The up and coming fight over the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense should be a neat one. The Republican’s have drawn up their full neo-com battery of complaints and complainers in a pre-nomination attempt to influence the President, but Hagel seems to those of us who have no ax to grind, to be an excellent candidate.
This guy is a decorated Vietnam hero who has served as a Republican senator with great distinction. Of course the nut Right doesn’t recognize any service that isn’t either painted red (for blood) or hysterically anti-Obama.
The fact is, that Hagel is an excellent choice mainly because his views seem to coincide nicely with Obama’s, and isn’t that what any President would want from his Secretary of Defense?
It should also be noted that Hegel’s views coincide with those of the American people, most of whom don’t want any more wars, especially in the middle east. Of course Karl Rove would probably like another war. Probably feels he didn’t screw the country up enough with the two he and Cheney talked Dubya into starting.
Hagel has referred to the defense budget as “bloated”, and at $525 billion excluding the costs of the wars we have been waging, it definitely is. I mean can anyone reasonably argue with that?
He opposed the Iraq war and later the surge in Iraq. Well, everyone who didn’t oppose the Iraq war turned out to be wrong. Is there any argument with that? We wanted oil. We didn’t get it, and we killed a lot of American kids in the process. Is there really anyone out there dumb enough to argue with Hagel on that one? He also opposed the surge in Iraq and what did it actually accomplish. We didn’t win the war and we didn’t manage to settle the problems between the various factions that are still killing each other over there. We got out a few months later having nothing to show for our efforts except a huge fiscal deficit and oh yeah, we killed a few more American kids.
But the big problem seems to be that Hagel once made two comments that have upset Sheldon Adelson and the Israeli faction that spends a lot of money lobbying for them in Washington. Hagel once referred to that lobbying group as the Jewish lobby instead of the Israeli lobby. His is obviously a serious problem for Old Testament scholars but for the rest of us it is not such a big deal. The Israeli’s are, after all, mostly Jewish.
The other big problem seems to be that he once said that he was the Senator from Nebraska not the Senator from Israel. I don’t know about you but this doesn’t seem like such a big deal for me. In fact it seems self-evident. If he has said that he wasn’t the Senator from France do you suppose they’d stop exporting pate’ to us?
It’s all petty bullshit and anyone pathetic enough to say otherwise really needs to get a life. The Israeli lobby that seems to be all bent out of shape and their allies led by Sheldon Adelson and the doddering Ed Koch should, maybe, start thinking about what’s good for America, not necessarily what’s good for Israel. Yesterday’s ad in the Times was a disgraceful example of people who care more for Israel tan they do for this country, trying to influence our legislators. America has been a real and constant ally of Israel ever since it came into being. Israel has definite problems right now, many of them self created. Maybe it’s time we thought about America first and let Israel work out some of the interior solutions that have led them to many of their exterior problems. Maybe with Hagel as Secretary of Defense they will be inspired to do just that.
The bottom line is that Obama is President, he wants Hagel, he should get Hagel. The cabinets are appointed jobs for people who have to work closely with the President. Congress job is to advise and consent, not to cause problems or impose their will. The time for that comes when we need a new Supreme Court judge and let’s hope that moment isn’t too far in the future.