all these Vietnam analogies? Or World War II, if it suits you - or, as did Bush yesterday, compare it to our own Revolutionary War. I still think this war is more comparable to the Spanish American War -- but without the success.
Posted by: Bill Adkins | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 07:09 PM
One tiny elephant in the Vietnam-Iraq analogy is that the South Vietnamese wanted American soldiers to help them fight the Vietcong, whereas the Iraqis can't wait for us to get the hell out; and short of that, wholly support the killing of our soldiers.
Posted by: Mimi Schaeffer | Tuesday, February 20, 2007 at 10:48 PM