Even for controversial nominees, Senate confirmation hearings
are usually a time to shine in the center of the media spotlight.
In his confirmation hearing last week, Chuck Hagel didn’t look like
a star under a spotlight: Hagel looked like a deer in the
headlights.
Former Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel went through a whole day of
questioning in his quest to be the next Secretary of Defense by
delivering fumbling, nearly incoherent remarks, flip-flopping on
his long record of opposition to Israel and toughness against
terrorists (including Iran) faster than a freshly-caught fish.
Hagel was so bad at responding to Senate Armed Services
Committee members that, at times, Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mi) had to
correct him. Questioned about Iran’s nuclear weapons program — and
Obama’s policy — Hagel said, “I support the president’s strong
position on containment.” But Obama has declared containment was
not our policy. Obama’s policy has only succeeded in alienating
Israel and encouraging Iran’s bellicosity. For those who may not
remember, Obama’s 2008 campaign promised unconditional negotiations
with Iran, which Iran rejected forcefully. Since then, Obama has
mouthed decisiveness but has done nothing more than increasing
economic sanctions which haven’t slowed, far less stopped, Iran’s
march to the bomb.
Then Hagel was handed a note, which caused him to say that “we
don’t have a position on containment,” at which point Levin threw
him a life preserver saying, “Just to make sure your correction is
clear, we do have a position on containment: which is that we do
not favor containment.” It was so bad that an Obama aide told the
New York Times that Hagel’s Iran wanderings were
“somewhere between baffling and
incomprehensible.”
His performance — on Israel, the Iraq surge, on the future
strength of our military — was comprehensively awful. Having said
that the “Jewish lobby” has intimidated many members of Congress,
Hagel couldn’t name a single one who he believed had been
intimidated. Having previously said that the Iraq surge was our
biggest foreign policy mistake since Vietnam, Hagel refused to
answer Sen. McCain’s question on whether the surge was a mistake or
not. He abandoned his long-held beliefs so often many senators such
as Texas’ Ted Cruz simply didn’t believe what he said.
No cabinet nominee in living memory has performed so badly in a
confirmation hearing. Hagel, who has said that the Pentagon budget
was “bloated” and needed to be cut, didn’t show much — really any
— knowledge about how the budget was structured or how it stands
after the $500 billion in cuts that have already been made or what
the future effects will be of the sequestration of funds — which
will happen next month — that will add another $600 billion in
cuts over the next decade.
Hagel served in combat as a sergeant in Vietnam. But promoting
Sergeant Hagel to Secretary of Defense will be the same as
promoting a power-wrench wielding worker from the production line
to CEO of Ford. He’s out of his depth and will serve as a tool of
his president in dismantling the military.
Despite his awful performance, Hagel will be confirmed to
succeed Leon Panetta as defense secretary. A sufficient number of
Republicans have said that they won’t filibuster the nomination
because they believe Hagel — a former member of their club —
deserves a vote.
We can expect that Hagel will be an ideal Pentagon chief for
Obama, not for what the nation needs. The nation needs a defense
chief who will capture the best intelligence information and
analyze it to determine what threats the Pentagon will have to
deter or defeat in the next ten years. We need a defense secretary
who would then, with the president, devise a strategy to accomplish
that goal and then, from the strategy, derive a Pentagon budget in
detail to answer those threats.
We need a defense chief like Caspar Weinberger or Donald
Rumsfeld who is expert in defense analysis and budgeting, someone
who could go to the president and tell him that we don’t have the
means to accomplish the “Pacific shift” the president’s strategy
requires or to provide the sea-based missile defense Obama promised
Poland when he reneged on Bush’s promise of a land- based defense.
Hagel isn’t that man. He’ll be Obama’s yes man at the Pentagon, a
useful tool and nothing more.
Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey have
fought long and hard against the sequestration cuts because they
will result in a force so small and weak that our military will
have to abandon some of the missions it is now expected to perform.
Hagel won’t fight the cuts, he’ll embrace them. And he will embrace
Obama’s politics for the Pentagon.
Hagel will push Obama’s “women in combat” policy and whatever
expansion there can be of the policy that embraces the homosexual
agenda. And Hagel will be at the forefront with the political waste
Obama’s team has imposed on defense spending.
The next time Navy Secretary Ray Mabus wants to spend $427 per
gallon on “green” fuel instead of buying diesel at $3.20 per gallon
— as Mabus did with the Solazyme company — Hagel will encourage
the waste. He will do what Obama wants him to do, reducing the
force — and our nuclear capability — as much as his president
wants.
In the hearing, Hagel said, “There are a lot of things I don’t
know about. If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do.”
So who will be his tutors? President Obama, who will continue his
efforts to reduce America from a superpower to an also-ran.
Secretary of State Vichy John Kerry, who wants to focus on global
warming and negotiations with Iran, and John Brennan, who has
encouraged Obama to play whack-a-mole against terrorists in Libya,
Uganda, and across Africa.
With tutors like those, Hagel won’t learn anything useful to
defending America and its allies and interests abroad.
Under Leon Panetta, the military has had a rough four years.
Under Hagel, it will only get worse.
The White House touts Hagel as the military equivalent of a “man
of the people,” a former enlisted man who understands and relates
to the troops as only one of them could. But Hagel doesn’t know any
more about the troops than any other anti-war liberal. It’s not
something he can learn on the job. What will Hagel do for the
warriors who see political correctness ending their combat
effectiveness?
It’s tempting to say that the troops should just quit, leaving
the battlefield to the girls and the gays. But they shouldn’t, and
it won’t be Hagel who can convince them of their duty in the
politicized Obama military.
It’s up to the veteran warriors, those who fought in Desert
Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan, to stay, to outlast Obama’s decimation
of our combat forces and the attempted destruction of the military
culture that is essential to winning future wars. It is they,
officers and enlisted men alike, who have to stay to train the
young people coming in, to impart to them the values that the
veterans hold most dear.
I remember what my dad told me and my roommate on the day we
were commissioned as second lieutenants in the Air Force. Dad was a
World War II mud Marine. He’d seen it all on Guadalcanal, Tarawa,
and Iwo Jima. As graduation presents he gave each of us a Marine
K-bar combat knife with this advice. “Right now, you two are
highly-educated and motivated. But you’re two of the most useless
people on earth. Find some guy with a lot of stripes on his sleeve
and ask his advice every day. If you do what he suggests, every
time he suggests it, you might survive and even do a good job.”
What do you tell a new brown bar if he can’t find that gunny or
E-6 who’s been there and done that for twenty years? Chuck Hagel
doesn’t know, and that’s why we need the veterans to stay. We can
survive four years of Chuck Hagel if our warriors do their duty,
staying on the job despite the chicken**** and the policies that
would otherwise destroy the military culture by a thousand
cuts.
It’s all up to you, gents. It’s your duty to stay and maintain
the core force that can be restored when we need it. Your forbears
did it between the World Wars, after Vietnam, and throughout our
history. Now it’s your turn.
Photo: UPI
