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CHUCK HAGEL FOR PRESIDENT? A SANE FOREIGN POLICY VOICE
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Thursday, Sep 16 2004, 8:48PM
AFTER 9-11 AND UP TO THE TIME OF THE IRAQ INVASION, Senator Chuck Hagel was one of the very few voices of sanity in senior Republican circles.
Although I don't have his earlier statements on hand to hyperlink to this post (I'll try and dig some up), I heard Chuck Hagel speak to a small group organized by Jack Janes and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies where Hagel outlined a set of crucial "questions" that the Bush administration had failed to answer in its war against terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Hagel supported his president in the end, particularly after the invastion started, but few know that his views were sensible and raised many of the questions Kerry is now posing. In fact, I think Hagel lodged more of an internal battle over foreign policy inside the Republican Party than the Democrats did in Congress before the Iraq War.
Around this same time, I had the opportunity to participate in a small lunch with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at the German Ambassador's home -- and I was struck by how nearly identical Fischer's recited roster of unanswered questions about the war were to Hagel's.
In the room with Fischer that day were host German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Steinberg, Sandy Berger, Robert Kimmitt, Leon Fuerth, Ted Koppel, and others -- and many were pretty tough on Germany's and Fischer's resistance on the Iraq War. But Chuck Hagel at that time was pretty much hitting the same buttons inside the Republican Party.
Today, in an AP story on Kerry's statement that Bush is not being straight on Iraq, Chuck Hagel is again the hero and saying the right things.
In the AP report:
Bush also faced tough assessments of Iraq from quarters that typically would echo the commander in chief. The head of the Army Reserve said his force of part-time soldiers has yet to fully adapt to the demands of a global war on terrorism. And a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said the situation in Iraq is deteriorating.
"The worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we're winning," said Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran. "Right now we're not winning. Things are getting worse."
John Kerry needs to point out that Bush's own team is deeply concerned about Iraq -- and he ought to go give Chuck Hagel the kind of bear hug Bush gave John McCain.
For $6.21 and a lot of real or assumed Nebraska state spirit, you can attend the famous six-decade old "Nebraska Breakfast" which Senator Hagel hosts in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. It's best to get there by 7:30 a.m., and the next breakfasts are on September 22nd and 29th.
Hagel deserves kudos and strong applause for giving serious thought to the health of America's national security circumstances and for raising the right questions despite the Bush team's attempts to squash them.
Suffice it to say, I don't expect to see Chuck Hagel signing any Committee on the Present Danger manifestos.
-- Steve Clemons
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Sometimes I wonder if I should even be worried about Hagel's ownership of a voting machine company. He acts like a reasonable guy far too often.
The acid test of Bush's folly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1306411,00.html
Simon Tisdall
Friday September 17, 2004
The Guardian
The corrosive impact of the Iraq crisis in almost all areas of international relations, as well as on Iraq's long-suffering civilians, was dramatically demonstrated yesterday by the UN general secretary Kofi Annan's blunt declaration that last year's war was illegal.
The recent spat between the US and Iraq's northern neighbour Turkey is a case in point. Since the war officially ended, Turkey has fretted about Iraq's possible fragmentation, Kurdish separatism, and the safety of Iraq's ethnic Turk minority.
When US forces attacked the city of Tal Afar, home to many Turkomen, last week, Ankara finally drew the line.
Unless they called a "total stop" to the fighting there, the foreign minister Abdullah Gul said, Turkey would suspend all cooperation: and that would include closing the vital supply lines to northern Iraq.
Thus has a "liberated" Iraq achieved by default something that Saddam Hussein never could: an open if temporary rupture between the US and a key Muslim ally which is now increasingly identifying with the EU.
Turkey's concern about regional stability is shared by Iraq's other neighbours. Jordan and Syria have good cause for alarm, and according to a new study by the Chatham House thinktank in London, full-scale civil war in Iraq would ineluctably draw in Saudi Arabia in support of the Sunni minority.
The war has had a deeply destabilising impact on the House of Saud. It has further strained ties with the US already badly frayed by 9/11. Whereas in the past, Saudi jihadis (holy warriors), principally from al-Qaida, have gone abroad to pursue their terrorist aims, the US occupation of Iraq has drawn them to a new base, awash with arms and munitions, from which to attack western interests in Saudi Arabia.
On Wednesday another Briton fell victim to that barely contained internal breakdown, fatally shot in Riyadh.
"In all likelihood, Saudi Arabia will be contaminated with jihadis in the same way as Afghanistan," the Chatham House study says. "Osama bin Laden's ideological children are returning to his homeland."
One thing at stake is the west's oil supply. If the Iraq war really was about securing the Middle East oilfields, then George Bush may be well on the way to achieving the exact opposite.
Another ostensibly unsettling consequence is that Iran may emerge stronger, in regional terms; another potential case of the US shooting itself in the foot.
Iranian economic, cultural and political influence with Iraq's Shia majority is growing. An isolated Syria is ever more dependent on Iranian goodwill. And the US is so bogged down militarily that, it is argued, the chances of aggression against Tehran are now diminishing.
For these reasons Iran's dominant conservatives hope the US will agree to unconditional dialogue. However, civil war in Iraq could just as easily suck them in against the US on the side of the Shia.
In this unpredictable, potentially chaotic regional evolution can be heard the death knell for Mr Bush's "Greater Middle East Initiative" to deliver democracy to all the Arabs.
And his infamous doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, preventive war and forcible regime change also seems to be dying in the aftermath of its first application in Iraq.
Another GOP grownup on Foreign policy is Senator Lugar (Think Nunn-Lugar act for security and destruction of FSU nukes). Lugar actually ran for prez in 96 and did not go anywhere. I suspect Hagel would get the same cold shoulder from the DeLay crowd. I had a chance to hear Lugar speak in Feb 2003, before the invasion. Lugar was complaining at the time that the Bush administration was not discussing its post war Iraq plans with Congress and had no list of budgetary requirements, had not discussed its post war plans (what plans?), etc.
Lugar has been a strong defender and supporter of the president and willing to help, but has been left out of the loop by the administration. Today the Senate FRC basically told the administration to get its sh*t together and chastized them over the slow pace of Iraq reconstruction. IMHO, nothing will change because Bush Iraq nation building policy is rooted in cronyism and that alone dooms it to failure. Unfortunately, such constructive criticism seems to be mistaken for disloyalty by the Bush administration and I expect little effect. Lately the Senate Foreign relations committee has been a voice of reality for the situation in Iraq.
Bush is constantly on the campaign trail and seems to be clueless about the problems. It is clear that Bush enjoys campaigning and winning elections. It is less clear that he enjoys governing (other than the adulation of pre-selected audiences). I find it hard to believe that Americans will give his cheerleading on Iraq much credibility. There is too big of a disconnect between the situation in Iraq as reported and the rosy scenario Mr. Bush envisions.
Do we need to ask the question, "Is he delusional? or just lying?"
Speaking of Bush being clueless...
U.S. Intelligence Offers Gloomy Outlook for Iraq
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. intelligence report prepared for President Bush in July offered a gloomy outlook for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst scenario being a deterioration into civil war, government officials said on Thursday.
The National Intelligence Estimate, which is a compilation of views from various intelligence agencies, predicted three scenarios, from a tenuous stability to political fragmentation to the most negative assessment of civil war, officials said.
Still, Bush insisted to supporters in St. Cloud, Minnesota: "Iraq is headed toward democracy." ( I did not see this on the National Intelligence Estimate )
DING DING DING ! This is a proof postive that Bush is deluded and unwilling to change, a character flaw that shows "INATTENTION and INDIFFERENCE" rather than strength. Bush sees everything in black and white which shows arrogant stupidity and should be alarming to Americans since "inattention and indifference" is dangerous and cannot be TRUSTED.
Kerry correctly labels him as the 'EXCUSE PRESIDENT - "never wrong, never responsible, never to blame. President Bush's desk isn't where the buck stops -- it's where the blame begins."
As Kerry states "George Bush got us into this quagmire. It will take a new president to get us out."
George W. Bush has NOT earned our TRUST, is a FAILURE and should be FIRED !
Hagel deserves kudos? For supporting a war against his better judgment? For continuing to support a president who lied, that this nation would war?
I will never understand people like you.
To J. Burl:
Hey, enjoy the moderate Republicans while you can. If Santorum and DeLay are running things, it only gets worse. There are some good Repubs out there, even if they do have to toe their party's line from time to time. At least they are willing to work with the Dems on important issues of bipartisan interest.
Al: If you honestly believe there excists a bipartisan member of the GOP in 2004, you are a fool.
Each and every member of the democratic and republican party who supports GW Bush, supports... mindless violence, which our soldiers pay in blood; supports the greatest foreign policy blunder in our history of this country; that supports, and celebrates, the death and maiming of Iraqi children, murdered by the bombs dropped into the middle of Iraqi cities. Or, are you the the type of asshole who believes in the fiction of surgical strikes?
Will you be waving an Iraqi flag when Allawi visits next week? 'Cause if you do, you deserve to be forced to serve in Iraq, and take the place of a soldier that wants out.
J. Burl,
Just when I found a confederate you embarrass our position with the use of such invective. I know exactly how you feel and I second your emotion. It's rather difficult to ask you to tone down from diatribe when we both feel such frustration with the "reasoned"(?) populace. As for me, I've come to accept the outright savagery some people are guided by and just try to call them on it to shame them into thinking that perhaps they shouldn't acquiesce so readily to the status quo if such behavior will make them feel safe but sorry. Ultimately, someone is deathly wrong. Ours is a lardaceous life and the resulting grease has replaced most gray matter.
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