Thoughts on our circumstances...: Sen. Jim Webb's 2016 Presidential Candidacy - "Webb Is by Far the Best Candidate to Be President"

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Sen. Jim Webb's 2016 Presidential Candidacy - "Webb Is by Far the Best Candidate to Be President"

Jim Webb drops out of Democratic race, will potentially run as independent

I say James Webb won the debate on which candidate is fit to be president -- he is by far the best of both parties

From Dick Eastman
October 14, 2015

Who had heard of James Webb before this debate? I hadn't. He is one of the media's best-kept secrets.

On November 28, 2006, at a White House reception for those newly elected to Congress, Webb did not choose to wait in the line to have his picture taken with the president, whom Webb often criticized during the campaign. The president approached Webb later and asked him, "How's your boy?", referring to Webb's son, a Marine serving in Iraq. Webb replied, "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President." Bush responded, "That's not what I asked you. How's your boy?"; Webb responded, "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President." The Hill cited an anonymous source who claimed that Webb was so angered by the exchange that he confessed he was tempted to "slug" the president. Webb later remarked in an interview, "I'm not particularly interested in having a picture of me and George W. Bush on my wall."

Judging the Democratic debate, James Webb won. He would make the better president for the American people and for the world.

I also think that every middle-class non-mafia Republican west of the Hudson River would vote for him over any of the joke candidates in the GOP party.

Right after the debate, I posted to Facebook:

Webb convinced me he was the best of the Democrats in the race. Sanders named Wall Street and pharmaceutical companies as villains, and he talked about the diminishing middle class, but he didn't fault the money and lending system, or speak of deflation or of how his socialism was to be funded -- which means it will be by tax and deficit financing. But Sanders could never have convinced me, because of his unqualified stand with Israel. O'Malley was a pretty boy -- Mr. Nice Guy who is going to fix the economy with a windmill- and solar-based economy by 2050. Chafee, and all of them, lost points on "climate change". And of course, all of them would deny that Israel controls the US, that Israel and American Jews were with the Saudis behind 9-11, or that weaponized weather modification is being used throughout the world to degrade economies and create business for disaster capitalism.

Prediction: because he did not enter the race in time to be in this debate, Biden is out of the picture. Not a word about Palestine in the Democratic debate, and not a word about debt and deflation, which kills even more people each day around the world. Both murderous evils stem from the same Jewish world power. CNN did not ask about Palestine, and in particular Gaza -- and should have. But I must add that James Webb emerged from the debate -- I knew nothing about him before I saw him. He is definitely the best candidate from both parties, truly independent, and has been against all of our adventures in the Middle East. But I see the networks are declaring that the debates narrowed the field to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Why can't good people back a good man when he offers himself to serve us? Don't people realize they must shout down mass-media, and out-volunteer billionaire money?

Jim Webb 2016 biography (campaign website)

From ABC News:

James Webb, a celebrated Vietnam War veteran, was the Democratic U.S. Senator from Virginia from 2007 until 2013. He served as counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981. He also served in the Reagan administration as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs and Secretary of the Navy. Additionally, he is a published author who has written nine books. In 1983, he won an Emmy award for a report he produced on PBS NewsHour during the Lebanon Civil War.

In his own words: "Our elected officials need to get back to the basics of good governance, and to remember that their principal obligations are to protect our national interests abroad and to ensure a level playing field here at home, especially for those who otherwise have no voice in the corridors of power."

Family tree: Webb says he can trace his family roots back to Scots-Irish settlers who arrived in the US in the 18th century. In 2004, he wrote Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, chronicling the history of Scots-Irish settlers in America; he also narrated a television version on the Smithsonian Channel. Today, he lives with his wife, attorney Hong Le Webb, in Virginia. He has six children.

Academic honors: Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968 and from Georgetown University Law School in 1975. He was also first in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps officers' Basic School, and a 1992 fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.

Military accolades: Webb was a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam. He was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts for his service, according to his campaign website. His military service was in keeping with family tradition. His father served in World War II, and he writes on his campaign website that both sides of his family "have a strong citizen-soldier military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War."

Incidentally, James Webb wrote the 2000 war drama, Rules of Engagement, starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.

What sets him apart: Webb touts his opposition to the Iraq War as a method of differentiating himself from Hillary Clinton. Although Webb was not a Senator until 2007, he wrote a widely-read Washington Post op-ed in 2002 opposing a war in Iraq. His son served in the Iraq war, and Webb has talked about how he wore his son's combat boots during his Senate campaign.

What you might not know about him: He is fluent in Vietnamese, which apparently helped him win over his wife Hong Le, who fled to the U.S. after the fall of Saigon. Hong Le Webb described in a 2006 Washington Post profile how her husband's love of Vietnamese people and culture, as well as his knowledge of the language, impressed her.

While many 2016 candidates and high-profile public figures -- Democrats and Republicans -- came out strongly against flying the Confederate flag in the wake of the deadly shooting inside a Charleston, South Carolina church in June 2015, Webb's statement was much more qualified. In a June 24, 2015 Facebook post, he wrote that the flag has "wrongly been used for racist and other purposes" but that the country needs to respect "the complicated history of the Civil War."

The above was from ABC News -- here is further commentary from ABC:

Jim Webb might be at 1 percent in the polls, but he was going to make sure he got his fair share of the time in tonight's debate.

"Can I get in the discussion at some point?" he asked after 10 minutes of radio silence. "I've been standing over here for ten minutes trying. It's gone back and forth over there."

The former Secretary of the Navy had his eye on the clock throughout the debate, as the debate centered largely on frontrunner Clinton and her main challenger, Sanders.

"You've let a lot of people go over their time," he said, after getting cut off during an answer on foreign policy.

"I hope I get that kind of time here," he said later on, following a lengthy answer from Clinton on race relations.

"I know my time has run out," he said a few minutes later. "How this debate has occurred is kind of frustrating because unless somebody mentions my name I can't get into the discussion."

From Wiki:

James Henry "Jim" Webb, Jr. (born February 9, 1946) is an American politician and author. He has served as a United States Senator from Virginia, Secretary of the Navy, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, Counsel for the United States House Committee on Veterans' Affairs and Marine Corps officer.

In the private sector he has been an Emmy Award winning journalist, a filmmaker, and the author of ten books. In addition, he taught literature at the United States Naval Academy and was a Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics. As a member of the Democratic Party, Webb announced on November 19, 2014, that he was forming an exploratory committee to evaluate a run for President of the United States in 2016. On July 2, 2015, he announced that he would be joining the race for the Democratic nomination for President.

Webb is married to Hong Le Webb, a Vietnamese-American securities and corporate lawyer, twenty-two years his junior. Hong Le was born in South Vietnam and escaped to the United States when she was seven, after the fall of Saigon. She grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. They married in October 2005. Webb was married twice previously, and has four grown children. Hong Le and Jim Webb have one child together, Georgia LeAnh, born December 2006. Webb is also a stepfather to Hong Le's daughter from a previous marriage. Jim Webb speaks Vietnamese.

His first marriage was to Barbara Samorajczyk, a lawyer who has worked for various real estate and development companies in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia. She is a member of the Anne Arundel County, Maryland, Council. They have one daughter, Amy, who was eight when they divorced in 1979. Webb and Samorajczyk have three grandchildren.

His second marriage was to health-care lobbyist Jo Ann Krukar in 1981, who also assisted in his 2006 Senate campaign. They have three children: Sarah, Jimmy, and Julia. Jimmy Webb was a rifleman and Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps, and served a tour in Iraq with Weapons Company, 1st Battalion 6th Marines. In tribute to his son, Jimmy, and to "all the people sent into harm's way," Jim Webb wore his son's old combat boots every day during his 2006 Senate campaign.

In the military, he earned the Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts.

In a 1990 New York Times opinion piece, Webb opposed further U.S. military escalation in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield, citing lack of a coherent strategy and consent from the United States Congress. He also warned against a permanent military presence in the Middle East. Seven months before the beginning of the 2003 Iraq War, Webb wrote an essay for The Washington Post in which he "questioned whether an overthrow of Saddam would 'actually increase our ability to win the war against international terrorism' and pointed out that the measure of military success can be preventing wars as well as fighting them. He charged, 'those who are pushing for a unilateral war in Iraq know full well that there is no exit strategy if we invade.' He concluded, 'the Iraqis are a multiethnic people filled with competing factions, who in many cases would view a U.S. occupation as infidels invading the cradle of Islam. … In Japan, American occupation forces quickly became 50,000 friends. In Iraq, they would quickly become 50,000 terrorist targets.'"

During the 2004 presidential campaign, Webb wrote an op-ed piece for USA Today in which he, as a military veteran, evaluated the candidacies of John Kerry and George W. Bush. He criticized Kerry for the nature of his opposition to the Vietnam War in the 1970s while affiliated with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and accused Bush of using his father's connections to avoid service in Vietnam. Webb wrote that Bush had "committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory" with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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In 2017, there will be a new president. The people have very little say in who that president will be; however, the fact is that the earlier people start pushing for the man and the causes they want, the better the chances get. This is not a time for party loyalty: vote for the man who is for the people and is most definitely impossible to be bought off or scared off, and who has the intelligence not to be misled or taken over by handlers. I beg you to look at James Webb and cancel your vow never to become involved in presidential politics again. We can't surrender: we must put up our own man and fight to give him power to help us.

On Jan. 20, 2017, America is going to have a new president. I say the best man in the field to hold that job is Jim Webb -- what he is for, who he is for, and what he is made of. Can we encourage each other to really help this very good man?

"For ours is a world of work, and not one of deceit and racketeering…." I endorse Jim Webb, and I urge you to very quickly learn all about him, volunteer, and donate to his campaign, so he can win the nomination and be elected president of the US.

-- Dick Eastman

Senator Jim Webb on Letterman (May 19, 2008)