Press Releases

September 19, 2007

The Virginian-Pilot: Editorial: Troops need rest promised by Webb

JIM WEBB HAS a modest idea: Soldiers should spend as much time at home as on the battlefield.

He has offered that proposal as an amendment to the Defense authorization bill, which should come up in the Senate this week. For his work, he has been savaged by people who have never spent a moment in harm's way, and by politicians untroubled by years of incompetence on Iraq.

Even so, his amendment appears to have a better chance than earlier this year, when it fell short by a couple of votes. For the sake of America's soldiers and sailors, passage can't come soon enough.

Historically, the Defense Department likes soldiers to get twice as much time stateside as they spend in theater.

Then came Iraq - which was to be a different kind of war. It was supposed to be faster and cheaper. It was neither, and when Iraq became a civil and sectarian war of attrition, the military was asked to guarantee security during 15-month rotations interrupted by a scant 12 months at home.

"It's just wearing people out," Webb said.

And that fact, despite all the political flak from Washington, is what drives Virginia's junior senator. He has opposed the war from the start, not because he doesn't believe in fighting, but because he knew that Iraq would be monstrously complex and inescapable.

"One of the greatest ironies is hearing the people warning against any sort of drawdown using the same language that I... used about getting into Iraq in the first place," he said.

There are other curiosities surrounding what's become known as the "Webb amendment." In order to oppose the bill, administration acolytes need to argue that it's just fine to sustain this unsustainable troop tempo.

Webb has compromised on his bill to allow for emergencies. But he rejects the notion that it would make troop deployments too complicated. The Pentagon, after all, was able after World War II to figure out the GI Bill with "a stubby pencil on a memo pad, for 8 million people."

Republicans have also accused the senator of using the amendment to tie the president's hands and to then end the war. Webb is not - never has been - among those calling for a precipitous withdrawal.

"We need to put a safety net under the troops while the rest of the debate is taking place," he said. "This to me is the one element that absolutely needs to be put in place, while the rest of the debate goes on."

If more people in Congress had actually worn a military uniform, Webb says, his proposal would have been an easier sell.

"There are so few people up here who have served in the military or who have a personal connection that we risk having these debates in a sterilized vacuum," he said.

Washington is a disorienting place for anybody, let alone an author who finds himself a senator, a Republican who finds himself a Democrat. It may, in fact, be the only place in which a decorated Marine and Ronald Reagan's former Navy secretary can find himself lumped with anti-war protesters and peaceniks.

"There's just no clear groupings here, on either side," he said this week.

He's right, of course. Even so, Webb can comfort himself with the fact that in a place with no clear allegiances, he has staked out a firm position on the side of the soldier. Which leaves the rest of Washington to explain why they're not standing with him.

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