I've
not formed an opinion on Chuck Hagel as Secretary of War -- it
requires top-notch administrative abilities, and because of the
nature of the position the candidate has to possess a certain
ruthlessness, at some level it's wise if the candidate is a real son
of a bitch. In the past some have crossed this line and exhibited
qualities more akin to Dr. Strangelove -- Donald Rumsfeld held the
position twice & Dick Chaney and Caspar Weinberger had the job as
did Melvin Laird and everyone's favorite dove Robert McNamara. Of
then 17 men in the job since Vietnam, I've trusted the complete
sanity of maybe 3 of them - Bill Cohen, Les Aspin, & Leon Panetta.
The Job involves deploying our forces all over the world in some
reasonable anticipation of where they might deter conflict &
where they might be in a position to intervene in a way that is
decisive enough to shut down conflict.
It also involves advising the
President when and where we should remain bystanders and allow
conflicts to play themselves out because our involvement is highly
likely to make things worse. During the genocide in Cambodia, George
McGovern of all people advocated that we send troops, Bob Dole
needled Clinton about sending weapons to the Muslims in Bosnia, and
scores of people who'd voted against building our fleet of Apache
attack helicopters suddenly wanted the fleet they never wanted to
invade Rwanda. If you think we've already engaged in way too many
military operations since WWII, you can subtract Cambodia, Bosnia,
and Rwanda from that long list - most likely because the War
Secretary made a convincing argument that our involvement would only
make those horrendous situation even worse than they already were.
Mr.Hagel is accused and has semi-apologized for being against
dont-ask-dont-tell and saying Ambassador Hormel was too aggressively
gay to be Ambassador to Luxembourg. It's a stupid statement, first
it's gratuitously anti-gay, and second any actor from central casting
who could stay on script would do no worse than a"C" as our
ambassador to Luxembourg because our relations with that country are
about as untroubled as can be between sovereign states. Hagel knew
that, which makes his anti-gay remarks basically pure. We almost
elected a man President who ran on a constitutional amendment to ban
same-sex marriage nationwide, and who as a senior in prep school
organized a gay-bashing posse. The President makes military policy,
the War Secretary follows those orders. I'm gonna look more closely
at Hagel's record, but I am satisfied that his anti-gay attitudes and
remarks are far enough in the past not to disqualify him per se. If
you are thinking about Bradley Manning, only the President can help
him should he be convicted and harshly sentenced
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