Anyone who watched Chuck Hagel’s lamentable performance before the Senate Armed
Services Committee last week had to conclude that the man is inadequate at best
and woeful at worst for the post of US secretary of defense. Here was a nominee
who did not even know the Obama administration’s position on Iranian nukes (he
said it was containment but was quickly corrected and told it was
prevention).
At a time when the United States faces formidable national
security threats from so many parts of the globe, it’s pretty obvious that a
muddled, befuddled, and at times incoherent candidate for secretary of defense
is a calamity in the making.
Then there is Hagel’s disastrous history of
predictions, like the comment in his 2008 book, America: Our Next Chapter, where
he wrote, “America’s refusal to recognize Iran’s status as a legitimate power
does not decrease Iran’s influence, but rather increases it.” This was just one
year before the government of Iran began to mow down its own citizens in the
streets of Tehran in order to protect that “legitimacy.”
Or Hagel’s
opposition to the Iraq surge, predicting, in January 2007, that it would be “the
most dangerous foreign policy blunder... since Vietnam,” an utterly erroneous
prognostication that he was correctly hammered on by John McCain at the
hearings.
Or Hagel’s 1998 meeting with the elder Assad in Syria, where he
said, “Peace comes through dealing with people. Peace doesn’t come at the end of
a bayonet or the end of a gun.” Tell that to the 60,000 people slaughtered by
the dictator’s son.
Add the fact that Hagel has an irrational dislike of
homosexuals, voted against Iran sanctions and believes America should be talking
to terrorist organizations and Obama’s nomination becomes downright
mystifying.
But what’s even more confusing is how quickly so many Jewish
groups – especially AIPAC – have caved on Hagel. The same man who said that
Israel didn’t need to “keep Palestinians caged up like animals,” and famously
spoke of “the Jewish lobby’s” intimidation of lawmakers on Capitol Hill has been
handed a get-out-of-political-purgatory-free card by many who claim to be
Israel’s foremost defenders.
Senator Chuck Schumer was skeptical about
Hagel but then changed his mind after a 90-minute West Wing meeting. “Based on
several key assurances provided by Senator Hagel,” Schumer said, “I am currently
prepared to vote for his confirmation. I encourage my Senate colleagues who have
shared my previous concerns to also support him.”
Impressive. An
hour-and-a-half conversation undid a 12-year voting record which included, as
recently as 2008, a vote against an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill
to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist
organization.
Schumer is often referred to as the most influential Jewish
member of the Senate. But then how could verbal assurances alone have turned him
around when he is surely aware of the Jewish teaching that it is not what a man
says but what he does that matters? The Daily Beast reported that AIPAC – whose
annual Policy Conference in DC I have attended for 20 years as a huge fan and
supporter – has chosen to sit the Hagel nomination out, desiring as they do a
positive relationship with the Pentagon and believing that President Obama has
enough votes to get him confirmed.
On the surface that seems a wise
choice. Why make enemies, especially if they’re going to be in powerful
positions? But what comes to mind is the famous teaching of Hillel: “If not now,
when?” If you don’t use your political influence to oppose the nomination of
someone who said, “I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator,”
with its regrettable allusion to charges of Jewish dual loyalties, and who
opposed sanctions against Iran, and who called for direct negotiations with
Hezbollah and Hamas, then when will you speak up? Indeed, demonstrating a
complete absence of political will to oppose a man like Hagel has its own
risks.
WHAT ARE brave United States lawmakers like freshman Senator Ted
Cruz of Texas to make of AIPAC’s surrender? Are they to feel that they are the
ones charged with protecting Israel while organizations whose stated purpose it
is to do just that sit on the sidelines? During the hearings Cruz aired a clip
from Al Jazeera in which Hagel appeared to agree with a caller who accused
Israel of atrocities. Cruz said: “The caller suggests that the nation of Israel
has committed war crimes, and your response to that was not to dispute that
characterization.” Cruz then asked Hagel directly whether he thinks Israel was
guilty of war crimes, saying the suggestion was “particularly offensive given
that the Jewish people suffered under the most horrific war crimes in the
Holocaust... I would also suggest that for... a prospective secretary of defense
not to take issue with that claim is highly troubling.”
And what should
Senator Jim Inhofe be thinking? Of Hagel’s views on America’s relationship with
Iran and Israel, he said, “Too often it seems he’s willing to subscribe to a
worldview that is predicated on appeasing our adversaries while shunning our
friends.”
Should Inhofe be protecting Israel more than AIPAC? Then there
is Senator Lindsay Graham who defended the pro-Israel lobby by pressuring a
cowering Hagel to admit he could not name a single lawmaker who had ever been
intimidated by those scary Jews. Graham predicted that Hagel would be “the most
antagonistic secretary of defense toward the State of Israel in our nation’s
history.”
Perhaps the pro-Israel lobby as a whole can learn how to stand
up for itself from its LGBT counterpart.
In 1998, Hagel’s homophobia once
more manifested itself in his opposition to President Clinton’s appointing Jim
Hormel ambassador to Luxembourg, stating that he was “openly, aggressively gay.”
The Human Rights campaign, the nation’s largest gayrights advocacy group,
recently demanded that Hagel apologize for the disgusting remark. Sure enough,
Hagel apologized, which just goes to show you that not everyone is afraid of
alienating a potentially powerful member of the Cabinet.
How ironic that
pro-Israel groups have themselves proven the falsity of Hagel’s defamatory
claims of intimidation. It turns out that even when it comes to nominees with
deeply troubling records on Israel, they have little bark and still less
bite.
The writer has just published his newest best-seller, The Fed-up
Man of Faith: Challenging God in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering. Follow him
on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
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