The Republicans are offended by
President Obama’s choice of Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, for secretary of
defense. The best I can conclude is that
they are opposed because the President nominated him and because they are bound
and determined to look like a bunch of jack asses.
It can’t really be because, as
Senator Lindsey Graham says, “he has long severed his ties with the Republican
Party.” Just over four years ago, after
he stepped aside and decided not to run for re-election to the Senate, he was almost
universally praised by his fellow Republicans.
Four years doesn’t sound like “long” to me, and it is a bit too
convenient that these severed ties are just now being revealed. Besides, he was elected twice as a Republican
senator presumably by Republicans. Obama
is surely going to claim this as an attempt at bipartisanship. Arguing that it isn’t really without
appearing to be … well to be jack asses, doesn’t seem to be an easy task.
Unfortunately, Republican
opposition also can’t be rooted in Hagel’s opposition to the war in Iraq and the
surge Congressman Tom Cotton says "Our
troops deserve much better than a man who voted to send them to war when it was
popular and then abandoned those very troops when it was unpopular.” But he can’t really mean to say something that
is so ridiculous. That would mean that
anyone who opposes a war is somehow un-American, that the only thing that a
good American can do when we are at war is mindlessly support the official
government position. It would also mean
that people can’t change their mind … ever … even if they come across new
information, circumstances change, or they simply come to believe that they
were mistaken. No one can possible have
such a naive, narrow, and ignorant view of the world.
I suppose it could be because he favors
negotiating with countries like Iran rather than simply labeling them as evil
terrorists and starting a war that could destabilize the Middle East and throw
the world into recession and confusion, for starters. No sane person would want to avoid war and no
real American would see nuance in the world.
He must be a threat to the country,
The problem is that he’s not really a
threat to the country or its military, and its pretty hard to believe that Republicans
really think he is. Hegel is thoughtful,
but he is not a pacifist. He is a
Vietnam Veteran, and an advocate for the military. He would support cuts in military spending,
but that is, until proven otherwise, just a matter of good sense. No one is going to argue that he isn’t knowledgeable
about foreign policy and defense issues.
So that only leaves us with Israel, and this is not about Israel.
Republicans are not opposing this
nomination because Hagel said that the “Jewish
lobby intimidated lawmakers."
Republicans are using this line to rile people up and to justify their
opposition. It’s exactly what Romney
tried to do during the election. They
can’t really believe that American interests are best served by always
championing Israeli interests. Israel
and the United States are two different countries with different sets of interests. There is no way they correspond
completely. And the Jewish lobby does
intimidate lawmakers. That’s what every
lobby does, or at least tries to do. Besides,
Hegel’s voting record does not exactly paint him as a supporter of Hamas. This is just a rather crude attempt to
motivate opposition to the nomination by appealing to fear and hate, with a bit
of push from a powerful and narrowly focused lobby.
So, this brings us back to concluding that Congress is a
bunch of angry Obama-hating jack asses. If
they do actively oppose the nomination of a hawkish homophobic Republican, it
will be hard to reach any other conclusion.
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