But he didn't say that recently. That's a quote from a fascinating February 28, 1988 article that I found in the NYT archive. (You'll need TimesSelect for access.) Webb was Secretary of the Navy at the time.
I was looking for some more detail about what he'd said about women in the military and found it:
But Webb shattered his welcome at Annapolis in 1979 with a scathing article for Washingtonian magazine. Entitled ''Women Can't Fight,'' it was a traditionalist's diatribe against the admission three years earlier of women into the academy. The piece took a tone that could only offend women; he called Bancroft Hall, the school's single, mammoth dormitory, housing 300 women and 4,000 men, ''a horny woman's dream.''But perhaps more significant than that is his thinking about the use of military force:
''There is a place for women in our military, but not in combat,'' he wrote. ''And their presence at institutions dedicated to the preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation.''
Webb's second novel, ''A Sense of Honor,'' set at Annapolis, stirred up more turmoil. It decried the Naval Academy's emasculation and defended the old style of masculine indoctrination and hazing that Webb and his classmates had known....
Webb's views on women came up in his confirmation hearings for the reserve affairs position, and, during his tenure as secretary, the Navy has been harshly criticized by Pentagon review boards for pervasive patterns of sexual harassment and discrimination.
["Fields of Fire"] is so intensely personal that one can't help but turn to it for an exegesis of its author. What emerges is a portrait of a man who views all military missions through the prism of Vietnam.The danger is that we commit our forces in an operational environment, and then become paralyzed by the political debate that follows.
Without question, this is the case when Webb considers the Persian Gulf. For him, the frigates and destroyers in the Gulf sometimes resemble the tanks and foot soldiers that slogged into ambush in rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam. ''It is something that I think about all the time in the Persian Gulf,'' he said recently, ''where we are dangled around like a target before the next step.''...
The problem he recalled from Vietnam was that American forces were not given free rein to fight a war. ''The military was forced to pay a human cost for the country's caution,'' said Webb, ''and then paid again with its prestige when some labeled the inevitable results of such limited activity 'military incompetence.' '' Once again, in the Gulf, more than geopolitical interest was at stake. It was the prestige of the military. It was also youthful lives and limbs.
''I have really been struggling with this,'' Webb said one evening last fall. He was nursing a beer in a darkened Virginia restaurant near the Pentagon. ''The danger,'' he said, ''is that we commit our forces in an operational environment, and then become paralyzed by the political debate that follows.'' When the first oil tanker under escort hit a mine in July, Webb escalated his activities. In a set of memorandums to then Defense Secretary Weinberger, Webb called into question some of the fundamental premises of the Reagan Administration's Gulf policy....
Vietnam was not the only historical analogy he saw. He was also troubled by the parallels to Beirut - where he had worked as a journalist in October 1983, winning an Emmy award for ''The MacNeil/Lehrer Report'' on his coverage of the terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks there.
''In Vietnam, the problem was not setting clear enough goals, so that we could shape our policy in the early years, and know where we were going,'' said Webb. ''In Beirut, it was injecting a military force and then paralyzing it. You just couldn't change anything because the debate was so strong at the top.''
Webb is clearly a very smart guy with a lot of nerve and many years of experience thinking about the right questions.
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10 comments:
I agree he is a very smart guy and he will rock a lotta boats if he gets elected. Including some Dem boats.
There's nothing more reckless and irresponsible any leader can do than to send soldiers into action to risk their lives, then if-and-but everything once they're there. If there's one thing I want from my leaders in the times we live in, it's this: if you can't stomach the consequences of military conflict, have the dignity to admit it, and don't give it your blessing in the first place.
Better to not go in at all, then go in and pull out as soon as things get ugly. I don't know if this guy mentioned Somalia, but that was a shameful exercise, and we paid a big price for it, too.
Jim Webb was merely observing from his experiences as a grunt in Vietnam that women by and large are really ill-suited to hump up and down the hills, through the jungles and rice paddies, while carrying a 60-pound backpack in the heat and humidity. From Webb's honest assessment of women as grunts, edward thinks that Webb's observation represents "antiquated ideas about women in the military (that) remind (him) of the silly arguments some people still use to exclude out-of-the-closet gay people from the military."
Now women can and should be allowed to serve in the military in combat roles suited better to their abilities. I remember viewing a news report on a female fighter pilot taking off from an aircraft carrier and doing bombing missions over Afghanistan. The news reporter characterized her as "the Taliban's worst nightmare."
How edward goes from Webb's statement to performing a politically correct attack upon him as hopelessly mired in the past because of his experiences as a grunt is specious.
By the way, edward, I served in Vietnam as a medical corpsman and along with female nurses we had gay men serving in our hospital unit there even though they were still in the closet at that time. And they all served with honor. In fact, one of my close friends was reportedly caring on an affair with a doctor, who was a major and headed the tirage team that evaluated the causalties being carried off the med evac helicopters and airplanes. I never brought up the situation with him when we were playing cards back at the hootch. Although once he did catch me just staring in bewilderment at him and asked me what I was thinking about. "Oh just what a strange war this is," I replied nonchalantly. Like Dick Cheney I had other priorities at the time, namely saving my sorry and scared ass and getting back in one piece to the world.
Whatever your sexual orientation, war is a young man's game. That's the brutal reality. After about two months in country, I dropped about thirty pounds from the heat and humidity, which was oppresive. And I didn't even fight and have to struggle day after day for survival and sanity like the grunts did.
And Webb is also correct in his statement about that dormitory in Annapolis. I tried in vain to score with one American nurse that I had the hots for. Once I told her I was reading Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," and she reminded me of Catherine Barkley, Lt. Frederic Henry's lover in the novel. I noted that the character saw the dead in the rain.
"That bitch would really freak out during monsoon season," the nurse replied. "I'll catch you later."
So it was once again back to the whorehouse in the ville. I later heard that she had hooked up with a jet jockey, a fighter pilot. So I couldn't blame this really attractive older woman for brushing off a young man and flying off with the jet jockey for weekends in Bangkok. But my literary opinion of Heminway has waned considerably ever since she shot me down many decades ago. Boo hoo, do I deserve a purple heart?
But when I returned that novel to the base library, I picked up Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." And I finally found a literary character that I could identify with: Captain Yossarian, a hardcore civilian like me pretending to be a soldier. So I was in my own personal closet, a cowardly civilian, an actor out on loan to another movie studio, who found himself on the set of a war movie that resembled an absurd Marx Brothers comedy.
But, seriously, Webb would be a good senator for this country. He has principles rather than positions, and he knows how in the rush to war pandering for domestic political gain, President Bush has committed the worst foreign policy debacle since LBJ's quagmire in Vietnam. And look at all the political heavyweights on both sides of the aisle that voted for the war resolution and enabled the Iraq War. In my wildest imagination, I never thought an American president would make such a disastrous blunder after the the cautionary tale of the Vietnam War. "It's deja vu all over again," as Yogi Bera once said to sports reporters when his team lost a double-header one afternoon.
I liked Webb enough to vote for him in the Dem primary and considered him for the general election. I'm not impressed by Allen overall, but I was disgusted by Webb's campaign and reacted negatively to the MSM shilling for Webb.
I voted for Allen last Friday.
George,
That's a terrific memoir. Can't say that I agree with your political statements, but at least you explained your rationale. I can respect that.
I could probably vote for Webb. It's a damn shame what the current political climate does to honorable men, though. Allen got creamed, too. I wonder why they put up with it?
Webbs's "A Sense of Honor" was almost required reading for those entering the Naval Academy back when I went in in 1988, though I'm sure it wasn't on any military official recommendation lists. I thought the novel was very good, though the "sexy parts" struck me as tacky, unrealistic, and detracting from the overall story. Along with what has been quoted about "Nurse Goodbody," a big subplot in the book dealt with Captain Lenahan's affair with the wife of a friend and fellow officer.
Lenahan is presented as an admirable hero in the book, who not only can kick ass but quotes Milton and Shakespeare to himself, and although he is presented as conflicted about the affair, this struck me as just really not OK.
Why didn't this character just stick to the loose nurses and horny single female military personnel Webb was so aware of? Frolicking with a fellow female officer would presumably be off-limits for an "honorable" character in a Webb novel, as the character would be falling prey to, and an accomplice in, the dangers of a co-ed military that Webb perceived (what we called "going over to the dark side" at the Naval Academy). But any viable and psychologically realistic "sense of honor," military or otherwise, would seem to exclude screwing the wife of your friend and fellow warrior (unless he gave you permission to do so).
Honor has a very specific meaning at the military academies. "A midshipman does not lie, cheat, or steal," and will be kicked out for one offense if he does. Lying to anyone -- even a girlfriend -- about anything is -- or at least was -- grounds for expulsion. But honor also of course has a larger meaning implied by that basic proscription against deception, and logically would proscribe the deception inherent in adultery with a comrade's wife.
I'm no prude when it comes to art. I like watching movies about very bad people, and I'm aware that great men can have tragic flaws. But this character just struck me as artistically unintelligible. Webb wants us to think of him as having honor (or maybe only a "sense" of honor?), and in every other aspect of life he was a stand-up Marine, but yet he's doing something that is extremely dishonorable. Perhaps in a better work of art this scenario could be portrayed more convincingly, but here it just seemed gratuitous, and any point or moral was lost on me.
It's quite possible to have a certain piggishness in sexual matters, and even exhibit disrespect (but not dishonesty)towards the opposite sex, without betraying one's honor in the above sense. Being a gentleman and being honorable, though both are important, are two different things.
To the extent that Webb suggested that one could be honorable and be an adulterer (in a book widely read by future officers), he did a disservice to the military culture and to the military's concept of honor.
These juvenile parts of the novel reminded me of a conversation I had with my grandma when I was about 8 years old. I thought I had a novel in me, and as I began scratching out the first chapter on a piece of notebook paper, I asked her if it was okay if I used cuss words, since I knew all good novels had them.
Edward:
Spot the difference:
The mainstream media shilling for a democrat.
A republican partisan shilling for a Republican.
You're right, no difference at all...
Though I'm surprised to see a lefty so willingly admit it.
Edward, remind me again which office Lynne Cheney is running for? VA Senator? President? I'm a little confused. I thought Webb was running for VA Senator against a football coach or something. Who knew he was running against the VP's wife.
Also, given Webb's previous writings and statements, if he's elected can we expect him to push for a military strategy of 'git-r-done' with minimum US casualties? That would drive the Kossaks and the DUmmies crazy for sure.
Maybe Webb could debate Ned Lamont.
I'm obviously a Vet, and married to a serving NG Officer. I think that women can do some jobs in combat as well as men and a few, perhaps better. Though just as clearly they will fail at others. As Cedarford implied, but did not explicitly say, the Army is not a social science experiment. Leadership in combat is tough enough without complicating it unnecessarily. When we decide to open up a combat MOS to women it ought to be based on an overall military effectiveness calculation, rather than to provide an opportunity to a single woman that has both the ability and desire to do the job. Examples:
1. at one end of the spectrum, there are not enough women who have the physical build, endurance, and interest to do jobs like 11B (infantryman) or 19E (tanker). The endurance and body strength requirements are such that it would screen almost all women and from an overall organizational perspective, the small numbers that can qualify aren't worth the trouble to adapt. However, they can do a good combat job as MP types, where there aren't the huge lifting or load bearing issues
2. At the other end, women (absent some plumbing issues) make excellent pilots. High attention to detail, great hand eye coord, a bit weaker in spatial orientation, and with less testosterone, make fewer really bad ego mistakes.
open combat jobs to women only where there are enough that qualify to make a difference.
as an aside, back in the late 70's, I was in a Brigade HQ's after they had been opened to assignment for women. The commander, a man I respected, refused to take women until the Division could assign him 4 with one of them being a SGT. He wasn't bigoted. The point was that taking one woman alone in a unit of 100 was unfair to all. with 4 and an intermediate supervisor, they could be integrated and effective. unit effectiveness is the only criteria that should matter in assigning females.
Fenrisulven said...
On the other hand, the fast-track to promotion among officers is with combat units. Females who are denied an infantry billet aren't promoted as quickly as their male peers.
I guess that what is a strength for the USMC is also a weakness. By that I mean the motto "every Marine a rifleman". Heresy I know :). My point is that unlike the Marines, the Army doesn't bias that much in favor of combat arms ( Infantry, Armor, Artillery). promotions are generally equal across all of the branches and specialties and you compete only directly with peers. Having said that there is no "combat arms" bias, there is a "leadership" or command bias, by that I mean that a commander of an MP unit will have an advantage over an MP staff weenie etc. So a female MP commander who wins a Silver Star crushing an ambush will get 2 advantages over somebody who sat the war out in a staff billet in Qatar.
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