Another day and another previously undisclosed Chuck Hagel speech replete with dumb and controversial remarks. (In his Cameron University speech in 2011 he accused India of fomenting terrorism in Pakistan and attacked NATO. This in turn caused a flap with India, which decried the remarks.) Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan joins the government of Iran, the National Jewish Democratic Committee and, as far as we know, every Democratic U.S. senator in giving Hagel a thumbs’ up to head the Pentagon.
Chuck Hagel (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Conservatives and principled pro-Israel liberals may be discouraged, even apoplectic, as we are poised to see Chuck Hagel sail through the Senate. I’ll get to the gloom and doom, but on the bright side, there are a number of positive takeaways:
The Republican Party is rock solid in its support of Israel and determination to prevent Iran from getting a bomb. In order to be confirmed Hagel had to pretend he was, too. That is called winning the policy war, if not the confirmation battle. For those rare Republicans who mysteriously decided to support Hagel, there was a home-state backlash. (“The Steering Committee of the Alabama Republican Party has taken the rare step of officially demanding that one of the state’s two GOP U.S. Senators change a publicly announced position in a high-profile Washington battle. Specifically, the state party leaders have passed a resolution demanding that Sen. Richard Shelby reconsider and reverse his decision to support Senator Hagel to be Secretary of Defense.”)
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