Both sides of Mr. Webb’s family have a strong citizen-soldier military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Mr. Webb’s father was a career Air Force officer who flew B-17s and B-29s during World War Two, cargo planes during the Berlin Airlift, and was a pioneer in the United States missile program. Colonel Webb was the first family member to finish high school and graduated from the University of Omaha in 1962 after 26 years of night school.
While in the Senate, Mr. Webb was selected to deliver the response to the President’s State of the Union address in 2007, and served on the Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Veterans Affairs, and the Joint Economic Committees. He wrote, introduced, and guided to passage the Post-9.11 GI Bill, the most significant veterans legislation since World War II, and co-authored legislation which exposed 60 billion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. A long-time advocate of fixing America’s broken criminal justice system, Mr. Webb was spotlighted in The Atlantic Magazine as one of the world’s “Brave Thinkers” for tackling prison reform and possessing “two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine.”
Having widely traveled in Asia for decades, as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee’s Asia – Pacific Subcommittee Mr. Webb was a leading voice in calling for the United States to re-engage in East Asia, meeting frequently with key national leaders throughout the region. In 2009, he led an historic visit to Burma, becoming the first American leader to visit that country in ten years, and opening up the dialogue that resulted in the re-establishment of relations between our two countries.
Mr. Webb graduated from the Naval Academy in 1968, receiving a special commendation for his leadership contributions. First in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officer’s Basic School, he served as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam and was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. He graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1975.
How can Jim Web be such a socialist?
No democrats will vote for a Vietnam war veteran after the failure of John F’n Kerry - Did you know he too server in Vietnam
Kerry served in Viet Nam? I never heard that. I wonder why he never mentioned it in his campaign?
Too bad he’s a scumbag.
He's seen war first-hand, and knows what lying scammers our elites are. Iraq and Afghanistan are eventually going to produce even more Webbs than Vietnam did.
The problem is, he has picked the wrong remedy. Socialism is the elites' tool to suppress the middle classes - Webb, like many Democrats, either doesn't get that or has decided that he would rather join 'em than try to beat 'em.