The ghost of Vietnam will be haunting Virginia if former Navy Secretary James Webb wins the Democratic nomination Tuesday. Webb will then challenge not only Sen. George Allen, but also the Bush administration’s pivotal decision to invade Iraq. An Allen-Webb race could be the most important Senate contest in the country.
Webb, a former Republican and highly decorated Marine who earned the Navy Cross, Silver Star and two Purple Hearts in Vietnam and whose son now serves in Iraq, has long been an outspoken critic of military intervention in the Middle East. Like many other Democrats, he accuses the Bush administration of “fighting the wrong war.” The only solution for Webb is “leaving carefully” and refocusing the military elsewhere in the war on terror.
But Allen, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, believes otherwise. “All I know is what I’ve seen and heard on the ground, as opposed to partisan political posturing,” Allen told The Examiner during a recent telephone interview as he visited U.S. troops and met with top Iraqi officials. “What I’ve heard from the Iraqis is that they’re really happy we liberated them from that tyrant Saddam Hussein. I believe success is a possibility, and that the tuck-tail-and-run method will not finish the job. Our strategy should be to win.”
Winning is a military strategy that hasn’t been employed by American troops since World War II. The Cold War-era conflicts in Korea and Vietnam were about containment, not winning, while the Gulf War was limited from the outset.
Allen says he became convinced that winning in Iraq was possible after meeting with Mahmoud Mashhadani, speaker of the National Assembly. During his first-ever meeting with a member of Congress, Mashhadani told Allen that although he thought differently last year, he now believes the U.S. presence in Iraq is vital for his fellow Sunnis “to help the [new] government stand up, not as a permanent occupation.”
While acknowledging that the Sunni triangle remains “a problem area,” Allen considers Mash-hadani’s change of heart “a very significant breakthrough.” He was also impressed by Prime Minister Jawad al-Maliki’s demonstration of “good leadership and an even-handed approach” in helping to quell a Shiite uprising near Basra, even though Maliki is himself a Shiite. “It will be very helpful when he cracks down on the Sunnis,” Allen told The Examiner. Various Kurdish factions that have traditionally been at each other’s throats have called a truce, and the junior senator from Virginia is hopeful that Sunnis and Shiites will eventually do the same.
