Jim Webb, the senior Senator from Virginia, has been many things in life: a combat Marine in Vietnam, a committee counsel in the Congress, an assistant secretary of defense and Secretary of the Navy in the Pentagon, an Emmy-award winning journalist, a film-maker, and the author of nine books.
And, in 2006 he was compelled to run for Congress because of his deep concern about the direction our country was headed.
With a lifetime of service in and around the military, he was particularly concerned about our nation's defense and foreign policies. Second, as a long-time political commentator he had grown increasingly concerned about the imbalance between the Presidency and the Congress, and viewed the tragic failure of our government to respond to the suffering of the Hurricane Katrina victims as an indication of a larger, systemic failure of accountability in American government. And finally, as a strong proponent of economic fairness and social justice, he wanted to help close the growing gap between those at the very top in America and everyone else, particularly those who do the hard work of our society.
Success in the Senate
A member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senate Armed Services Committee, Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, and the Joint Economic Committee, Jim has been able to achieve progress in all of these areas. Recently, Jim was named the Chairman of Personnel Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, which entrusts him with responsibility for all manpower and personnel issues affecting active duty, National Guard, reserve, retirees, and civilians in the Department of Defense.
Additionally, Jim is the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In August 2009 he became the first Senator to visit Laos in six years, the first member of Congress to visit Cambodia in two years, and the first American leader to ever meet with General Than Shwe, the top leader of Burma. Jim successfully negotiated the release of an American held prisoner by the military junta in Burma, and met with Novel Laureate Aung San Syu Ky. This historic trip marked the beginning of a new dialogue with an isolated country whose strategic importance to the United States has been overlooked.
The passage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which Jim wrote and introduced on his first day in the Senate, provides our newest generation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans the same educational benefits that our veterans received after World War II. The bill offers new economic opportunities to hundreds of thousands of Americans and helps to strengthen the U.S. economy. Jim also authored legislation that led to the establishment of the Commission on Wartime Contracting to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan wartime-support contracts. And he has been leading the charge in Congress to comprehensively examine and restructure America's criminal justice system.
Accolades
By the fall of 2008, Washingtonian Magazine had named Jim as the "Rising Star" in its "Best & Worst of Congress" edition, and Politico newspaper named him "Rookie of the Year." By late 2008, Esquire Magazine counted Jim among the world's "75 Most Influential People of the 21st Century," for doing "more to repair his party's relationship with the military" than anyone since the Vietnam War, and in October 2009, The Atlantic Magazine spotlighted Jim as one of the world's "Brave Thinkers" for tackling prison reform as a freshman senator and possessing "two things vanishingly rare in Congress: a conscience and a spine."
During his time in the Senate Jim has received numerous awards from veterans' organizations for his lifetime of service to our veterans, and for his leadership on the Post-9/11 GI Bill. He was awarded the Gold Medal and Citation of Merit by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) in 2008 in "recognition of exceptional service rendered the country, community, and mankind;" the Military Officers Association of America's (MOAA) Colonel Arthur T. Marix Congressional Leadership Award in 2008; the Military Order of the Purple Heart's 2009 Inspirational Leadership Award; and the Congressional Award for Meritorious Service by the Blinded American Veterans Foundation's (BAVF) in 2009. He also received the "Marine for Life" award in November 2008 at the annual U.S. Marine Corps Birthday Gala in New York City celebrating the Corps' 233rd birthday.
A Lifetime of Service
Jim hails from a Scots-Irish family with a strong citizen-soldier military tradition that predates the Revolutionary War. Following in that tradition, he graduated the Naval Academy in 1968, receiving the Superintendent's Commendation for outstanding leadership contributions while a midshipman. He subsequently chose a commission in the Marine Corps.
First in his class of 243 at the Marine Corps Officer's Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, Jim served with the Fifth Marine Regiment in Vietnam, where as a rifle platoon and company commander in the infamous An Hoa Basin west of Danang he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star Medal, two Bronze Star Medals, and two Purple Hearts. He later served as a platoon commander and as an instructor in tactics and weapons at Marine Corps Officer Candidates School, and then as a member of the Secretary of the Navy's immediate staff, before leaving the Marine Corps in 1972.
Jim spent the "Watergate years" as a student at the Georgetown University Law Center in 1975. While at Georgetown, he began a six-year pro bono representation of a Marine who had been convicted of war crimes in Vietnam - ultimately clearing the man's name in 1978, three years after he committed suicide.
Jim served in the U.S. Congress as counsel to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs from 1977 to 1981, becoming the first Vietnam veteran to serve as a full committee counsel in the Congress. In 1982 he led the fight for including an African American soldier in the Vietnam Veterans memorial on the National Mall. In 1984 he was appointed the inaugural Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs, where he directed considerable research and analysis of the U.S. military's mobilization capabilities. In 1987 he became the first Naval Academy graduate in history to serve in the military and later be appointed Secretary of the Navy. He resigned as Naval Secretary in 1988 after refusing to agree to a reduction of the Navy's force structure during congressionally-mandated budget cutting.
Prior to his coming to the Senate, Jim received many awards for community service and professional excellence, including the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal, the Medal of Honor Society's Patriot Award, the American Legion National Commander's Public Service Award, the VFW's Media Service Award, the Marine Corps League's Military Order of the Iron Mike Award, the John Russell Leadership Award, and the Robert L. Denig Distinguished Service Award. He was a Fall 1992 Fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.
Writing Career
In addition to Jim's public service, he has enjoyed a long career as a writer. Jim has written six best-selling novels: Fields of Fire (1978), considered by many to be the classic novel of the Vietnam War, A Sense of Honor (1981), A Country Such As This (1983), Something To Die For (1991), The Emperor's General (1999) and Lost Soldiers (2001). He is also the author of three non-fiction efforts, including Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America, which writer Tom Wolfe termed "the most important ethnography in recent American history," and his most recent publication, written during his first year in office, A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America.
Jim taught literature at the Naval Academy as their first visiting writer, has traveled worldwide as a journalist, and his PBS coverage of the U.S. Marines in Beirut earned him an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Jim has traveled extensively, particularly in Asia, as a journalist, business consultant and screenwriter-producer. He speaks Vietnamese and has done extensive pro bono work with the Vietnamese community dating from the late 1970's. In 1989 he met with key Japanese government and industrial officials as a featured guest of the Japanese Foreign Ministry. He has worked on feature film projects with many of Hollywood's top producers. His original story "Rules of Engagement," which he also executive-produced, was the number one movie in America during April 2000.
Jim is the proud father of one son, four daughters, and one step-daughter. He lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Hong Le Webb.
Use of military rank, job titles, and photographs in uniform does not imply endorsement by the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense