Posted on 01/21/2007 8:13:15 AM PST by Timmy
Chuck Hagel for president
By ROBERT SCHEER
Published Sunday, January 21, 2007
Chuck Hagel for president!
If it ever narrows down to a choice between him and some Democratic hack who hasn’t the guts to fundamentally challenge the president on Iraq, then the conservative Republican from Nebraska will have my vote. Yes, the war is that important, and the fact that Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, the leading Democratic candidate, still can’t or won’t take a clear stand on the occupation is insulting to the vast majority of voters who have.
Hagel is a decorated Vietnam War vet who learned the crucial lessons of that Democrat-launched debacle of post-colonial imperialism.
Even more important, he has the courage to challenge a president from his own party who so clearly didn’t.
"The speech given" Jan. 10 "by this president represents the most dangerous foreign-policy blunder in this country since Vietnam," Hagel said. "We are projecting ourselves further and deeper into a situation that we cannot win militarily.
"To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives to be put in the middle of a civil war is wrong. It’s, first of all, in my opinion, morally wrong. It’s tactically, strategically, militarily wrong," he added.
If Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, another Democratic darling, has uttered words of such clarifying dissent on the president’s disastrous course, then I haven’t heard them.
Instead, too many leading Democratic politicians continue to act as if they fear that if they are forthright in opposing the war, they will appear weak, whether on national security or the protection of Israel, and so ignore the clear, strong voice of the American people that just revived their party’s fortunes.
Ever since President Ronald Reagan painted foreign policy as a simplistic war of good versus evil, the Republican Party has been in the thrall of neocon adventurers.
Yet, the national emergence of Hagel reminds us that, two decades earlier, it was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a war hero and a Republican, who was the only president to clearly challenge the simplistic and jingoistic militarism that most Democrats embraced during the Cold War.
It was President Eisenhower, in fact, who refused to send troops to Vietnam and his Democratic successors who opened the gates of war.
True conservatives, going back to George Washington, have always been wary of the "foreign entanglements" that our first general and president warned against in his farewell address. And it is in that spirit, recognizing the limits to U.S. military power, that Hagel spoke on NBC’s "Meet the Press."
Independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, late of an oft-opportunistic Democratic Party that saw fit to nominate him as recently as 2000 for the vice presidency, had just finished accusing those who don’t support Bush’s escalation of the war of being "all about failing." In his defense of the indefensible, Lieberman baldly repeated many of Bush’s lies that launched this war four years ago.
"The American people ... have been attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we’re fighting in Iraq today, supported by a rising Islamist radical superpowered government in Iran," the fear-monger said. "Allowing Iraq to collapse would be a disaster for the Iraqis, for the Middle East, for us, that would embolden the Iranians and al-Qaida, who are our enemies. And they would follow us back here."
Never mind the ridiculous image of "superpowered" Iran invading the United States or the fact that foreign jihadists - arriving after the overthrow of anti-fundamentalist strongman Saddam Hussein - make up only a tiny fraction of the combatants in Iraq. The question is how the apparently intelligent Lieberman doesn’t understand that the main task of our troops for most of their stay in Iraq has been, de facto, to expand the power of Shiite theocrats trained for decades in Iran. Tehran couldn’t have baited a better trap.
In any case, Hagel refused to bite on Lieberman’s apocalyptic vision, which somehow manages to skip the hard truth that Iraq has collapsed because of our involvement, not despite it.
"The fact is the Iraqi people will determine the fate of Iraq," Hagel responded, in what amounts to a radical opinion in paternalistic, arrogant Washington.
"The people of the Middle East will determine their fate," he said. "We continue to interject ourselves in a situation that we never have understood, we’ve never comprehended," and "we now have to devise a way to find some political consensus with our allies" and "the regional powers, including Iran and Syria.
"To say that we are going to feed more young men and women into that grinder, put them in the middle of a tribal, sectarian civil war, is not going to fix the problem," he added.
Words of wisdom that set the standard for anyone running for president.
I doubt there is one poster on FR who would support Hagel.
Chuck Hagel would make a worse president than Hillary Clinton.
Which Republican is THAT?
It sure as hell ain't Hagel!
For which party will Hagel run??
Ben Nelson is probably more to the right than Hagel.
Always remember that columnist Scheer enjoys the distinction of being SO far left that EVEN THE LA TIMES fired him.
LOL
I don't recall Hagel speaking out when Clinton sent troops to Bosnia or Haiti.
Being qualified means a person must have character, integrity, be pro-American, stead fast principals and values, a through understanding of and led by the United States Constitution in war and in peace.
There is no doubt that a person of the Clinton persuasion would have been burned at the stake and in later years been tried for treason and other crimes. In times of real morality and real values, these two would never have been considered for leadership in any elected position.
“Look, I’m a long-shot for the Republican nomination,” Hagel admitted. “McCain, Guiliani, and Romney are all lining up as ‘hawks.’ My only chance is if the whole war is a disaster. This resolution is a risk-free way for me to help bring that about. Without a united country behind him, Bush can’t win this. At the same time, I’m on the right side of the polls. I could be seen both as a visionary and a man of the people. It’s my best option if I’m ever going to be president.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
LOL... this clown Hagel will get like 3 votes in the primaries if he runs for President.
Hagel is on the same level as Jimmy Carter in my book. What a disgrace to the Republican party and our country.
I note that you have violated JimRob's rule about changing headlines.
Is it surprising that a communist would support a candidate named 'Hagel' ( I'm thinking a homonym for Hegel)?
You must really hate Dubya then. Chuck Hagel is to right of Bush on prescription drugs (voted against Bush's budget busting "reform") and campaign finance reform (he voted against the McCain Bill that bill Bush signed).
Who would have thought 30 yrs ago we would have Presidential candidates named Hussein or Hagel?
Maybe we can put up a counter ticket of Adolf Mussilini Stalin and a running mate of Ghangis Ho Chi Pot?
I saw this at Huff Post. Scheer lunacy!
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