I have not been on team anti-Chuck Hagel mostly because I didn’t know a lot about Chuck Hagel.
But what I’m finding out is deeply troubling — including David Brooks’ excellent post highlighted in my post Hagel the perfect foil to manage military’s decline over Republican objections.
Hagel seems like the perfect smash-mouth Obama nominee, someone who, like his possibly future boss, is more interested in smashing Republicans and dividing the opposition than strengthening our international standing. He’s a flip-flopper’s delight, for the war then self-righteously against it, on the wrong side of almost every issue (such as the Iraq surge) while claiming moral superiority every step of the way, as Bret Stephens demonstrated.
I warned repeatedly that in a second term Obama would bring the hammer down on Israel, and Hagel has the pedigree to do it with a smirk on his face.
Make no mistake. The problem is not Chuck Hagel in isolation, it’s what the nomination of Hagel says about where Obama wants our defense and foreign policy to go.
I’ll use this post to collect links on Hagel:
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