Chuck Hagel resigns: was he too militant or not militant enough in pursuing New Hitler?

Chuck Hagel resigned as Secretary of Defense today. It's pretty clear he was fired.

The Young Turks discuss Hagel's resignation/firing in Pentagon Boss Chuck Hagel Fired - Why And What Now?

This is the PBS Newshour report on the resignation, Why is Chuck Hagel stepping down? 11/24/2014. One of the two guests interviewed is neoconservative Thomas Donnelly from AEI, aka, Neocon Central. The other is P.J. Crowley, a former Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.

Robert Reich posted on Facebook today that he thinks Hagel was dumped from being Defense Secretary because Obama and his advisers think Hagel's not enthusiastic enough for more wars:

Why is Chuck Hagel being canned after having been Defense chief for less than two years? Competence aside, part of the answer is the White House has moved from seeing events in Iraq and Syria through the Vietnam lens to the Nazi Germany lens, and Hagel is still seeing them as Vietnam.

For the last fifty years, American foreign policy has swung between two polar-opposite views: Through the Vietnam lens, we don’t want to be dragged into foreign civil wars that can end up costing tens of thousands of American lives. But through the Nazi Germany lens, we must stop barbarous and aggressive fascist movements before they overwhelm civilization. Obama himself began with Vietnam lenses but he and his advisers view the Islamic State as more like Nazi Germany.

I hope Reich is wrong about the Obama team seeing Middle East crises through a "Nazi Germany" lens. One of the biggest problems in US foreign policy since the Second World War is that policymakers inflate opponents in "Hitler." It gets particularly dysfunctional in a situation like Syria where no one can really decide whether the New Hitler is the Islamic State group or their mortal enemy the Assad regime.

One of the most useful books I've ever read on US foreign policy - one we're unlikely to see Little Tommy Friedman ever quoting - is The Specter of Munich: Reconsidering the Lessons of Appeasing Hitler (2006) by Jeffrey Record of the Army Air War College; a version of it is available via that link. He thinks the "Munich analogy" has been so overused that it not only ignores the real history of "Munich" in 1938 and why it was a bad policy for the West but also leads to wildly inflating threats and over-reacting in self-destructive ways. As he puts it, the real Hitler and Nazi Germany were not only enormously powerful militarily (and got a huge boost from the Skoda arms factories they got in Czechoslovakia from the Munich Agreement) but were also "unappeasable *and* undeterrable." And, "No post-1945 foreign dictatorship bears genuine comparison to the Nazi dictatorship."

When Chicken Littles like Sen. Lindsay Graham squawk that the Islamic State is going to come "kill us all" in the United States, that's just crackpot warmongering. Only bad policy comes out of that.

Historian Andrew Bacevich has been one of the best analysts of US military affairs for the last decade plus. He has basically a conservative-realist framework for looking about foreign and military policy, based on the thinking of Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. He has meaningful criticisms of both Democratic and Republican thinking on foreign policy without falling into the vapid Both Sides Do It cliches our star pundits so often use. This piece of his at TomDispatch addresses the current poor state of US foreign policy, Malarkey on the Potomac: Five Bedrock Washington Assumptions That Are Hot Air (with an introduction by Tom Engelhardt) 11/23/2014.

But as The Young Turks discuss in the clip above, it's not entirely clear that Hagel is being pushed out because of his caution and restraint.

Chemi Shalev writs in The bitter irony is that Israel is the sorriest to see Hagel go Haaretz 11/24/2014:

Hagel was brought in to withdraw American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan at a time of severe budgetary cuts, but reality in the Middle East and elsewhere had other plans. Rightly or wrongly, through its own fault or that of others, the Pentagon has been perceived in recent months as being caught flat-footed by the rampage of Islamic State in Iraq, the survival of Bashar Assad in Syria, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the belligerency of Vladimir Putin in Ukraine and more. Under these circumstances, the credibility of America’s veiled threat that “all options are on the table” against Iran also took a serious hit.

But rather than displaying the kind of resolute confidence and leadership needed in such dangerous times, Hagel often sounded like Chicken Little shouting “the sky is falling.” He told Charlie Rose only last week that ISIS is “an incredibly powerful new threat” to every interest we have, the likes of which have never been seen before. Hagel’s panicky overkill, which already rankled Obama back when he still referred to ISIS as “junior varsity” may have been the final nail in his coffin: better the momentary embarrassment of an appointment gone wrong, Obama’s advisers reasoned, than the long term damage incurred by a defense secretary who sometimes sounds as if he hasn't convinced even himself that he can get the job done. [my emphasis]

For the next Secretary of Defense, I hope he Obama at least finds a Democrat to nominate this time.

Chuck Hagel and the Israel lobby

Last week's quarrelsome Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel's nomination as Secretary of Defense highlighted the real existing effect of the Israel lobby and its outsize effects on American politics and foreign policy. I've listed below several pieces discussing this issue.

I'm still bothered by the fact that President Obama picked another Republican for his third Secretary of Defense, following Bill Clinton's example with Bill Cohen, his third Defense Secretary. Obama kept George W. Bush's Secretary of Defense, Bill Gates, on as his first SecDef. This works against the success that Obama has had in diminishing the Republicans' perceived advantage on national defense in public opinion polls. It's another symptom of Obama's near-compulsive pursuit of an illusory bipartisan harmony.

But for this nomination, that ship has sailed. And now the Republican nominee for SecDef has become a partisan flashpoint, with his own Party for whom he served in the Senate bitterly opposing him and the Democrats supporting him. And so the game has to be evaluated for what it is. But Israel and the closely related issue of Iran got the most attention.

Here are two video news reports on the hearings, which ran for eight hours.

The Hagel Hearings The Real News 02/01/2013, with commentary by Jim Lobe:

Chuck Hagel Defends Record at Confirmation Hearing PBS Newshour 01/31/2013:

The main issue in whether Chuck Hagel is qualified to be the US Secretary of Defense has become whether he's rabid enough in his support for anything and everything the government of Israel might want to do themselves or might want the United States to do. Obviously in the reports above, John McCain's seemingly theological concept of the value of The Surge in Iraq, also made a newsworthy moment in the hearing.

As Gideon Levy writes in Israel does as it pleases Haaretz 02/03/2013, Israel's foreign and military policies are increasingly heedless of their extreme unpopularity and even their blowback potential for Israel. Their policies are often reckless, and their allies, including the United States, need to take full account of that fact.

The public discussion of US-Israeli policies still largely proceeds on the polite assumption that a two-state solution with the Palestinians is still a viable option. In reality, Israel has succeeded in closing it down as a realistic possibility. Stephen Walt in Some inconvenient truths Foreign Policy 01/28/2013 listed this as one of the practical realities he wishes that the Washington foreign policy establishment would openly acknowledge:

#3: "There's not going to be a two-state solution." For official Washington insiders, the politically-correct answer to any question about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that we favor a two-state solution based on negotiations between the two parties, preferably done under U.S. auspices. Never mind that there's not much support for creating a viable Palestinian state in Israel (surveys in Israel sometimes show slim majorities in favor of a 2SS, but support drops sharply when you spell out the details of what a viable state would mean). Never mind that the Palestinians are too weak and divided to negotiate properly, and the failure of the long Oslo process has diminished Fatah's legitimacy and strengthened the more hardline Hamas. Never mind that the latest Israeli election, while it weakened Netanyahu, did not strengthen the peace camp at all. And never mind that the United States has had twenty-plus years to pull of the deal and has blown it every time, mostly because it never acted like a genuine mediator. But nobody in official-dom is going to say this out loud, because they have no idea what U.S. policy would be once the 2SS was kaput.

But, as Levy notes:

Even more troublesome are the questions about the settlements. Again, Israel's conduct is based on the assumption that, as far as West Bank settlements are concerned, anything is allowed. A committee set up by the UN − by the power of whose decision the State of Israel was established and won world recognition − published a document on Thursday castigating Israel's policy. The committee ruled that the settlements are a violation of international law − or, in other words, a war crime.

Israel, the report's composers established, will be susceptible to lawsuits in the International Criminal Court in The Hague and sanctions. So what? The Foreign Ministry has already called it a one-sided report. A commentator in Israel Hayom, like all Israel's commentators, has already consigned it to "the garbage heap of history." ...

I appeared before this investigation committee’s members − impressive, well-known jurists − at their request. Their committee was set up by the same council that wrote the Goldstone Report into Operation Cast Lead in Gaza − which penetrated so deeply into Israeli consciousness that the Israel Defense Forces acted differently in last November’s Operation Pillar of Defense. That report was not thrown into the garbage heap, but went into history. This settlement report, too, will resonate − at least in the outside world.

See also:

Phyllis Bennis, Will Chuck Hagel's Appointment Actually Help the Anti-War Left? The Nation 01/08/2013

Juan Cole, Why the Senate should Confirm Chuck Hagel as SecDef Informed Comment 01/31/2013

Juan Cole, Chuck Hagel Mauled in Bizarro World of US Senate Informed Comment 02/01/2013

Robert Dreyfuss, The Hagel Disaster The Nation 02/01/2103

Howie Klein, Will The GOP Slap Down Obama By Torpedoing Chuck Hagel? Down With Tyranny 02/02/2013

Jim Lobe, It’s All About Israel Inter Press Service 02/01/2013

Jim Rutenberg, Secret Donors Finance Fight Against Hagel New York Times 01/26/2013

Stephen Walt, I'd like to thank the Senate Armed Services Committee Foreign Policy 02/01/2013

Tags: chuck hagel, israel, israel lobby, us foreign policy

Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary

Obama has nominated former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as his nominee for the next Secretary of Defense.

The Israel lobby has conducted a vocal opposition to the nomination.

The PBS Newshour reported on the debate over Hagel in Firestorm of Criticism for Cabinet Nominee Chuck Hagel 01/04/2013:

Fred Kaplan sums up the arguments of Hagel's opponents in The Real Reason Republicans Hate Hagel Slate 01/06/2013: "These resisters have four main concerns. They fear that Hagel will cut the military budget. They fear that he’ll roll over if Iran builds a nuclear weapon. They fear that he’s too reluctant to use military force generally. And they fear he doesn’t much like Israel; the extremists on this point claim he’s anti-Semitic."

Glenn Greenwald looks at the politics of the Hagel nomination in Chuck Hagel and liberals: what are the priorities? Guardian 01/05/2013. He argues in favor of Hagel's nomination, pointing out, "All of the Democratic alternatives to Hagel who have been seriously mentioned are nothing more than standard foreign policy technocrats, fully on-board with the DC consensus regarding war, militarism, Israel, Iran, and the Middle East." Though he observes that Hagel's views are solidly within the current national security state consensus, "at the very least, Hagel's confirmation will be a much-needed declaration that some mild dissent on foreign policy orthodoxies and Israel is permitted."

I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that its bad practice and bad precedent for Obama to nominate another Republican as Secretary of Defense.

But Obama is very committed to promoting his image of bipartisanship, and I suspect that's a major appeal for him in a Hagel nomination. But it's unlikely to be widely perceived that way, as Kaplan observes: "What Republicans seem to fear most is that by appointing Hagel as secretary of defense, Obama can claim a false bipartisanship in his national-security team. In fact, these critics say Hagel does not reflect the values or positions of the Republican Party; his presence in Cabinet meetings would not constitute real bipartisanship." Still, it does reinforce the notion that is no dead among the punditocracy that Democrats can't be fully trusted on national security.

As Jacob Heilbrunn explains in Hagel Unchained Foreign Policy 12/14/2012, he was quite a conservative Republican in his Senate career. His difference was adhering to a Realist view of foreign policy rather than a neoconservative/militarist-nationalist outlook: "So for much of the past decade, Hagel -- despite a lifetime rating of 84 percent from the American Conservative Union -- has been a prickly presence on the right, a traditional realist as opposed to the crusading neocons who have, by and large, co-opted much of the GOP's foreign-policy brain trust."

I would have much preferred to see Obama nominate a Democratic "realist" to that position. But if he nominates Hagel, I would rather see him confirmed than rejected. Because, as Kaplan writes, "On the issue of military force, Hagel is more dovish than many Republicans and perhaps some Democrats."

Stephen Walt is skeptical of the extent to which Hagel's presence at Defense will make any kind of decisive difference on policy toward Israel and Iran. In What's at stake in the Hagel affair Foreign Policy 12/26/2012, he writes:

Contrary to what some suggest, the choice of SecDef isn't going to make any difference in U.S. policy toward Israel or the "peace process." Policy on those issues will be set by the White House and Congress, with AIPAC et al. breathing down both their necks. The Israeli government has no interest in a two-state solution, the Palestinians are too weak and divided to persuade Israel to rethink its present course, and the United States is incapable of mounting the sort of sustained pressure that might force both sides to compromise. Which means the two-state solution is dead, and it won't matter whether Hagel gets the nod or not. The $3-4 billion annual aid package won't be affected, and I'll bet the United States continues to wield its U.N. Security Council veto whenever it is asked.

This appointment could affect U.S. policy toward Iran, insofar as Hagel's been skeptical about the wisdom of using military force in the past. He's hardly a dove or an appeaser, of course; he just recognizes that military force may not be a very good way to deal with this problem. (Well, duh.) If Obama wants to pursue diplomacy instead of preventive war -- and he should -- the combination of Hagel at Defense and Kerry at State would give him two respected, articulate, and persuasive voices to help him make that case. But if Obama were to decide that force was a good idea, neither Kerry nor Hagel would stand in his way. So in terms of overall Middle East policy in the next couple of years, this appointment may matter less than most people think.

Taylor Marsh makes the same point more colloquially, "The pissing contest over Mr. Hagel is just the latest extension of a Washington class of elite imbeciles who think a person of contrary opinion at the Pentagon will cause world pandemonium." (News Desk: Hagel Nomination as Secretary of Defense “Locked Down” 01/07/2013)

But Walt thinks Hagel is a solid nominee, as he wrote in an earlier piece, Top five reasons Obama should pick Chuck Hagel for SecDef Foreign Policy 12/14/2012.

Tags: chuck hagel

Obama's aura

This is a kind of classical California take on Barack Obama: Is Obama an enlightened being? by Mark Morford, SFGate.com 06/06/08. He reports on a view that not everyone may have heard expressed this way:

Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn't have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Dismiss it all you like, but I've heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who've been intuitively blown away by Obama's presence - not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence - to say it's just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. (my emphasis in bold)

Personally, I'd settle for a lot less in the next four years than a completely "new way of being on the planet". But Morford's take has a certain amount of charm.

Gene Lyons cited this column during the past week (Clown cars just keep on coming Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 06/18/08), "What’s Morford been smoking ? We can’t tell. ... So are we talking about a political movement or a cult?"

I get the impression Gene Lyons may not have spent a lot time in California.

But then, strange mystical ideas aren't unique to California. Lyons' own paper ran an editorial this Saturday (Somewhat biased? 06/21/08) that opens:

We read an editorial the other day from a newspaper down in Louisiana that came out foursquare against ... hurricanes. We kid you not. No word yet on whether Mother Nature will suspend hurricanes based on the newspaper’s advice, but we doubt it. Mother Nature may not even subscribe.

Next to this stuff, the Catholic Church's positions on the Assumption of Mary and the Real Presence sound downright empirical.

But I have get all un-gooey on Morford's column, I guess. He doesn't yet have the clout of a Great Journalist like Tim Russert. But he also said this in his column: "Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway."

Now, I get it that Morford was introducing his Lightworker revelation with that teaser sentence.

But years of reading Bob Somerby's Daily Howler seem to be rearranging my superego or something. Because I can't help but noticing some of the worst pundit habits in this column. Even if we take the column as a spoof, it's worth thinking about what is being spoofed.

That business about Obama not being "really one of us" is the current Chris Matthews-approved Big Pundit script. This is quite convenient for Republicans, who aren't interested in his Lightbringer aura. They prefer to paint Obama as not "really one of us" because of his alleged "radical liberal" positions, to use Sean Hannity's kooky construction. And they're less interested in reminding people of Obama's Light-ness than his blackness, hoping that institutional racism will create a big opening for the propaganda about Obama's "radical liberal" ideas and other alleged "elitist" failings and general exotic-ness to take root among independent voters.

Then there's the stock pundit tactic of quoting some anonymous sources - many "spiritually advanced people" in this case - to express the pundit's own opinion. Why do all these spiritually advanced people need to be anonymous on this matter?

And he's displaying the marvelous talent that all conventionally advanced pundits seem to possess: discerning the soul of his subject. Without even a personal interview, in this case. And just how does one go about testing whether a person is a "Lightbringer" or not?

But speaking of people who are not "really one of us", what's up with the talk about a Chuck Hagel Vice Presidential candidacy on the Democratic ticket? (Chris Silizza, Hagel for (Democratic) Veep? The Fix blog 06/21/08). Once the Iraq War became an incredibly unpopular disaster, Hagel started criticizing it more often. Before that, he was one of those "moderate" Republicans who would go on the talk shows and wring their hands and express their deep concern over this or that upsetting news from Iraq, but were normally there faithfully supporting Bush on war votes and voting against antiwar initiatives.

As Jake Thompson and Robynn Tysver reported last year in Idling till now, Hagel may shift to '08 gear Omaha World-Herald 03/11/07, "Hagel has an 85 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and 82 percent from the National Taxpayers Union."

And, they report, in 2006 "Hagel scored the highest pro-Bush voting record in the Senate last year - 95.5 percent". (my emphasis)

I really can't get my head around this idea. We're looking at a heavy Democratic advantage in 2008 and a Presidential candidate with a strong position. For once, the Democratic Presidential nominee even looks to have more money for the general election campaign than the Republican. This could be a chance for Obama to build a real electoral mandate for withdrawing from Iraq, ending the torture policy and enacting comprehensive health insurance.

So why in the name of all Lightbringers would he want to have one of the most pro-Bush Republicans in the Senate as his Vice Presidential candidate?

Tags: barack obama, chuck hagel

I'm unimpressed

Big whoop. Sen. Chuck Hagel addresses a polite letter to the President asking him to, golly gee, maybe think about diplomacy before launching a full-blown war against Iran.

But he apparently intended for it to be kept secret. See Private Note to Bush from Hagel Calls For Direct, Unconditional, Comprehensive Talks with Iran Steve Clemons, The Washington Note 10/31/07.

Somehow, the myth of the Republican "moderate" limps along. Hagel has one of the most pro-Bush voting records in Congress. He did vote for one or two of the Democrats' more substantial proposals on withdrawing from Iraq.

But at this stage of the game, what is an appeal like this going to accomplish when dealing with men like Dick Cheney? It's just hard to believe it can accomplish anything.

A more public and explicit stance against launching a unilateral war against Iran, combined with aggressive debunking of the shaky-to-downright-bogus claims Cheney and Bush are making about Iran would be more helpful.

It's symptomatic that the only Republican in Congress identified with strong, straight-forward opposition to the Iraq War and to attacking Iran is Ron Paul. And he's a far-right conspiracy kook. He's against the Iraq War, he says, because it is being waged on behalf of the United Nations.

Tags: chuck hagel, iraq war, iran war, ron paul

The strange universe of Republican "moderates"

Regular readers have seen me express skepticism on a fairly regular basis about the so-called "moderate" Republicans. I'm almost more comfortable believing in the existence of the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny than I am believing there actually are any "moderate" Republicans.

But this surprised even me. You know all these stories we've been seeing and hearing about those brave, courageous, independent-minded Republicans John Warner and Chuck Hagel? The ones who sponsored a very mild anti-escalation resolution against Bush's adoption of the McCain escalation strategy in Iraq? That resolution that a lot of the Dems were ready to line up behind to get a "bipartisan" anti-escalation vote?

Well, the Republicans decided to use the Senate tradition of the filibuster to prevent any anti-escalation measures from being debated on the Senate floor. So if you wanted any anti-escalation resolution to have a chance of passing, you had to vote for "cloture", i.e., to cut off debate on the measure on the floor so that the anti-escalation measure could be debated.

Warner and Hagel voted against cloture! In other words, they effectively voted against their own resolution!

Someone tell me again, what evidence is there for the existence of "moderate" Republicans?

Tags: chuck hagel, iraq war, republican party