An open letter to Senator Jim Webb

Dear Senator Webb,

I understand your decision not to seek the Vice Presidency. In fact, I applaud it. You can do much more good in your role as Senator and war-tested Democratic statesman. It is in the latter role that I'm now asking for your help.

Senator, we need someone to get very angry. And I think you're the guy. We need someone to put a very big infantry-boot-shod foot down about one specific talking point being tossed around by the McCain campaign.

John McCain has been saying on the stump that if we elect him President, he'll win the Iraq War and our soldiers will be able to come home with honor. Someone needs to tell John McCain that whenever our soldiers come home — be it this very evening, or, as he has suggested, 100 years from now — they will come home with honor. The only people who have acted without honor in this conflict are the civilian leadership of our military. They acted without truth. They acted without foresight. They acted without concern for the reputation of our nation on the word stage. But our soldiers obeyed the orders of their Commander in Chief. They acted with courage, selflessness and tremendous effectiveness. They covered themselves in honor.

Every conversation with or about John McCain begins with the obligatory "We honor his service." And that's as it should be. But John McCain should remember that we LOST his war. We retreated. Vietnam fell. Just like his plane did. Yet we still honor his service. As we should. But the soldiers in Iraq WON their war. Saddam fled. He was captured. Killed. There were and are no weapons of mass destruction. There's a new sovereign government in place of Saddam's torturous regime. Our military has won. They have wrapped themselves in honor and do not need John McCain's 100-year occupation to prove it.

Senator Webb, you may be the only person in Washington with the spine and the boots to make this point heard.

And by the way, thanks for your service.