Secretary of offense

By Max J. Castro
majcastro@gmail.com

In a marathon confirmation hearing last week, Senate Republicans gave Chuck Hagel, President Barack Obama’s for Secretary of Defense, a very hard time. There would be nothing unusual about this except for the fact that Hagel is a Republican and a former Senator who was a colleague and friend of several of those now coming at him with knives drawn. He is also a Vietnam veteran who received a pair of Purple Hearts for two wounds suffered during his service as an infantry squad leader. Hagel would be the first enlisted member of the armed forces to become Defense Secretary.

Given his track record, one might have thought Republican Senators would be on their feet cheering Hagel. That instead they are hitting him with sharp barbs and threatening to scuttle his appointment signals something significant. It is that the disaster in Iraq and the ongoing quagmire in Afghanistan have not stopped the hawks from continuing to push for a world characterized by a very muscular U.S. hegemony. Conversely, Obama’s choice of Hagel indicates that in his second term the president intends to pursue a different objective.

What GOP and neoconservatives critics of Hagel have demonstrated in recent days is that what they really want is not a U.S. Secretary of Defense. They want a U.S. Secretary of Offense. And they know that is not where Chuck Hagel is coming from. Although he voted for the Iraq war, Hagel soon realized what a mistake the U.S. invasion and occupation had been. He opposed the escalation of U.S. involvement, or the so-called surge.

Hagel also has been virtually the only successful American politicians who has strayed from the bipartisan “Israel can do no wrong” line. He even has criticized the hard-line pro-Israel lobby in the United States. During the Israeli war – ostensibly against Hezbollah but which in the process devastated much of Lebanon – Hagel was the only member of Congress who did not join the cheerleading and instead pointed out that Lebanon is also a U.S. ally. And, while George W. Bush was tightening the embargo on Cuba to inhumane dimensions, Hagel was an outspoken advocate of a policy of engagement.

Those trying to block Hagel’s nomination are trying to exploit his past deviations from orthodoxy, particularly on Israel. But what really concerns the likes of Hagel’s former colleague John McCain, who grilled the nominee with a vengeance, is Hagel’s overall view of the use of American power.

On that, the most salient issue right now is Iran. McCain attacked Hagel for having voted against economic sanctions against that country several years ago. The same people who pushed for war in Iraq would like the military option, which Obama says he hasn’t taken off the table, executed sooner rather than later. They fear that as the key member of the president’s cabinet on military matters, Hagel’s would be a skeptical voice regarding an armed attack on the Iranians.

They are very probably right. In a January 27 opinion column in The Washington Post, Bob Woodward recounts a meeting between Hagel and Obama four years ago:

“In the first months of the Obama presidency in 2009, Chuck Hagel, who had just finished two terms as a U.S. senator, went to the White House to visit with the friend he had made during the four years they overlapped in the Senate.

“So, President Obama asked, what do you think about foreign policy and defense issues?

“According to an account that Hagel later gave, and is reported here for the first time, he told Obama: ‘We are at a time where there is a new world order. We don’t control it. You must question everything, every assumption, everything they’ – the military and diplomats – ‘tell you. Any assumption 10 years old is out of date. You need to question our role. You need to question the military. You need to question what are we using the military for.’”

Evidently, Obama liked what he heard. And Hagel, with his strong military record, would provide the president some cover against volleys from the right when it comes to curtailing the armed forces’ insatiable claims on the budget and bolster Obama’s resolve to resist Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to bully or blackmail the United States into attacking Iran.

The betting in Washington is that Hagel will win confirmation, although not without a fight. In order to have any chance of winning confirmation, Hagel already has been forced to apologize regarding his comments on the pro-Israel lobby and express before the Senate committee views about the use of U.S. power more hawkish than those he shared with Obama in 2009.

His terrible performance at the hearing likely reflects the psychological strain of saying one thing while thinking another. And Hagel faces a hurdle no other nominee to the cabinet in history has ever faced in the form of two shadowy organizations financed by secret funders running campaigns against his confirmation. The same forces that tried to torpedo Obama unsuccessfully are gunning for Hagel.

While a win by Hagel would increase the chances of a saner and more nuanced U.S. foreign and defense policy, don’t expect any sharp turns or sudden reversals. The military-industrial complex, U.S. business interests, and conservative policy and political elites represent formidable obstacles to fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy. And yes, there is also a large number of ordinary Americans who want this country to remain the “indispensable” – read dominating – nation on the planet.