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Q&A: James Webb; Former Secretary of the Navy
The San Diego Union-Tribune 10/30/2005
Webb, a 1968 Naval Academy graduate, was a highly decorated Marine infantry officer in Vietnam. He was an assistant secretary of defense and later secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration. Webb is the author of six novels, the non-fiction "Born Fighting" and several Hollywood screenplays. He lectured at the James Bond Stockdale Leadership and Ethics Symposium at the University of San Diego Oct. 19 and was interviewed by members of the Union-Tribune's editorial board.
You were a Marine infantry platoon leader and later a
company commander. You were wounded twice and won a Navy Cross. You
wrote "Fields of Fire," widely acclaimed as one of the best novels
on Vietnam. And you became, in a sense, a spokesman for a lot of
Vietnam veterans. Looking back 25 years, how has the country's view
of America's Vietnam veterans changed since the 1970s?
First of all, I think with the young people there's absolutely no
comprehension of what the war was about. It is very difficult to
teach unless you get specialized courses in universities in this
sort of thing. So basically in my experience the Vietnam War is
pretty much summed up by people in a sentence or two that we went
into Vietnam and it was a disaster and we left. And even on the
Vietnamese side, I go to Vietnam a lot. As you know I speak
Vietnamese. I can get away from the (Vietnamese government) handlers
and talk to people. The official position in Vietnam is that Vietnam
fought America, which is not true. The United States attempted to
assist an existing government, which lost 245,000 soldiers dead on
the battlefield. But I say that because that plays in to how people
view Vietnam veterans. I think that the country, even back in '79
when I was working on the House Veterans Committee, the average
American respected the service of the people who were in Vietnam.
Today, it's like: 'yes this guy did a good job in a horrible
endeavor.' There's not a comprehension of the level of performance
of people who were in Vietnam. It has sort of faded. If you look at
the actual battlefield results, there's no comprehension of how
competent our military really was.
Do you think America's perception (of the war) has changed
over the past 25 years given the boat people, human rights problems
and Hanoi's dictatorship? What's history going to say about
America's role in Vietnam?
One of the reasons that I stayed so involved with this over the
years was because really what has been going on has been a quiet
battle for how history's going to view this. And it becomes
essential for people who have had different experiences, the combat
experience and also stayed with this issue beyond 1973 or 1975 to
see how things played out to make that case, to remind people. I had
no political views when I went to Vietnam. I trusted the country's
leadership. That was it. I was a 22-year-old guy trying to learn how
to lead troops.
Just graduated from the Naval Academy?
Right. But I studied the history of Vietnam. I've studied warfare.
But I wasn't going to get into a long political debate about whether
the war was just or not. I used to tell people when I figure that
out I'll talk to you about it. Right now I've got to go lead troops.
After 1978 when the boat people starting showing up, you could only
then really begin to discuss what it was we were attempting to do.
When you have the witnesses of the truth, 50 percent dying, popping
up in the water. But over the past seven or eight years, I think
people who have gone into Vietnam, particularly if you're in the
media or if you have some notoriety, you're usually accompanied by
someone who is either your interpreter or your escort. And they are
90 percent of the time Interior Ministry people. They guide people
through this. So there hasn't been a full comprehension of how that
society has worked. I started going back in 1991. And it was pretty
clearly still a Stalinist state in 1991. What moved Vietnam forward
was when the Soviet Union fell, and they lost anywhere from $1
billion to $3 billion a year in subsidies.
And today?
The last three or four years actually have been pretty good. I was
back in July and I was pretty impressed with the government leaders
that I met with. This is at the province and district level. In a
province where I had fought, where 10 years ago the government
leaders were really hard-core America haters, apparatchiks. They've
been able to groom some very competent people. So, on the one hand I
don't think there's a comprehension at all of the journey. And, on
the other hand, compared to some of the other countries in the
region, it's fairly hopeful.
What is your take on the wisdom of our strategy in Iraq and
the competence of its execution?
I was an early voice saying we shouldn't go in, that it was not
connected to the war against international terrorism, that it was
not among the highest national security concerns that we should be
considering. My warning before we went in was basically that it was
a strategic mousetrap on three different levels. One is that it
would involve the nation's focus and attention and resources beyond
military resources to the detriment of other interests. Second was
that if you're going to decapitate a government, you would be
draining your force structure. And thirdly, in the sense that we
have focused so strongly on the Sunnis while the Shiites have been
in a win-win since day one, and as a result we're empowering Iran.
Has that view changed any now?
No.
You don't buy the argument that it didn't used to be about
terrorism and al-Qaeda but that now it is?
I think the tragedy in my view of Iraq is that it has created a lot
more terrorists than would have existed if we hadn't gone in. I
don't think it's a plus that Iraq is filled with terrorists right
now. This isn't a zero-sum game like there's only X number of
terrorists in the world and as a result we're going to draw them to
the flytrap and kill them off.
There are a lot of people who say we made a terrible mistake
but we will compound it if we just back out now. Do you agree?
I'm not saying we should pick up everything and leave in six months.
I'm saying we made a horrendous mistake going in, in my view a
strategic error. This is not a moral comment. There are a lot of
situations around the world where I wouldn't shed a tear if a leader
were taken out. The question is where you draw your national
priorities and how that plays out. I was in Beirut as a journalist
in 1983. It was an incredible experience for me looking at the lay
of the land. We had an issue when I was secretary of the Navy where
we tilted toward Iraq (during the Iran-Iraq war). I think I was the
only guy in the Reagan administration who opposed the tilt toward
Iraq in writing.
What's your recommendation on how we get out?
I think there are two things that need to happen. The first is that
the administration needs to say with absolute clarity that we have
no long-term aspirations in Iraq. And then the other is to reinvolve
a lot of the countries that are in that region. Iran's probably too
dangerous because of the way they've moved into the Shiite areas;
But to reinvolve the Arab nations and invite them to participate in
the solution.
In 1979 you famously wrote a piece questioning the Army's
embrace of females in combat situations. Later you criticized what
you saw as hysteria in the aftermath of the Navy's Tailhook scandal.
Do you have any second thoughts on those issues?
My view then, and the decibel level was loud on all sides back in
1979 with the Carter administration. The Carter administration had
just ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to support a political policy
that did not exist. They had ordered them to support removing the
ban on women in combat. That's when I wrote that piece. And the
commandant of the Marine Corps at that time, Robert Barrow, who is
one of my all-time Marine heroes, stood up to them. He called me
after he had done it. He basically said that the deputy secretary of
defense had given them that order and they had all smartly saluted
except for Barrow. He said I do not believe that is a legal order,
I'm going to have my counsel check on it. If it is a legal order,
I'm going to explain to the Congress the circumstances under which
I'm obeying it. And they backed off. But that's how high the decibel
level was and how much the political intrusion in the military was
going on at the time.
But what was your position?
When I was secretary of the Navy, I opened up more billets to women
than any secretary of the Navy in history. But we did it the right
way. I got my warfare chiefs, the three warfare chiefs, to go down
and examine inside their own specialties where women should be
absorbed. I had them then report to the chief of naval operations.
And then the chief of naval operations reported to me. I had the
uniform side make the decisions, the recommendations, and then bring
them to me. This wasn't me standing up there pontificating because I
was a civilian official. So when this has been done in a rational
way where it works, I fully support it. When it's an intrusion from
the outside, I think that not only I but other people should have
questions. So where it is now? I think that from what I can see from
a distance it's working well.
You were secretary of the Navy in the last couple of years
of the Reagan administration. You resigned over a matter of policy,
specifically budget cuts which began pulling the Navy away from the
Reagan administration's goal of a 600-ship Navy. Now we have about a
290-ship Navy...
And that's on a good day.
Yes, and it's still shrinking. How would you assess the
overall adequacy of the U.S. military today?
I think it's thin. It's thin; the Navy, the Army and the Marine
Corps. I wouldn't have a strong comment about the Air Force. The
worry that I have (is) with the Navy. How these issues are debated
depends on what the national security crisis of the moment is. Five
or six years ago people were trying to say that the Army was too
large. But what you're seeing right now with the Navy in my view is
it needs some better advocates to really argue about the strategic
issues, which is where the Navy is the strongest.
The whole case for sea power.
Exactly. Force projection without having to negotiate basing rights.
These sorts of things. The aircraft carrier concept is under attack
again and yet every nation that becomes a major power tries to in
some way replicate what we've been able to do. And it's a pretty
dangerous thing to start undoing that. So the Navy needs better
advocates.
What about the Army and the Marine Corps?
When (former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric) Shinseki was talking
about a 10 division Army doing a 12 division job, he was right. Even
before the Iraq situation. I was a proponent of downsizing the Army
and the tactical Air Force, but I think particularly in the Army's
case they went too far. The Marine Corps, I think the Marine Corps
has done very well in terms of its force-structure size. The
question is how it's being used. When you're having these guys do
two or three tours over there in Iraq and the Marine Corps taking
the higher casualty rates and being out where they are, that's a
question of national policy rather than force.
What is your view of don't ask/don't tell as a policy and
how it has worked?
I think it's a good policy for the basic reason that when you look
at the confined quarters that people live in, I think you would have
some extremely difficult problems if there were more overt lifestyle
issues at play. I think there have always been gays in the military
and there always will be. Young people living in cramped quarters
need to have zones of privacy. And that's a practical issue the way
that I look at it.
So how has the policy worked?
I think it has worked because it allowed people to keep zones of
privacy. That's why I support it.
You recently wrote a book, "Born Fighting," on the history
of the Scots/Irish contributions to this country. What are the most
important things that Americans should understand about the
contributions of the Scots/Irish?
The Scots-Irish basically created red-state America. I start the
book at Hadrian's Wall with the formation of England vs. the
formation of Scotland. And I take the migration from principally
southwestern Scotland into Ulster in Northern Ireland where the
Calvinists, then Presbyterians, which are now the Baptists, the
Methodists and descending religions, were the soldiers for the
English/Anglican structure but suffered a lot of the same
disabilities that the Irish Catholics did. They migrated almost en
masse, huge numbers of them, more than 250,000 migrated to the
Appalachian Mountains in the 1700s. From there they moved west,
became the dominant culture of the non-slave holding South, etc.
They never defined themselves ethnically as much as they did by the
cultural values, the family values and this sort of thing. They
created populist style democracy in the United States. Andrew
Jackson was the first Scots-Irish president. They created in many
ways the cultural traditions of the ground forces in the United
States military. Stonewall Jackson. Patton. Sergeant York. Audie
Murphy. Almost all the generals in the Civil War including Ulysses
Grant on the northern side were out of the culture. Gave us country
music. And at the same time when you look at socioeconomic benefits,
there's this misperception that white America is a monolith. It's
very stratified in terms of educational attainment and income
levels.
The Scots-Irish voted with the Democrats from Andrew Jackson
to Vietnam. Since Vietnam, they've increasingly voted Republican.
The Democrats appear not to quite get this. Can the Democrats win
another national election or regularly win them unless they somehow
reconnect with this culture that you write about?
They cannot. This cultural group is very much in play. Except for
the Christian Right, which is based in this cultural group, it is
not directly aligned with either party. But it has tended to vote
Republican more because people like Karl Rove, I think, have
understood the emotional buttons. But in terms of tangible
socioeconomic benefits, it has not benefited by the presidencies of
the last three or four presidents. The problem with the Democrats is
that they got away from the Jacksonian message. The Democrats used
to be the party where people went when they needed a voice on the
national level. You cannot develop a national strategy based on
group rights, minority rights, you can't do it. The Democrats need
to understand that and get back to what they used to do.
Are you interested in running for political office?
I have been talking to people about running for the Senate next year
against George Allen, as a Democrat from Virginia. I have a very
good life. I'm not sure that I'm going to do that or not but I have
been talking to people. Thinking about it.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS