Two divergent points of view on Hagel and commentary regarding the Hearing in the Senate today......

http://www.juancole.com/2013/02/mauled-bizarro-senate.html

Chuck Hagel Mauled in Bizarro World of US Senate

Posted on 02/01/2013 by Juan

The confirmation hearing in the Senate for Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, was painful to watch because it displayed the tomfoolery, pretense, self-righteous know-nothingism, and embarrassing lack of contact with reality that dominate the landscape of America’s broken democracy. It was like watching a Nebraska ordinary Joe set upon by circus freaks– a phalanx of moral midgets, stalking cat-men, vicious lobster boys and ethical werewolves.

Those who regretted that Hagel seldom stood his ground, often just deflected persnickety questions, and sometimes was made to recite the catechisms of Neoconservative orthodoxy, should remember that what is important in Washington is willingness to conform orally, regardless of what one actually believes or how one acts. Hagel might agree to look like he is being pushed around by his former colleagues, for the sake of their face and his. He won’t agree actually to be pushed around once he is in office.

Ted Cruz, a Texas tea partier who probably won’t be there after Texas turns blue in a few years, tried to carry out a Fox News-style ambush of Hagel.He played a 2009 Aljazeera interview of Hagel on the issue of nuclear disarmament.

At one point a caller called in from London with a rambling statement, who made an argument that there is a double standard, with the US and its allies free from international law on things like possessing and using nuclear weapons, whereas other countries are held to stricter standard. He said that this unequal application of the law was clear in that Omar al-Bashir, the president of Sudan, had been convicted of war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court, but Israeli leaders, who had committed war crimes against the Palestinians, had been held harmless. He went on rambling, complaining about alleged war crimes the Sri Lankan government committed against the Tamil Tigers, then the host asked him for a question and to finish up. When Hagel responded, he began by saying he agreed with the caller’s point. It is obvious to me that he was agreeing that there had been a double standard, and he later said it should be overcome with regard to nuclear disarmament by the US and Russia taking the lead to reduce stockpiles. The caller had a thick accent and it wasn’t even clear that Hagel understood everything he said in his rant, much less meant to agree with it. Is Cruz saying that Hagel was agreeing about Sri Lanka, too?

The relevant bit begins at 6:26 minutes in:

Cruz insisted that Hagel should have disagreed with the caller about Israel having committed war crimes, given that Jews were victims of war crimes. Cruz is a truly bright and energetic man, with a Princeton education, who clerked for Rehnquist. He knows very well that he is lying about Hagel. And he knows that Israel is guilty of plenty of war crimes. He managed to make Hagel deny this obvious fact, however. Cruz’s performance underlines the importance of Christian Zionism in reinforcing the crackpot conviction in the US senate that it is impossible ever to say anything slightly negative about Israeli policy (the only country in the world so exempted).

Ironically, Cruz’s implausible grandstanding occurred on the same day when, as the New York Times headline put it, “U.N. Panel Says Israeli Settlement Policy Violates Law ”

Or how about “UN mission finds evidence of war crimes by both sides in Gaza conflict.”

In fact, a British court issued an arrest warrant for Tzipi Livni for her role in launching the attack on Gaza in 2008-9, and it is not clear that she can travel to the UK without fear of arrest. The charge, Senator Cruz? War crimes.

Ah, and then there is Lindsey Graham, the Red Queen of the Senate (who is the essence of the pedantic governess and asks through-the-looking-glass questions like: “Divide a loaf by a knife: what’s the answer to that?”).

Graham wanted to know why Hagel voted against the 2007 senate resolution declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization.

The reason that was a dumb resolution is that terrorism is defined in the US civil code as the deployment of violence by a non-state actor against civilians for political purposes. Since the Revolutionary Guards are a kind of Iranian national guard, they are not a non-state actor. They are therefore not a terrorist organization. They may deploy terror, but it is state terror. (The senate also said they were terrorists because they were guilty of killing US troops in Iraq. First of all, there is no evidence that is true. Second of all, killing troops is not terrorism, it is an act of war). Graham’s position is illogical and makes a hash of any reasonable definition of terrorism.

Graham wants to pile on illogical charges against Iran and its institutions in order to force the US into a war on that country, which is 3 times more populous and much more geographically vast than Iraq. Because, like, Iraq went so well, I guess.

Then the Red Queen went after Hagel for having said that the “Jewish lobby” intimidates people. He demanded, “Name one person here who’s been intimidated by the Jewish lobby . . . Name one dumb thing we’ve been goaded into doing due to pressure by the Israeli or Jewish lobby.”

Hagel said he didn’t have anyone in mind.

The irony, of course, is that Graham is himself part of the Israel lobby, and there he was intimidating Hagel for complaining about having been intimidated!

All the congressmen and senators know that the Israel lobby intimidates them or tries to, on a daily basis. Ernst Hollings complained, “you can’t have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.” AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the de facto foreign agent of the Israeli government in the United States, which gets away with not having to register as such because it has bought off or intimidated Congress. 22-year Illinois veteran of congress Paul Findley has also complained about this. And, just read former AIPAC lobbyis M.J. Rosenberg regularly to get the inside scoop on how AIPAC pressures Congress, including against the president. As Graham knows, there is a whole book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt about the Israel lobbies, which will soon be supplemented by further publications documenting all the … intimidation. The Israel lobbies work by threatening to give money to a rival in the next primary or election. Since races in many districts are close, and since there is no wealthy, organized lobby for the Palestinians or Arabs, it is crazy for a US politician to risk AIPAC’s ire. AIPAC doesn’t always win, and recognizing its effectiveness as a lobby is not to buy into the bigotted notion of Jews secretly controlling Gentiles. In fact, denying that the Israel lobby exists is not only willful blindness, it is itself a form of anti-Semitism, since such a denial depicts Jews as inherently unlike Cubans, Armenians, Indians, Latinos and all the other ethnic groups that lobby Congress.

The long arm of these lobbies is something about which I have a little personal experience.

Senator John McCain then attacked Hagel for having predicted that the surge or troop escalation ordered by George W. Bush would be a huge mistake. The Iraq War was fought under false pretenses (that the Saddam Hussein regime was two years from having a nuclear weapon and had big stores of biological and chemical weapons, and that it was behind the 9/11 attacks and trained al-Qaeda in the use of chemical weapons– all of these pretexts for war being wretched, bald-faced lies). The Neocons promised McCain’s committee a short inexpensive war of $60 billion, over within 6 months. Instead it turned into a quagmire that cost thousands of American lives and some 33,000 badly injured veterans who lead diminished lives. McCain was a cheerleader for the war, then a skeptic, then a cheerleader, and now he has decided that the troop escalation was a success.

If the ‘surge’ was a success, it was a minor one in a vast and pockmarked terrain of abject failure. But there are plenty of reasons to question the David Petraeus narrative of a successful surge. In Baghdad, the horrible civil war that killed tens of thousands in 2006 gradually subsided through 2007 mainly because the Shiites ethnically cleansed Sunnis from mixed neighborhoods. The US troop escalation was complicit here because it disarmed the Sunni neighborhood militias first, exposing them to night-time attacks by the still-armed Mahdi Army and Badr Corps. I have talked to Iraq vets who were on the ground and saw this process unfold with their own eyes; they say everyone knew that was what was happening. The turning of Baghdad into a largely Shiite city, while it tamped down violence, could hardly be called a big success (it had been about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite in 2002 before the Americans came).

The other element of the surge was the creation in al-Anbar Province and elsewhere of “Awakening Councils” or “Sons of Iraq,” essentially clan-based Sunni Arab militias willing to fight the Sunni-Muslim radicals who had asserted themselves in the Sunni Arab center-west of the country. Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki opposed this program, which resulted in 80,000 armed Sunni militiamen, as a threat to the future public order in Iraq. After the violence began subsiding somewhat, he declined to bring more than about 9,000 of the Sons of Iraq into government security forces. The others were either cut off altogether or given small stipends. Some were hunted down and killed by the Muslim radicals, once they no longer had the protection of being in an organized unit. Some of the Sons of Iraq had been terrorists in 2005-2006, and al-Maliki refused to amnesty them, having them arrested and tried.

The big news from Iraq these days is precisely the continued discontent of Sunni Arab Iraqis, some of them (like the Abu Rishas) from families that had joined the Awakening Councils. They are demanding increased stipends for their service under Petraeus, demanding that hundreds of Sunni Arab youth arrested arbitrarily be released, demanding that the stigmatization of Sunni Arabs and the barring of them from public service be ended, and demanding that the pro-Iran, pro-Syrian, Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, step down.

So the “surge” didn’t account for the decline of violence in Baghdad, and its Awakening Councils created as many problems as they solved, and created expectations that continue to roil Iraqi politics and perhaps threaten a break-up of the country.

I’d say Chuck Hagel got it about right.

and.....

http://www.juancole.com/2013/01/should-confirm-secdef.html

Why the Senate should Confirm Chuck Hagel as SecDef

Posted on 01/31/2013 by Juan

Reprint edn.: this appeared earlier, but is a propos of today’s Senate confirmation hearings. A future column will treat that process:

I doubt Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, and I would agree about almost anything with regard to domestic US politics . . . But he isn’t being nominated for secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He is being nominated as Secretary of Defense. And on defense and foreign policy issues, Hagel’s views have much to recommend them. I testified in April, 2004, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Hagel served, about the then Mahdi Army uprising in Iraq. The chairman, Richard Lugar, and Hagel both struck me as informed and concerned about the situation. Others, like Sam Brownback, seemed almost robotic in throwing softballs to my fellow panelist, the neoconservative Richard Perle, who denied that there was any uprising. Hagel had voted for the Iraq War authorization, but raised questions even then about US ignorance of what it was getting into, and he later in the Bush years joined Democrats in voting to get out.

Here are some positive things about the Hagel nomination:

1. Chuck Hagel is a decorated war hero, having won two Purple Hearts as infantry squad leader in Vietnam. He knows what war is, unlike the usual gaggle of chickenhawks who have emerged to accuse him of not being warlike enough. The very notion of William Kristol in a uniform is enough to provoke mirth, but here is an influential man (why?) who never met a war he didn’t love. Hagel not only knows war but knows it from the point of view of the infantry and NCOs, not just the officer corps. Hagel is cautious about wars and what they can achieve, and has become more cautious over time, as his hands got burned by the Iraq resolution. This caution is admirable in a Secretary of Defense.

2. Hagel has been an advocate for veterans. He introduced legislation to limit deployments in Iraq, which failed. (Many Iraq vets served multiple 18-month tours, and many of their problems have to do with frequent, long deployments.) He was a principal co-sponsor of Sen. Jim Webb’s bill on GIs, which expanded educational opportunities for those who served after September 11 (the bill became law). Unlike many inside-the-Beltway hawks who use the troops for political purposes but cut veterans’ benefits when the war is over, Hagel cares.

3. Hagel has long opposed the use of sanctions instead of diplomacy in the Middle East, having argued on June 27, 2001 at a conference of the American Iranian Council that sanctions on Libya and Iran “isolate us” (Washington Times, March 29, 2002).

4. Hagel opposed George W. Bush’s and the Neoconservatives’ ‘muscular Wilsonianism,” the idea that the US should invade countries like Iraq and impose democracy on them: Hagel said in 2006, “You cannot in my opinion just impose a democratic form of government on a country with no history and no culture and no tradition of democracy… We have not always connected those fundamentals to our efforts.” (- International Herald Tribune, March 17, 2006)

5. After an Israeli bombing killed dozens of children at Qana during the Israeli attack on Lebanon in summer, 2006, Hagel criticized the Bush administration for declining to call for a ceasefire (i.e. supporting further Israeli military action), saying, “The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now, this madness must stop.” (- Irish Times, August 2, 2006)

6. In 2009, Chuck Hagel signed a letter along with public figures such as James Wolfensohn of the World Bank and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski asking that the US government “Shift the U.S. objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior, offer it inducements that will enable its more moderate elements to prevail, and cease discouraging third parties from engaging with Hamas in ways that might clarify the movement’s view and test its behavior.” The letter did not call for direct US negotiations with Hamas, though it perhaps implied that other intermediaries (the EU?) might. (- International Herald Tribune, March 26, 2009). Hamas is a force in Palestinian politics and pretending it doesn’t exist and branding it a terrorist organization to which we forbid ourselves from talking just further reduces the US from being an honest broker in negotiations to being a handmaiden of Likud Party policy.

7. Hagel supports withdrawal from Afghanistan, warning in a 2009 op-ed that the US cannot dictate the outcome there, but can only try to empower Afghans to pursue their own fate. He acknowledged that much will depend on Afghan-Pakistan relations. (Washington Post, September 3, 2009) If anything, Hagel seems to have been more eager to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan than was Obama himself, and he will be an excellent steward of the coming US disengagement from Afghanistan.

8. Hagel signed on to the Global Zero proposal, spearheaded by a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James E. Cartwright, which argued for very steep reductions in the US nuclear arsenal, on the grounds that deterrence can now be achieved with relatively few warheads, mounted on submarines rather than on land and in silos. (- International Herald Tribune, May 17, 2012)

9. Hagel joined former Centcom commander Gen. Anthony Zinni (ret.), former US ambassador to the UN Thomas Pickering and others in arguing that an air attack on Iran without putting US troops on the ground could only set back but not destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, and would risk actually pushing Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. (The report Hagel endorsed isavailable in PDf here at the Wilson Center). At this point the evidence suggests (as outgoing Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak admitted) that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear bomb, as opposed to enrichment expertise. Hagel’s position is the only reasonable one, and it is a primary reason for which warmongers, chickenhawks, and American Likudniks have come after Hagel like a pack of jackals trying to beard a lone noble lion.

10. Hagel speaks his mind on the Israel-Palestine issue, unlike almost any other American politician still seeking public office. He castigated what he called the “Jewish lobby” for intimidating American politicians. The choice of phrase was unfortunate, since AIPAC and its affiliates do not represent American Jewry, which is significantly more liberal and less enthusiastic about the far rightwing Israeli parties and policies than the self-appointed ‘Israel lobby’ is. But John McCain’s riposte that there is an Armenian lobby but not a Jewish lobby is also kind of silly. Hagel has just said what President Gerald Ford did, that US policy toward Israel and Palestine should be guided by US interests. The leader of the sane Israel lobby, J-Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, has come to Hagel’s defense.

For Hagel’s appointment to go through is extremely important at this juncture. It will blunt if not altogether end the use by extremist Jewish nationalists of the charge of ‘anti-Semitism’ to sideline critics of any aspect of Israeli policy. It will set a precedent showing that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other such organizations don’t always get their way on appointments, despite their long track record of shooting down capable Americans nominated for public service on the grounds that they are insufficiently worshipful of Israeli policy. ( Chas Freeman is a recent such victim of an orchestrated smear campaign, such that the US was deprived of his considerable expertise at a time it is desperately needed). It will put the far right wing coalition now in charge of Israel on notice that its intensifying colonization of Palestinian territory and attempt forever to forestall a 2-state solution is unacceptable. And it will signal that the US is not going to war against Iran for Bibi Netanyahu, however much William Kristol and the American Enterprise Institute demand it.

Hagel will be nominated and he will be passed by the Senate. And that process will be a turning point in the relationship of the US government to Israel and to its US lobbies. It is an extremely positive development, most of all for Israel itself, which cannot survive if it tries to annex the Palestinian West Bank (as Netanyahu obviously intends to do).

and today's news and the Senate Confirmation Hearing.....

http://www.businessinsider.com/hagel-was-right-about-the-iraq-surge-2013-1

In one of the more dramatic exchanges on Thursday during the confirmation hearings of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense, the former Senator was peppered with questions from Sen. John McCain (R.-Ariz.) about the 2007 Iraq surge.

In Iraq at that time, the insurgency had reached deadly new heights as violence swelled throughout the country. President Bush then surged an additional 20,000 U.S. troops with a strategy of "protecting the population" under the leadership of General David Petraeus.

In McCain's opening question, he grilled Hagel — who opposed the surge — asking him about his statement at the time, in which he said the surge "represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam."

As Hagel tried to explain why he said that, McCain interrupted, saying, "I want to know if you were right or wrong. That’s a direct question. I expect a direct answer."

McCain, an adamant supporter of the surge strategy, wanted to hear that the surge was the reason behind the turnaround in Iraq with a simple yes or no answer.

"The beginning of the surge also factored in what General Allen had put into place in Anbar province, the Sunni Awakening," said Hagel in an attempt to answer. "We put over, as you know, a hundred thousand young," before McCain interrupted.

"Senator Hagel, I’m very aware of the history of the surge and the Anbar Awakening, and I also am aware that any casual observer will know that the surge was the fundamental factor, led by two great leaders, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker."

But a casual observation is very different from what actually happened on the ground.

In an extremely well-researched report from Army Lt. Col Daniel Davis, he writes, "When the full facts are examined, however, it becomes very clear that the surge of troops in 2007 was instrumental at best and according to one senior ground commander who led much of our fight in the Anbar province, '75% to 80% of the credit' for the surge’ssuccess lies elsewhere."

In the forward to another official historical account from Marine Corps University Press, Maj. General John F. Kelly writes, "at a certain point, al-Qaeda’s agenda became too much for the average Anbari to bear. It was increasingly directed at the sheikhs themselves, and just as importantly, it began to have an impact on the business interests of tribal leaders."

Simply put, the brutality of elements of al Qaeda in Iraq against the Sunni populace hit a breaking point, and led to the Anbar Awakening, where Iraqis finally fought back with the help of U.S. forces. "The surge of troops in 2007 did play a role, so there is no attempt to suggest it had no place," Davis writes. "But in case some may charge that the Iraqi view downplays the US role and overemphasizes its own, I’ll explain."

Davis interviews both Iraqis and American ground commanders in his report, and concludes that the surge did help, but the shift of the populace against al Qaeda — their awakening — is the biggest reason for the deescalation in violence.

In an interview with the commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Col. Sean MacFarland said:

"I give huge credit to the Iraqis who stood up to al-Qaeda. Maybe 75-80% of the credit for the success in the counterinsurgency fight in Ramadi goes to the Iraqi people who stood up to al-Qaeda and joined us in common cause. But, make no mistake, there would have been no Anbar Awakening without the US Forces. It's like asking, 'Which element is the most important component in making an engine run: the spark, oxygen, or fuel?' The answer is 'all three.' You can debate all day long over which is the most crucial, but without all three nothing happens. It was like that in Anbar. Al-Qaeda threats and atrocities were the spark, we provided the air (or environment) to make it happen, but without the fuel provided by the various Awakening groups, we would not have achieved anything lasting or widespread."

Sen. McCain may have wanted a yes or no answer to whether the surge worked, but it's not that simple, and Chuck Hagel knows it.

"No single personality was the key in Anbar, no shiny new field manual the reason why, and no 'surge' or single unit made it happen," writes Maj. Gen. Kelly. "It was a combination of many factors, not the least of which — perhaps the most important — was the consistent command philosophy that drove operations in Anbar from March 2004 forward. "

and....

http://freebeacon.com/cnn-senators-shocked-at-how-ill-prepared-hagel-is/

CNN: Senators ‘Shocked’ at How Ill-Prepared Hagel Is

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff
January 31, 2013 4:34 pm

CNN’s Dana Bash reports there is “disbelief” among senators about the weak performance given by defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel at his Thursday confirmation hearing.

See Hagel’s seven worst moments of the first round of hearings here.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/01/31/hagel-if-confirmed-ill-be-sure-to-learn-much-more-about-the-defense-department/

Hagel: If confirmed, I’ll be sure to learn much more about the Defense department

POSTED AT 6:01 PM ON JANUARY 31, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Watch the clip below. He’s also been reassuring senators that he won’t have a policymaking role as SecDef, in case they’re leery of tasking an unqualified incompetent with so much responsibility. He’s basically daring Democrats to vote no, isn’t he?

Question: Are there Democratic votes in play that weren’t before? A GOP Senate aide tells BuzzFeed that they may have a shot now at blocking the confirmation:

Chuck Hagel’s chances of becoming the next Secretary of Defense might have diminished somewhat Thursday, after a choppy first half to his confirmation hearing emboldened Senate Republicans who think they may actually be able to prevent his confirmation.

“There’s a possibility Republicans could block his nomination, especially after today’s performance,” a Senate Republican aide confirmed to BuzzFeed…

[M]ore meetings are still to come, and a number of lawmakers are withholding their judgment until then. Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander said his decision “will depend upon the hearing today and my meeting with him next week.”

Unless Hagel starts drooling on himself, which at this point is within the realm of possibility, I can’t believe there’s any critical mass of Democrats willing to kneecap Obama so soon into his term by voting with the GOP. If he’d doubled down on the “Israel lobby” invective, that’d be one thing, but the Party Of Ideas isn’t going to torpedo The One’s preferred candidate for something as minor as being glaringly unfit for the job. The GOP will have to filibuster. Or does “block” mean hold?

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who aggressively questioned Hagel about controversial remarks he had made on Al Jazeera, suggested he may put a hold on Hagel’s nomination. Cruz noted Hagel’s failure to disclosure requested documents relating to hundreds of speeches he has given over the years, as well as information about the organizations paying him to speak, and their sources of funding.

“In my view, the committee lacks adequate information to vote on his nomination,” Cruz told reporters. “I think we should do everything necessary to ensure that the committee and the full Senate has full disclosure, and an adequate time to review that disclosure.”

Delay the confirmation long enough and maybe Hagel will decide to withdraw. Which brings us to another question: Are there 40 Republicans willing to go to the mat for a filibuster, especially with Democrats already warming up the “obstructionist GOP” talking point for gun control, immigration, and budget negotiations? This might be a good opportunity, actually. Most of the public probably isn’t paying attention (when do they ever pay attention to confirmation hearings that don’t involve Supreme Court vacancies?) and Hagel’s been so ridiculously bad today that not even otherwise sympathetic media can spin it. After you watch him notify the Senate that they’ll have to confirm him before finding out just how unqualified he is, watch below as Dana Bash admits on CNN that even Democratic senators can’t get over how poorly he’s done. Jen Rubin says a Democrat on the Hill told her, “It is very clear from the testimony that Sen. Hagel will not be bringing the potato salad to the next Mensa picnic.” The bar for publicly embarrassing Democrats into dooming Obama’s nominee is very, very, very high, but this guy has a slim chance of clearing it. Says a lot about O’s contempt for his party leadership, and of course for the public, that he’d feed this to them.