Hagel
Praveen Mahendran writes:
The potential appointment of Charles T. “Chuck” Hagel as Secretary of Defense, which is currently being debated on the Senate floor, has been a prominent headline. Former Senator Hagel is a Vietnam veteran who enlisted and earned two purple hearts for bravery. He began his life in politics under Republican Representative John McCollister in 1977, and in 1995 began his campaign for Senate, where he won in 1997 and retained his seat until his retirement in 2008.
On February 12, earlier this month, the Senate Committee on Armed Forces convened to discuss and vote on moving the nomination of Chuck Hagel to the Senate floor. The committee is chaired by Senator Carl Levin (D), who began the hearing by recapping Mr. Hagel’s war service, as well as many commendations from political and military figures from both sides of the aisle. Ranking member Senator Inhofe (R) was the second to speak, beginning by commending Hagel’s military service, which would come to be a common theme throughout the hearing from both parties. However, shortly following this he called into question Hagel’s history as a senator, his comments at the previous hearing before the committee, his nuclear policy, and his stance on Iran and Israel.
Chairman Levin opened the floor to discussion, which quickly became a series of somewhat repetitive arguments and rebuttals between the Democrats supporting Hagel and the Republicans against his appointment. Although a self-proclaimed bi-partisan committee, Republicans considered Hagel to be, as Senator Graham (R) stated, in a “league of his own”, outside the usual party lines of Republicans and Democrats.
The Republicans had several main points of opposition. First, Hagel had some substantial discrepancies between how he had acted as a Senator and what he stated before the committee. Furthermore, as a Senator, Hagel was 1 of 2 senators who didn’t vote to pass sanctions against Iran, and 1 of 4 who didn’t declare the Islamic R evolutionary Guard of Iran as a terrorist group. According to the committee members, he had also spoken on Al-Jazeera agreeing that Israel had committed war crimes. These actions to them seemed to strongly contrast with his testimony in front of the committee at the last hearing. The Iranian government had also endorsed Hagel, which didn’t help his case.
There was also an incident in the last hearing where to some Hagel seemed not to understand America’s nuclear containment policy, a hearing which overall the committee considered “unimpressive”.
In regard to his personal life, there were several speeches he didn’t declare to the committee as is required, nor did he release certain financial information, which Senator Vitter (R) took to the point of hypothesizing that Hagel could have foreign donors.
Each Republican point was met with an equally compelling argument in support of Hagel. Chair Levin immediately countered Vitter’s and others’ comments regarding Hagel’s release of financial information, stating that he had followed the same procedures as was required by his predecessors, and that the misreporting of speeches Hagel gave was understandable given the sheer number of them (80+).
They called the incident where Hagel appeared to be confused about the U.S. nuclear containment policy a “slip of the tongue”. Even Republican Senator Sessions supported this point.
Democrats stated that they had great faith in Hagel in regards to protecting Israel and defending against Iran, quoting the laundry list of political supporters. They even quoted an Israeli source that faith in him had merit. In regards to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, committee members including Senator Kaine assured the committee this wasn’t a vote in favor of Iran but rather to prevent hostilities with an established regime of Iran. Their most powerful point was the fact that Hagel would be the first Secretary of Defense to have been an enlisted man, which gives him great military insight (he would actually be one of five, this statement was incorrect).
The vote ultimately came down to 14 ayes and 11 nays, allowing Hagel to proceed to the Senate. However, despite the noticeable split along party lines in this decision, there was a high degree of reverence for bipartisanship within this committee. Even in this debate Senators were reaching across the aisle to support certain points. The battle on the Senate floor right now is as divisive as it has ever been for the past few years, but it’s good to know that there exists a degree of respect between the parties in some circles.
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