Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

He served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs during the Reagan Administration and was Secretary of the Navy during the 1987-1988 interval.  Webb resigned as Secretary of the Navy after refusing to agree to reduce the size of the Navy.

After his government service Webb became a best selling fiction author, writing novels  about the military life he knew so well, beginning with the 1978 work, Fields of Fire, structured heavily on personal experience and dealing with a platoon of Marines serving in Vietnam in the late sixties.  

He wrote the story and became executive producer for the 2000 film, Rules of Engagement, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.  

A current Warner Brothers production being directed and produced by Rob Reiner, Whiskey River, is an adaptation of a Webb script.  It is a story about a fictional American soldier injured in Iraq.  

Considering the foregoing, the Rove smear brigade would be facing the same kind of dilemma with James Webb as Republicans confronted with another Marine, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter.  

Republicans knew how futile and absurd it would be to attempt to link tough talking and tough minded Ritter to the normal boiler plate smear of pacifist, quiche eater, ivory tower wine and cheese indulger that has been presented ad nauseum when their war policies are challenged.

In the case of Ritter certain Republicans chose to question his sanity.  Undaunted, Ritter turned the argument back on his shameful and baseless accusers.  After all, does squinty-eyed Donald Rumsfeld or glassy-eyed George W. Bush loom as models of probity and coolly reasoned logic?  

With Webb not only having achieved in so many different areas, along with compiling an admirable record for bravery on the battlefield, as well as having served in an administration headed by that icon of the right, Ronald Reagan, how much of a target does the former Marine provide for the likes of Rove?  

It would be delightful to see fearless computer terminal warriors such as Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, or even George W. Bush himself, all of whom avoided Vietnam conflict, seek to lecture Webb about military policy and strategy.  

The same could be said for media warriors such as Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, none of whom saw any military action in Vietnam or anywhere else.

In Webb's campaign he has raised two important points that bear sober reflection.  He trains his guns on the pseudo militarists and tough talkers whose twisted intellectual creativity spawned freedom toast on Air Force One and freedom fries on the ground.  

One major point Webb recently made was that the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness and is in a rapidly decaying state.  The evidence is clear, manifested by bankrupt policies at home and abroad with raging debt, corporate corruption among those financing Republican campaigns, and deceit abroad as war is launched on flagrant misrepresentations.  

A second point was a grim shot across the bow that assuredly rattled vulnerable Republicans.  Webb stated that a major reason for seeking a Senate seat is to combat the kinds of politicians that cost the lives of men with whom he served in Vietnam.

So there you have it, Rove and the rest of the Republican campaign command.  Here is a man who served with distinction and is less than enamored with the policies of the self-professed, professional pro-America patriots who have sought to claim the flag as their sole possession while smearing those who oppose them.