Is he the next defense secretary? Vietnam scars shape Hagel’s outlook - Basketball Forum : Professional and College Basketball Forums

**Prince** · 12-20-2012, 10:13 AM

Quote:

Shards from a Vietcong mine are still embedded in Chuck Hagel’s chest, 44 years after his infantry squad walked into a booby trap in the Vietnam jungle. Scar tissue marks the left side of his face from another mine explosion, barely a month after his first brush with death.

“I remember,” Hagel told an interviewer for the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project in 2002, “thinking to myself, you know, if I ever get out of all of this, I am going to do everything I can to assure that war is the last resort that we, a nation, a people, calls upon to settle a dispute. The horror of it, the pain of it, the suffering of it. People just don’t understand it unless they’ve been through it.”

Today, Hagel, 66, heads President Obama’s shortlist of candidates to lead the Pentagon. If he is nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate, he would become the first defense secretary with a Purple Heart, the combat decoration for those wounded in battle, since Elliot L. Richardson, who held the job briefly during the Nixon administration.

Hagel served 24 months in the Army as an enlisted grunt before embarking on successful careers in business and politics that saw him earn millions and win election to the Senate, twice, as a Republican from Nebraska.

Although his views on whether the Vietnam War was justified have changed over time, Hagel’s combat experiences have consistently driven his approach to foreign policy, his political passion.

As a senator, he voted to authorize the war in Iraq but soon became the most vocal and cutting Republican critic of the George W. Bush administration, accusing it of bungling the occupation. In 2007, he warned that Bush’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq would be “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.”

His unbridled assessments left other Republicans wondering whose side he was on and thoroughly alienated the GOP’s neoconservative wing, which still hasn’t gotten over its resentment. In recent days, some of them have intensified a campaign to shoot down his potential nomination even before Obama has made an announcement, ripping Hagel for what they see as his weak stance on Iran and his insufficient support of Israel.

“Stopping a war is a hell of a lot harder than starting it, and Chuck understands that,” said Bob Kerrey, another former Nebraska senator and Vietnam War hero. “Sometimes it provokes cries from the right that he’s soft. But it’s just that he’s experienced it and it animates him.”

At times, however, Hagel has almost seemed to delight in thumbing his nose at his party. During this fall’s campaign, signs supporting Obama and Democratic candidate for Senate Tim Kaine were posted on the front yard of his Northern Virginia home. Hagel said his wife, Lilibet, put them up, but he didn’t disavow them, either.

Four days before the election, he further irritated the GOP by publicly endorsing Kerrey, a Democrat, making an ultimately futile bid to reclaim an open Nebraska Senate seat, even though Hagel had previously said he wouldn’t take sides in the race. Hagel said he acted in an attempt to help break the partisan “nonsense that’s literally strangling our country.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...y.html?hpid=z1

**Krstic All-Star** · 12-20-2012, 10:32 AM

Good Lord I hope not. I've met Susan Rice (she's very nice, and sharp), and though I wouldn't have been supportive of her as SecDef, she would have been infinitely better than Hagel.

Jennifer Rubin makes some good (non-partisan) points on why he may be in real trouble: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...is-in-trouble/

12-20-2012, 10:32 AM	#2 (permalink)
Krstic All-Star Legal Smeagol Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Unemployed, in Greenland?!? Age: 34 Posts: 30,661 Rep Power: 19240053	Re: Is he the next defense secretary? Vietnam scars shape Hagel’s outlook Good Lord I hope not. I've met Susan Rice (she's very nice, and sharp), and though I wouldn't have been supportive of her as SecDef, she would have been infinitely better than Hagel. Jennifer Rubin makes some good (non-partisan) points on why he may be in real trouble: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...is-in-trouble/ __________________ LIPA delenda est

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