Sounds like Jim doesn’t like to upset his fellow Democrats
Webb served under Reagan and was an R until 2006, according to Wikipedia. I believe he endorsed Trump? I get that he didn’t want to be disruptive by attending, which I respect.
I am mostly against women serving alongside men in close quarters or in combat. The policy change was step 1 in the feminization of the military. I am not an interventionist at all, but military needs to be focused on their mission, not social engineering.
The Webb of Treachery.
Webb, who also served as secretary of the Navy, wrote the 7,000-word essay “Women Can’t Fight” for Washingtonian magazine in 1979. He wrote that that presence of women “at institutions dedicated to the preparation of men for combat command is poisoning that preparation.”
Webb called the opposing alumni a “small but vociferous group of women graduates” and said Tuesday it is “particularly ironic to see that these same women who are criticizing me for a magazine article in 1979 have benefited so greatly from the policies I unilaterally put into place in 1987.”
“While this article was controversial, many of these protests have wrongly characterized my reasons for having written it, my views of women and also my record of government leadership in addressing opportunities for women in the military and in our society,” Webb said in a statement.