Sunday, October 29, 2006
Editorial: Jim Webb for U.S. Senate
The country needs a change. Send an independent thinker like Webb to Washington, D.C.
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
In Iraq and at home, America is on the wrong course, one mapped by the Bush administration and followed -- in lockstep, eyes forward, no questions asked -- by incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen.
Voters would be wise to select a better representative.
Democratic challenger Jim Webb is as independent a thinker as Allen is an administration parrot. Plus, Webb is feisty and smart.
Virginia and the nation will be served better by far if the commonwealth's voters elect Webb to the Senate on Nov. 7.
His first priority as a senator, Webb said in an interview with the editorial board, would be to reorder the nation's national defense and foreign policy, starting with Iraq. We strongly approve.
Webb talked about forcing a diplomatic resolution, bringing countries in the region to the table, being unafraid to talk to the nation's enemies.
Webb brings a special credibility to his assessment of President Bush's foreign policy, though, especially on Iraq. Webb famously opposed the U.S. invasion, and warned months ahead of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "Shock and Awe" military campaign that it would fail -- and why.
Tribalism and sectarianism would prevent Iraqis from uniting behind the U.S. as their liberator from even a cruel tyrant, and many would regard Western troops marching on an Islamic nation as an attack on Islam itself and form an insurgency against them.
And so it has been, creating such an unstable mess that the U.S. is left with no good options, either for staying or getting out.
As Webb surely knows, laying out a strategy as a candidate is a far cry from being able to follow through once in office, or from ultimate success. Whether his plans for an exit strategy will be right cannot be known. That is less important than his ability to reassess and his knowledge that sticking to reality is more important than staying on message -- a notion foreign to this administration.
Webb's weakness is that he is a newcomer seeking to break into politics by joining the august U.S. Senate. But he is more than an armchair student of national defense and world affairs. The Marine veteran is a former Navy secretary and former assistant defense secretary -- and, as opponents sneer, a former Republican.
The switch in parties during such a critical time for the nation is an indictment not of the man, but of the GOP, whose majority in Congress has failed to check the president even when he is demonstrably wrong. Webb's loyalty is to the country. Every politician's should be.
Webb does not have finely honed policy positions on a host of domestic issues. He does have populist leanings that are reflected in his strong interest in turning around a historic transfer of wealth from an increasingly devastated middle class to the economic elite.
"Some way or other," he told the editorial board, "we've got to protect people who are working."
We applaud that goal.
A vote for Webb would be in the best interest of the overwhelming number of Virginians. He gets our enthusiastic support.
