Jim Webb’s Foot-in-Mouth Disease (Volume Two, Exhibit Three)

My junior senator has a new book out, and was hawking it on Meet the Press.  Sadly, the affliction that has plagued him every day in the U.S. Senate went into the studio with him.

Here are some of the lowlights from his appearance (MSNBC):

I think we’ve done some incredibly productive things in the last year and a half in the Senate . . .

Now, to be fair, Webb may just be learning to speak Warnerese on that one (in which case, the translations is “I think we’ve pretended to do some incredibly productive things in the last year and a half in the Senate“), but the stuff that comes later in the interview cannot be so explained.  Here’s his take on the Middle East:

The military people have always done what they’ve been asked to do.  The military situation in Iraq is a classic holding action, in classical terms, which is in place so that political resolutions can be made.  And if President Bush were to use the right historical example, he probably should be looking at China in the 1970s rather than the situation in Germany in 1930s where we had a rogue regime with nukes, with an American war on its border that was spouting all of this hostile rhetoric and was not a part of the international community; and by aggressive diplomacy at the same time that we kept all of our other options on the table and maintained all of our other alliances, we were able to arguably bring China into the world community.

What makes this especially painful is that it is nearly the exact opposite of what he thought about Communist China before he became a Senator.  In fact, Webb’s resolute anti-Communism in his life before holding office was one of his most admirable qualities.  To see him take his years of thoughtful analysis and drop it in the trash like that is especially disappointing to those of us who have maintained our concern about the dangers of the Communist Chinese regime.

Webb further goes on to discuss his GI Bill (and to claim that anyone who opposes it has no respect for the military), and becomes one of the very few Democrats to get corrected by Tim Russert (Ouch!):

 I, I introduced this G.I. bill my first day in office.  The idea was to give to people who’d been serving since 9/11 the same educational benefits, the same right to a first-class future as those who served in World War II . . . And now the president says he’s going to veto this bill.  No president in history has, has vetoed a, a benefits bill for those who’ve served.  So on the one hand, we have this rhetoric, which goes to what I was writing saying, “This is the next greatest generation, these guys are so great.” And then we see this president, he’s fine with sending these people over and over again where they’re spending more time in Iraq than they are at home.  He’s fine with the notion of stop loss, where we can, we can make people stay in even after enlistments are done.  And then we say, “Give them the same benefit that the people in World War II have,” and they say it’s too expensive.  So I think the Republican Party is, you know, is, is on the block here to, to clearly demonstrate that they value military service or suffer the consequences of losing the support of people who’ve, who’ve served.

RUSSERT: The Pentagon, the administration and other editorials across the country have said the problem with the bill is that if, after three years people can leave with full benefits, it’ll be very difficult to retain good soldiers, to have them re-enlist.

Oops!  Perhaps Webb should make sure he knows what his opponents’ argument actually is before goes impugning their motives or their honesty.

Finally, there is Iraq, in particular Webb’s response to this question from Russert – “How do the Democrats argue withdrawal from Iraq without being perceived as weak on foreign or defense policy?”

Well, I think what we need is the kind of leadership that knows how to aggressively pursue robust diplomacy, just as the Baker-Hamilton report and a lot of very strong Republicans from past administrations like Brent Scowcroft have, have said.  There’s a, there’s a fair preponderance of people who have been thinking in this area who believe that you can put the right sort of diplomatic mechanisms in place so that we can withdraw our troops.  To turn that around the other way, I do not believe that you’re ever going to have stability in that region with a large number of troops in Iraq.  We were saying that, the–I was, I was writing about that six months before the invasion.  So it is in the national interest for us to remove our combat forces.  It is in our economic interest in terms of larger grand strategy to do it, and it is doable.  So I don’t think there’s a downside for the Democratic Party to be saying that.

What Webb leaves out is this: any sort of “diplomatic mechanism” means talking to Iran and Syria, the two regimes that have the most to lose from our success in Iraq and the regimes that have done the most to prevent it.  Webb indeed warned about Iranian influence in Iraq prior to 2003, but he has never presented a reational for preventing it from happening.  In fact, his entire policy on Iraq has been to accept Iran’s victory as inevitable – the exact reverse from what he believed (and still believes) about how the Vietnam War ended.

All in all, it was not one of Webb’s better days (of course, the fact that he opened his mouth had a lot to do with it), but at least this time he didn’t get the religion of Syria’s dictator wrong.  Then again, he wasn’t asked.