Chuck Hagel: Thinking

I have long been interested in Senator Chuck Hagel, a self-styled “Eisenhower Republican” from Nebraska. Still mulling a run for the Presidency in 2008, Hagel’s latest bout of independent “free thinking” deserves greater attention and scrutiny.
Senator Hagel, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, presents a “problem” for the widespread media and academic characterizations of an unprecedented “polarization” in American politics between Democrats and Republicans on foreign policy, and Iraq in particular. No less than the New York Times on July 30th ran a breathless story that began,

“No military conflict in modern times has divided Americans on partisan lines more than the war in Iraq, scholars and pollsters say — not even Vietnam. And those divisions are likely to intensify in what is expected to be a contentious fall election campaign.”

The cited distinguished experts, including Duke Professor Oli Holsti, essentially reduce Americans to mere pawns of their party affiliations, with Republicans being staunch defenders and Democrats as intense critics of the Iraq war. The subsequent defeat of “pro-war” Senator Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary ostensibly would seem to support that line of analysis.
But the New York Times writers and the scholars they quote either forget or consciously ignore Senator Hagel and what he represents — a growing, if still timid, spread of dissident “independent” thinking within Republican ranks.
In the days before the Times story about “unprecedented polarization,” Hagel was out criticizing the Bush Administration, first in a July 28th speech before the Brookings Institution and the next day in a blistering interview with his home-state paper, the Omaha World Herald.
At Brookings, Hagel’s careful remarks emphasized the need for a multilateral approach to the Middle East, for sustained intense diplomatic engagement, with both friends and adversaries, and for the US to be genuinely seen as “fair” in its Middle East dealings – “the currency of trust” and the “wellspring of building consensus.”
While Hagel asserted that “The United States will remain committed to defending Israel….

it need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships. That is an irresponsible and dangerous false choice. Achieving a lasting resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is as much in Israel’s interest as any other country in the world.
Unending war will continually drain Israel of its human capital, resources, and energy as it fights for its survival. The United States and Israel must understand that it is not in their long-term interests to allow themselves to become isolated in the Middle East and the world. Neither can allow themselves to drift into an “us against the world” global optic or zero-sum game. That would marginalize America’s global leadership, trust and influence, further isolate Israel, and prove to be disastrous for both countries as well as the region.

Ironically, given events, Hagel also called for the revival of the 2002 Beirut Declaration approach to peacemaking, a Saudi/Arab League plan to recognize Israel’s right to exist – and simultaneously to establish a recognized and viable Palestinian state. (a plan then opposed by Israel)
In the follow-up interview with the Omaha World Herald, Hagel called conditions in Iraq “an absolute replay of Vietnam,” where U.S. soldiers have become “easy targets” in a country that has descended into “absolute anarchy.” Hagel was particularly disturbed by reports that the Pentagon was calling for an additional 5,000 US troops for Iraq: “That isn’t going to do any good. It’s going to have a worse effect,” Hagel said. “They’re destroying the United States Army.”
Hagel’s candor has one Nebraska blogger marveling,

My God, a Republican Senator talking about the reality of the situation in Iraq – not just wagging a purple finger in the air, not just tossing-off meaningless platitudes about staying the course.
Though it’s undeniably too simplistic to draw too close a comparison between Iraq and Vietnam, it’s comforting to know that Hagel – a man who actually lived through the horrors of war – keeps an actual eye to the lessons of history rather than just irresponsibly reading from the Bush Administration’s talking points.

At the end of July, on the floor of the Senate, Hagel repeated much of his Brookings speech, prefaced with a harsher criticism of the Bush Administration’s then 3 week old non-approach to ending the Israel-Lebanon confrontation:

“How do we realistically believe that a continuation of the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon, is going to enhance America’s image and give us the trust and credibility to lead a lasting and sustained peace effort in the Middle East?”
“The sickening slaughter on both sides must end now. President Bush must call for an immediate cease fire. This madness must stop.”

Before Fox Fire
Hagel’s criticisms at the end of July were largely ignored, until the Senator appeared yesterday, August 20th, on Fox News Sunday, with Chris Wallace. In the following section, I will be quoting from the transcript extensively, and with emphasis added on especially interesting quotes.

After Hagel essentially agreed with the Federal Judge who had ruled the NSA’s warrangless wiretap program was unconstitutional, Wallace noted how Hagel’s own Republican party had “jumped” all over this decision, saying that it “shows the fundamental choice between Republicans and Democrats.”
While Hagel demurred to others to “speak for the party,” he also wasn’t going to “defend” it either:

Both parties are at significant peril in the election this year if they continue to define down to the lowest political common denominator this issue of terrorism.
We have on the one side the Democrats running around saying well, the Republicans are warmongers, they want to take your rights away from you, you can’t trust them. The Republicans, evidenced by that headline you threw up, are saying about the Democrats they’re cut and run, you can’t trust them.
What’s going to happen here — not only is there going to be a response to this in the November 7th election, but if you continue to debase this issue, a very serious issue — terrorism is a serious issue. It is a threat. It’s real.
If you continue to define it down to the lowest political common denominator for both parties, then what you’re going to find is the American people not taking it seriously, that it’s just another wedge issue…..
I don’t think those kind of headlines do any good. I don’t like it. I’ve said it, even though it’s my own party. This is a real issue. This is consuming our country, this one issue….

Wallace then went after Hagel’s characterization of conditions in Iraq as an “absolute replay of Vietnam,” taking it to its potential logical conclusion: “Is the president’s effort, policy, mission to create a unified democratic Iraq a lost cause?”

HAGEL: Well, history will determine that. I can’t determine that. You can’t either. The fact… is we are where we are. We’re not going to go back and replay or unwind the bad decisions, and I think we made them right from the beginning, beginning with the fact that we didn’t have enough troops going in. But that’s essentially irrelevant now.
It’s how do we get out of this mess. We’ve got a very unstable Middle East, I think the most unstable Middle East we’ve seen since 1948. And you can measure that any way you want. The fact is the future of Iraq will be determined by the Iraqi people just like it was in Vietnam.
The answer, in my opinion, is not to just keep feeding more American troops into it. The Iraqi people have already made some decisions here. We, in fact, are in probably a low grade, maybe a very defined, civil war.
You’ve got corruption everywhere, as bad as it’s ever been…. Iran probably has more influence in Iraq than we do at this point.

As for what then is to be done, Hagel went on:

We have to play the cards we have right now, and that is that we are going to have to do everything we can, as we have been doing, to assist Iraqis to start governing, to start defending themselves, start supporting themselves.
Now, we’ve made a big deal out of the fact that they have a functioning constitution — that’s a significant achievement. An elected, fair free government, unity government — significant achievement. Now they must govern themselves. They must support themselves.
WALLACE: But you have said that you think that we should begin pulling troops out within six months.
HAGEL: I do.
WALLACE: How is that going to make things better?
HAGEL: Well, how is it going to make things better for us to continue to kill Americans and put Americans in the middle of a civil war that we have less and less control and influence over every day? How does that stabilize things?
This is going to play out, Chris, on its own. I’m not saying pull out of Iraq. That’s not what I’ve said. I’ve said start withdrawing troops. We have to show the Iraqi people — and this obviously cuts right to the great anti-Americanism by any poll, by any measurements there — that we are not there to predetermine their outcome. We’re not there to control or to govern. They are going to have to do that.
Now, the fact is — bottom line, Chris — there are very few options here. We don’t have any good options. We’ve got a mess on our hands in the Middle East. We’ve got two wars. We just lost four Americans yesterday in Afghanistan. Things aren’t going well there. We’ve got a peace in Lebanon that is barely holding.
So to continue to feed American troops into this I think takes away America’s diplomatic options and military options because we’re more and more bogged down.

Chris Wallace then returned to his initial effort to tar Hagel as a “democrat:” (for a Fox News audience)

After we announced your appearance this week, we got some e- mail from our conservative viewers saying, hey, this guy’s really a Democrat…. You favor direct talks with Iran, Syria and Hamas. Three weeks ago you called for an immediate truce with Hezbollah, saying the Israeli offensive was hurting our standing in the Middle East.
You’ve been very critical, as we’ve just heard, of U.S. policy in Iraq. And you have problems with NSA wiretaps and parts of the Patriot Act. When it comes to national security, are you closer to John Kerry than you are to George W. Bush?

Hagel didn’t take the bait.

HAGEL: Chris, I’m going to go back to the comment I made earlier. When it comes to war, Americans dying in a war, national security, it should never be held captive to a political agenda. I think that’s wrong. I’ve said it’s wrong.
I don’t base my analysis and judgment and votes on war, national security, on a party position. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do. I don’t think Americans really want us to do that.
Now, if you look at my record, my voting record — I’ve been in the Senate 10 years. Do you have any idea what my voting record is in support of the Bush administration position the last six years, the Republican Party? It’s about 95 percent over 10 years. My record is about as conservative as any conservative Republican in the United States Senate. It is constantly — the American Conservative Union constantly rates me as one of the highest.
So I don’t apologize, Chris, to you or anyone else for my position. My conservative credentials are pretty clear.
When it comes to war, Democrats die in war just like Republicans, and we debase war and the responsibility we have when we try to make it captive to a political position or a political party. I won’t do that….

Wallace went on to attempt to get Hagel’s opinion on his party’s political prospects at home.

Wallace: How much trouble is your party in?
HAGEL: Well, we’ll find out on November 7th. I don’t think the answer is the alternative that the Democrats present because I don’t know what that alternative is. What I think the answer is as a Republican — I’ve been a Republican all my life.
First time I voted was in 1968 on top of a tank in the Mekong Delta. I voted a straight Republican ticket. The reason I did is because I believe in the Republican philosophy of governance. It’s not what it used to be. I don’t think it’s the same today.
Where is the fiscal responsibility of the party I joined in ’68? Where is the international engagement of the party I joined, fair, free trade, individual responsibility, not building a bigger government, but building a smaller government?
I think we’ve lost our way. And I think the Republicans are going to be in some jeopardy for that and will be held accountable. Now, the people of each state and of this country will make their own decisions.

Wallace ended the interview with a question about Hagel’s own aspirations for President in 2008 (he’ll decide after November) and an observation that Hagel’s own wife, Lilibet, has just published a book about her husband in which she says that President wouldn’t be “number one on her list of desirable occupations” for her husband. (a sure sign of her “immense good judgment” and sanity, quipped Hagel)
The Iowa political blogger cited above offers a caution that many potential supporters may perceive between Hagel’s words and his actions:

It’s easy, of course, to give Hagel too much credit just for being so distinct… as a Republican Senator. He’s long been shattering illusions about Iraq with his words while voting, time and again, to feed this fantasy Bush & Co. have constructed….
He’s Chuck Hagel, folks – the thinking man’s unthinking Republican. And, you almost have to like him; you just can’t count on him.

This may be a useful check on our “thinking” about Hagel, perhaps. Then again, Hagel in many ways stands as one of the more credible and important political voices of dissent in Washington, especially on US foreign policy towards the Middle East. He also seems more “compelling,” as of now, than anyone on the Democratic side – though I am still looking.
At least on Middle East matters, Hagel seems to me to be well “above” the Republican-Democrat fray. He also has demonstrated a capacity to be “truly” different, even when, or especially when, the partisans mindlessly find agreement.
I’m impressed enough that the next time I am asked if I think of myself as more “conservative” or “liberal” on Middle East issues, I may duck this unhelpful question by replying that I’m more of a… “hagelian.” (with apologies to my political philsophy colleagues)