A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America Book

It is rare and satisfying to read a book by a member of the U.S. Senate that bespeaks an enormous intelligence, diplomacy and directness, befitting a gentleman with no ax to grind, and which teaches so profoundly subject matter based on long experience and no long windedness.

I speak of this book by Senator Jim Webb, who took a quite unusual path into politics: he was a writer for 30 years. This is his ninth book. He was Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, has worked all over the world in the Marines, as a journalist, a movie maker, a consultant, and so on.

He brings all those years of inside military knowledge to these pages, and the book's a real eye-opener. He gives us real history, in contrast to many stereotypes we've grown up with. He tells us how deeply trained and knowledgeable soldiers are, how Russian spies created disaster for us in the Korean theater, how Douglas MacArthur was not so much an insubordinate as a brilliant commander who ran up against an insane bureaucracy back in Washington, which quite clearly is the case today as well, regarding certain so-called "insubordinate" generals and the hell-bent-for-war administration of Bush and Cheney.

There's a lot of common sense discussion of problems we face today. For example, as important as Global Warming is, Senator Webb says the problem can't be given the full attention it needs until more essential needs are met by a growing number of Americans, for example, food clothing and housing, which current economic crises are exacerbating: without fed bellies, a roof over one's head, it is impossible to address further out issues.

He also in a chapter on our humongous prison system, which boasts the largest percentage of its citizens incarcerated in the world, Webb chronicles the huge population there for minor drug crimes, who are mainly
Black, and illustrates how this creates a permanent, usually not-able-to-vote underclass who can't find good jobs when they get out, and the volatility this brings about, how it bodes little well for a reconciliation within society. And he laments how hard it is to deal with this issue, because politians fear to touch it, because they would have to be bold and declare we should decriminalize marijuana, for example, and then they run the reality of being dubbed "soft on crime" which could cripple them politically. Note, in this long election campaign, I can't remember a single time our prison population is brought up in the debates.

Webb tellingly gives us a history of the Democratic Party moving away from its most notable support of unions, of the average American worker, which debate with the Republicans over the past few decades has morphed instead into "cultural issues" which most of the civilized world would never relegate to public debate: gay marriage, flag lapel pins; nonsense. As a result, many blue collar workers have been led astray, as it were, into Republican hands, and Webb urges the Democrats refocus on what made them strong.

Well, it's up to Senator Obama to listen. Webb's been talked about as a running mate. Maybe he could have a high position in the cabinet. One thing's for sure: Webb should sit down with Obama and highlight the important parts of this book. I hope Obama gives him a good read.