WEBB: My view on affirmative action has been and remains that it’s a 13th Amendment program. If you go back to the Johnson administration’s executive order on affirmative action, it was based on the 13th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, designed to remove the badges of slavery. African-Americans are the only ethnic group in this country that have suffered from deliberate discrimination and, and exclusion by the government over generations. When this program expanded to the present day diversity programs, where essentially every ethnic group other than Caucasians are included, then that becomes state-sponsored racism. And we should either move this program back to its original intent, which I support, or we should open up diversity programs to the point where poor white cultures have some opportunity.
WEBB: I don’t believe that right now this country needs a draft. I’ve proposed a 5% tax break for all people who serve honorably in the military.
Q: How much would that cost?
WEBB: If you go to the typical income of a veteran, it’s about $30-something-thousand, so it’s not a high-cost program. And it’s targeted to people who’ve served. And one of the things that that would do is to bring more people from across class lines into the military.
WEBB: I’m with Senator Warner on this, and I think in terms of what Colin Powell is saying, that’s a very important piece of how we deal long-term with the Islamic world particularly, that we have to stay on the moral high ground.
Q: But you would not end interrogation?
WEBB: No. Obviously we have to protect ourselves, and we have to be able to get information out. But if you abrogate the standards of the Geneva Accords, you give other nations who have less fair standards than ours the moral justification to do that. We saw that during the Vietnam War when the North Vietnamese refused to call our prisoners of war “prisoners of war.” They simply called them war criminals, and they didn’t respect the Geneva Accords.
“No benefit can come to anyone from women serving in combat. I have never met a woman, including the dozens of female midshipmen I encountered during my recent semester as a professor at the Naval Academy, whom I would trust to provide those men with combat leadership.”Was the content of that article wrong?
WEBB: This article was written from the perspective of a Marine company commander, and was way too narrowly based.
Q: But was it wrong?
WEBB: I don’t think it was wrong to participate in the debate at that time. It’s been 27 years, and I am fully comfortable with the roles of women in the military today. When I was secretary of the Navy, I opened up more operational billets to women than any other secretary of the Navy in history.
Q: Bottom line, do you now believe that women can, in fact, provide men with combat leadership?
WEBB: Absolutely.
WEBB: Well, I do regret that. There’s many pieces in this article that if I were a more mature individual, I wouldn’t have written, as I’ve tried to show by my conduct when I had positions in government.
You followed up with an article in 1997, [entitled] “The War on the Military Culture.” You write:
“Political and military leaders must have the courage to ask clearly in what areas our current policies toward women in the military are hurting, rather than helping, the task of defending the US.“Where are our current policies towards women hurting the defense of the US?
WEBB: I was pointing out in that article where the political process interferes with the military being able to make its own decision on those matters. And one of the things that I did when I was secretary of the Navy was I turned this over to the military side.
WEBB: A) I thought George Allen would be a leader, and B) I think that the Republican Party has reached the point where it’s mostly negativity rather than affirmative leadership. I affiliated with the Republican Party based on national security issues toward the end of the Vietnam War, and was never particularly comfortable with them, particularly on economic issues. And what you’ve seen over the last six years is a war that is an incredible strategic blunder of historic proportions.
Q: Did you go see Sen. Allen and talk to him about the war in Iraq before it began?
WEBB: Yes, I did. I spent an hour with Sen. Allen discussing with him that there was not an exit strategy because the people in this administration did not intend to leave. And from that point forward I decided that, although I had perhaps a personal regard for him on one level, politically that I could not support him anymore.
ALLEN: We’re going to need to do what it takes to succeed.
Q: Including more troops?
ALLEN: That is actually happening right now. If you look at the troop levels in Iraq, they are higher than they were several months ago. Moreover, they have been concentrated in the Baghdad area, so the troops are going to where they’re needed. But every single week you see more and more Iraqis and their military taking control, with the US in a supportive role.
Q: Mr. Webb, should we increase American troop levels in Iraq?
WEBB: We don’t have the troops. We’ve got people now in the Army pulling their third and sometimes their fourth tours into Iraq. We’re burning out our people. It’s a double strategic mouse trap--first, it was going to burn out our conventional forces, and second, that we have gotten so engaged in fighting the Sunni insurgency that we have allowed the Shia to get more power inside Iraq.
Let’s be clear: We made a strategic error in going into Iraq, but we have a responsibility to reduce our presence in Iraq in a way that will stabilize the region. We need a commitment from this administration that we, the US, do not want to be in Iraq as a permanent presence and a long-term presence. But secondly, that we have to get these other countries involved, the other countries tangential to Iraq, the countries that have cultural and historical interests in Iraq, involved in an overt way to move toward a diplomatic process.
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 are limits to what the military can do. Eventually, this is going to have to move into a diplomatic environment. And there are ways that we can move this forward.
WEBB: Yes. We could have contained Iraq. If you want to take out Saddam Hussein, there are ways to take out Saddam Hussein. We did not need to go into a country, decapitate the government and inherit the responsibility of rebuilding it. And eventually that is going to fall to the other countries in the region. It’s just going to.
WEBB: We need now a clear statement from this administration that we have no desire for a long-term presence in Iraq. And we need to convene an international conference with the countries that have cultural and historic ties to Iraq in order to have them assume some responsibility for the future of Iraq.
ALLEN: I have no interest for us to be permanently in Iraq.
ALLEN: I have no interest for us to be permanently in Iraq.
Q: Would you vote against them?
ALLEN: I have voted against permanent US bases.
WEBB: Would you vote against these four large bases in the remote areas of Iraq?
ALLEN: The four bases are a consolidation for force protection.
WEBB: How long are we going to be in these bases?
ALLEN: No longer than necessary.
WEBB: If our conventional mission is done in the cities of Iraq, we should be getting our conventional forces out of Iraq. Not into the remote areas of Iraq.
ALLEN: It’s important for force protection. It’s important to have the military options, whether it’s ground forces or air forces.
WEBB: As long as the US conventional forces are in Iraq there will not be peace in the Middle East.
ALLEN: No, that’s not the point. The Iraqis will ultimately take over these bases.
WEBB: Iraqis can build their own bases. You’re not protecting forces if you’re sitting in one area.
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The above quotations are from Virginia Senate debate on Meet the Press, moderated by Tim Russert, Sept. 17, 2006.
Click here for other excerpts from Virginia Senate debate on Meet the Press, moderated by Tim Russert, Sept. 17, 2006. Click here for other excerpts by James Webb. Click here for a profile of James Webb.
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