Senator Webb

I hadn't really planned on saying anything, but I stumbled across some comments in a few quite unexpected places I thought I'd share:

Senator Jim Webb: Clueless
DaveScot

As I was watching the Democratic response to President Bush’s State Of The Union speech tonight Senator Jim Webb played the United States Marine card three times (for himself, his brother, and his son all Marines). I take it personally when someone does that.

The first thing Webb does is claims to know better than the president and all the president’s advisors how to effectively fight terrorism because, well, Jim was a Marine in Vietnam. Well Jim, I was a Marine at the end of the Vietnam war. I didn’t go, it was mostly over by then, but one thing I noticed was that all the non-commissioned officers senior to me were real combat veterans. They knew how to survive guerilla warfare in an Asian backwater. Me and my generation of Marines, all we did was play at wargames 4 weeks a year in the Mojave desert. No one was trying to kill us, no foreign language was spoken by the natives, no guerillas in civilian clothes running around, none of that. After 30 years of that kind of experience our military was virtually without anyone in any rank who’d had actual combat experience. Here’s the deal Jim. In order to have an effective force in fighting guerilla and urban wars in Arab countries we need actual combat veterans seasoned in that type of warfare leading the unseasoned troops. Use your head, Jim. Now we have an effective force led by NCOs who know how to survive urban and guerilla wars in Arab countries. And Bush managed to build that force without losing 58,000 American lives as were sacrificed in Vietnam but rather limited the losses to 3,000. Use your head for something other than a place to put your hat, Jim. We needed a veteran ground combat force for the Middle Eastern theater. Now we have one. Now what happened to Russia in Afghanistan won’t happen to us.

The next bit of cluelessness was Webb on the economy. He said "When I graduated from college, the average corporate CEO made 20 times what the average worker did; today, it’s nearly 400 times. In other words, it takes the average worker more than a year to make the money that his or her boss makes in one day."

This is just utter dreck. The average CEO salary in the United States today is $1.2 million according to a survey by Pearl Meyer & Partners mentioned on Money Central. What Webb failed to mention is that at the largest 50 companies the average is $10.7 million. Meanwhile the average worker salary in the U.S. was $37,000 in 2002 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. I don’t know about Senator Webb’s calculator but when I divide 1,200,000 by 37,000 the answer is 32. The average CEO salary today is 32 times the average worker salary. That’s up from when Senator Webb and Elvis Presley were serving in the armed forces but it’s a long ways from the 400 times that Webb gave in his speech.

Even worse, the average CEO loses 50% of his salary in state & local income taxes while the average worker loses 20%. So it’s really $600,000 vs. $30,000 which is a factor of 20. Wow. When take-home pay is compared the average CEO makes 20 times the average worker. Just like when Elvis was singing in the Army. How about that. And speaking of fair, the average CEO pays almost 100 times as much in taxes ($600,000 vs. $7,000) as the average worker. Some people might not call that fair as it’s unlikely the CEO is using 100 times as much in government services as the average worker.

Color me disgusted. I expect most politicians to lie and be stupid about how to create a seasoned, finely tuned military but I expect my fellow Marines to have a bit more integrity and military savvy than most politicians. What a letdown. Drop and give me 500 Webb, then issue an apology to the public you tried to deceive.

Also, someone pointed out they had used the Korea example back in July, coming to the opposite conclusions as the senator:

Iraq alternatives: Vietnam - or North Korea?
Those advocating immediate withdrawal from Iraq cite as their rationale a fear that Iraq conflict may turn into another Vietnam - that is, into a war without end, but with mounting American casualties.

But there is another side to the Vietnam story: after Americans withdrew from Vietnam, nothing particularly terrible happened: Vietnam turned into an innocuous, stagnant Communist state that didn’t threaten anyone. In Vietnam, there were no major consequences to leaving the job undone.

Not so in the Korean conflict: the unfinished job festered into a major problem, all
complete with nuclear weapons and development of their delivery systems. Iran was left to its own devices - to the similar effect.

Which facts should make us pause and think about alternatives we are now facing in Iraq. If Americans withdrew, what would be the result? Would Iraq follow the Vietnam model, or the North Korea one?

The guarantee of Vietnam-type consequences of American withdrawal would warrant a Vietnam-type withdrawal - and that is why the “Vietnam“ argument is so popular. But we should know by now that such outcome is far from assured, because there can be other kinds of consequences too: the North Korean one, or the Iranian. Which should give a pause to those shouting “Iraq is the next Vietnam!” Because what if, after the American withdrawal, Iraq turns not into a post-withdrawal Vietnam, but into the post-war North Korea?

We Do Know One Thing That Doesn't Work

No Exit in Somalia
This time the U.S. stays on the anti-terror offense. Wednesday, January 10, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

It may be some time before we learn whether Sunday's air strikes by an AC-130 gunship in southern Somalia succeeded in killing the terrorists who were the intended targets--particularly Abu Taha al-Sudani, reportedly an al Qaeda explosives expert, and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. But the attacks--along with the deployment of a carrier battle group off the African coast--are welcome evidence that the U.S. has learned the lessons of May 19, 1996.

That's the date Osama bin Laden and his associates left Sudan for Afghanistan on a chartered plane. The Clinton Administration was aware that Sudan intended to expel bin Laden, and the U.S. might have easily tracked and destroyed the flight en route. The consequences of its failure to do so is only too well known, and the Bush Administration is right to be determined not to let terrorists get away again, whether by land, air or sea.

The strikes in Somalia are also a reminder that in the war on terror there is no "exit strategy" short of victory. The last U.S. military venture in Somalia is broadly remembered as a military and political fiasco, particularly after the notorious "Black Hawk Down" battle in which 18 U.S. servicemen were killed, in part for want of adequate armor.

Yet America's sheepish withdrawal from the country had consequences. Bin Laden viewed it as yet another sign that America can't take casualties and will retreat when hit hard. Somalia descended into anarchy and became a haven for al Qaeda operatives and affiliated terrorist groups. Last June, the capital of Mogadishu fell into their grip, and the rest of the country surely would have fallen as well had it not been for the timely military intervention of neighboring Ethiopia.

That intervention has been criticized by some for running the risk of fueling regional conflict rather than checking it. Thus a British newspaper report from December frets that Ethiopia's invasion offers "Islamic jihadists the chance to establish a new front in Africa after Iraq and Afghanistan, and to wage another proxy war between East and West." Maybe.
Then again, a Taliban-style regime on the horn of Africa, capable of harboring, training, financing and equipping terrorists was an intolerable threat to global security. By contrast, the main risk now is that some Islamists will escape to fight another day, an excellent reason for the U.S. to take action when they are dispersed and on the run. Our forces were able to hit the terrorists this week because Ethiopia's offensive had pushed them out of their safe houses and into the open. It is a useful reminder to other terrorists that the U.S. can hit them anywhere in the world.

None of this requires the U.S. to deploy militarily to Somalia. Our security interests in the region are already well-served by our military deployment in neighboring Djibouti, from where we can monitor the region and, when necessary, rapidly deploy force.

What the U.S. can do for Somalia is offer meaningful logistical, military and humanitarian assistance to the Transitional Federal Government, which the CIA previously eschewed in favor of financing local warlords. TFG President Abdullahi Yusuf may not be a model democrat, but he showed his stripes well enough when he said of Sunday's air strikes that the U.S. "has a right to bombard terrorist suspects who attacked its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." If only we received the same level of candid cooperation from Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

The story of Somalia is far from over, and America's involvement in the area will not soon end. But U.S. interests are well-served by putting terrorists on the run, wherever they may be. We will be better served still if we take the lesson that the only exit for us in the war against terrorists--whether in Somalia, Afghanistan and especially Iraq--is to make sure there is no exit for them.