[Peace-discuss] Ray McGovern: The Larger Question of Chuck Hagel

[Robert Naiman]

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/28/the-larger-question-of-chuck-hagel/

--  The Larger Question of Chuck Hagel
December 28, 2012

*Exclusive: *The up-in-the-air nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Defense
Secretary has become a test of whether the Israel Lobby can still shoot
down an American public servant who is deemed insufficiently passionate
regarding Israel, a test that now confronts President Obama, says ex-CIA
analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

The Israel Lobby is hell bent on sabotaging President Barack Obama’s
tentative plan to appoint former Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.
And – with Obama now dithering about this selection – the Lobby and its
neocon allies sense another impending victory.

Perhaps The New Yorker’s Connie Bruck
described<http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/chuck-hagel-and-his-enemies.html#ixzz2GLj5fEJp>
Hagel’s
predicament best in assessing why the Israel Lobby is so determined to
destroy the Nebraska Republican though he is “a committed supporter of
Israel.”[image: Former Sen. Chuck
Hagel]<http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/chuckhagel-atlantic.jpg>

But, as Bruck explained, “Hagel did not make the obeisance to the lobby
that the overwhelming majority of his Congressional colleagues do. And he
further violated a taboo by talking about the lobby, and its power.” Hagel
had the audacity, in an interview for a 2008 book, to say something that
you are not supposed to say in Official Washington, that the Israel Lobby
pulls the strings on many members of Congress.

In Aaron Miller’s book, *The Much Too Promised Land*, Hagel is quoted as
saying that Congress “is an institution that does not inherently bring out
a great deal of courage.” He added that when the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee comes knocking with a pro-Israel letter, “you’ll get
eighty or ninety senators on it. I don’t think I’ve ever signed one of the
letters” — because, he added, they were “stupid.”

*Finding Other Reasons*

Yes, it’s true that when the neocon editors of the Washington Post
decried<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/chuck-hagel-is-not-right-for-defense-secretary/2012/12/18/07e03e20-493c-11e2-ad54-580638ede391_story.html>
the
prospect of Hagel’s appointment to run the Pentagon, they cited a bunch of
other reasons without mentioning Hagel’s independent thinking regarding
Israel. For instance, the Post’s editors fretted over a September 2011
interview
with the Financial
Times<http://video.ft.com/v/1138459180001/Former-Republican-senator-criticises-party>,
in which Hagel said, “The Defense Department, I think in many ways, has
been bloated. … So I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down.” What
heresy!

The Post’s editors also questioned Hagel’s interest in avoiding another war
with Iran, calling his interest in meaningful engagement with Iran
“isolated.” The Post noted that Hagel “repeatedly voted against sanctions,
opposing even those aimed at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which
at the time was orchestrating devastating bomb attacks against U.S. troops
in Iraq. Mr. Hagel argued that direct negotiations, rather than sanctions,
were the best means to alter Iran’s behavior.”

Though the Post noted that Hagel also wrote an
op-ed<http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-needs-to-discuss-whats-at-stake-in-iran-war/2012/09/28/44530a8a-fd34-11e1-8adc-499661afe377_story.html>
last
September that contained the usual refrain about “keeping all options on
the table,” the neocon editors worried that a Defense Secretary Hagel might
not be enthusiastic enough in carrying out the war option against Iran.
Obama “will need a defense secretary ready to support and effectively
implement such a decision,” the Post wrote.

Yet, despite the Post’s avoidance of any mention about the controversy over
Hagel and the Israel Lobby, you can bet that the editors were particularly
worried that Hagel might become a strong voice within the Obama
administration against simply following Israel’s lead on issues in the
Middle East.

If Obama were to actually nominate Hagel– rather than just float his name
as a trial balloon and recoil at all the efforts to prick holes in it – the
message would be a strong one to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the
Israel Lobby that the old rules for the game are changing, that they can no
longer blackball American public servants from key jobs in Washington.

*Defecting on Iraq War*

As a two-term senator, Chuck Hagel’s other real sin was that he was one of
the few defectors among congressional Republicans regarding the Iraq War.
Though Hagel voted for President George W. Bush’s war authorization, he
eventually recognized his mistake and fessed up.

Hagel said he believes the Iraq War was one of the biggest blunders in U.S.
history. He sharply criticized the Bush/Cheney foreign policy as
“reckless,” saying it was playing “ping pong with American lives.” Such
comments have made Hagel particularly unpopular with the top tier of
hawkish Republican senators, such as Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and
John McCain of Arizona.

But Hagel’s ultimate offense, as far as Official Washington is concerned,
is his unusual record of independent thinking that could, in Israel’s eyes,
endanger or even derail business as usual with the U.S.  He is considered a
realist, a pragmatist. Moreover, there can hardly be a more offensive
remark to Israeli ears than the one made by Hagel to author Aaron Miller
reflecting the sad state of affairs in Congress:

“The Jewish Lobby intimidates a lot of people up here” [on the Hill], but
“I’m a United States Senator.  I’m not an Israeli senator.”

This remark, and others like it, have raised doubts in Israeli and
pro-Israeli circles as to whether Hagel has the requisite degree of
“passionate attachment” to Israel. This has generated a volley of vicious
invective characterized so well by former Ambassador Chas Freeman in “Israel
Lobby Takes Aim
Again<http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/24/israel-lobby-takes-aim-again/>.”
This invective is aimed at forcing Obama to drop any plan to put Hagel in
charge of the Pentagon. After all, it takes courage to counter character
assassination.

*Why the Fear?*

What really lies behind this? I suspect the fear is that, were Hagel to
become Secretary of Defense, he would take a leaf out of his book as
Senator and openly insist, in effect, that he is the American Secretary of
Defense and not the Israeli Defense Minister.

This, in turn, gives rise to a huge question being whispered in more and
more corridors of power in Washington: Is Israel an asset or a liability to
the U.S., when looked at dispassionately in the perspective of our equities
in the Middle East and our general strategic defense?

Hardly a new conundrum. Many decades ago, Albert Einstein, who feared the
consequences of creating a “Jewish state” by displacing or offending Arabs,
wrote:

“There could be no greater calamity than a permanent discord between us
[Jews] and the Arab people. Despite the great wrong that has been done us
[in the western world], we must strive for a just and lasting compromise
with the Arab people. … Let us recall that in former times no people lived
in greater friendship with us than the ancestors of these Arabs.”

Realpolitik, including the increasing isolation of Israel and the U.S. in
the Middle East, is breathing some life into this old attitude and
generating consideration of a new approach – necessity being the mother of
invention.

Few have been as blunt, though, as Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has been
described as the “unofficial dean of the realist school of American foreign
policy experts.”  In a recent talk, the former national security adviser to
President Jimmy Carter minced no words:

“I don’t think there is an implicit obligation for the United States to
follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do. If they decide to start
a war, simply on the assumption that we’ll automatically be drawn into it,
I think it is the obligation of friendship to say, ‘you’re not going to be
making national decisions for us.’ I think that the United States has the
right to have its own national security policy.”

*Even Petraeus Lets It Slip Out*

Back when Gen. David Petraeus was head of CENTCOM, he addressed this issue,
gingerly but clearly, in prepared testimony to the Senate Armed Services
Committee in March 2010 on the “challenges to security and stability” faced
by the U.S.:

“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present
distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests. … The conflict
foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for
Israel.

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of
U.S. partnerships … in the area and weakens the legitimacy of moderate
regimes in the Arab world.  Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups
exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

Petraeus’s testimony provoked a sharp rejoinder from Abe Foxman, head of
the Anti-Defamation League, one of the leading American Zionist lobby
groups. Foxman protested:

“Gen. Petraeus simply erred in linking the challenges faced by the U.S. …
in the region to a solution of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and blaming
extremist activities on the absence of peace and the perceived favoritism
for Israel.  This linkage is dangerous and counterproductive.”

Petraeus or someone on his staff had inadvertently touched a live-wire
reality that is becoming increasingly debated in official circles but
remains taboo when it comes to saying it out loud. Fearful that he would be
dubbed an “anti-Semite,” Petraeus began a frantic attempt to take back the
words, which he noted were only in his prepared testimony and were not
repeated in his oral presentation. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons,
Likud Conquer DC, Again <http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/070810.html>.”]

As Ali Abunimah of the *Electronic Intifada* describes it, this taboo
proscribes “stating publicly that U.S. ‘interests’ and Israeli ‘interests’
are not identical, and that Israel might be a strategic burden, rather than
an asset to the United States.”

Ironically, while Foxman and hardline Zionists were objecting vociferously,
Meir Dagan, then-Israel’s Mossad chief told a Knesset committee, “Israel is
gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden.”

Taboo or not, an un-passionately-attached realist like Chuck Hagel
presumably would be able to see that reality – anathema in Zionist circles
– for what it is.

As prospective Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel would bring something else
that would be extremely valuable to the job, a real-life understanding of
the horrors of war. He volunteered for service in Vietnam in 1967 at the
height of the fighting there, rejecting his local draft board’s suggestion
that he re-enroll in college to avoid Vietnam. A combat infantry squad
leader, he was twice wounded in that crucible. Do not let anyone tell you
that this does not have a lasting effect on a man.

*First in Three Decades*

Were Hagel to become Secretary of Defense, he would become the first in 30
years to bring to the job direct battle experience of war. One must trace
14 former secretaries of defense all the way back to Melvin Laird
(1969-1973) for one who has seen war up-close and personal.  (Like Hagel,
Laird enlisted and eventually earned a Purple Heart as a seaman in the
Pacific theater during WWII.)

Given this real world experience, the Israelis and their supporters in the
U.S. might well conclude that Hagel would not be as blasé as his
predecessors when it comes to sending troops off to war – and even less so
for a war like the prospective one with Iran.

Hagel’s past statements suggest he would urge more flexibility in talks
with Iran on the nuclear issue and on Palestine, as well. This leaves him
vulnerable to charges from the Israel Lobby, but even some pro-Israel
stalwarts reject the far-fetched notion that this makes him “anti-Semitic.”

In comments to the *New Yorker’s* Connie Bruck, for example, Rep. Gary
Ackerman, D-New York, has drawn a sensible contrast between Hagel’s
apparent inclination toward more flexibility with Iran on the nuclear issue
and the more familiar attitude – which Ackerman described as: “You know
‘Let’s bomb them before the sun comes up.’”

If recent reports are correct in suggesting that Obama intends to enter
more than just *pro forma* negotiations with Iran, he would have in Hagel
the kind of ally he would need in top policy-making circles, someone who
would support, not sabotage, chances for a peaceful resolution of the
crisis.

Recall that in 2010 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was able to put the
kibosh on a plan that had been suggested by Obama himself, and carefully
worked out with Tehran by the President of Brazil and the Prime Minister of
Turkey, that would have been a major step toward resolving the dispute over
Iran’s enrichment of uranium. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “U.S./Israel
Challenged on Iran <http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/051910a.html>.”]

*Avoiding “Complicity”*

The year just ending has been a rollercoaster for U.S.-Israeli relations.
It started with Obama’s rather extreme professions of fealty to Israel. In
a pre-Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer on Feb. 5, the President said:

“My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States,
but also the security of Israel, and we’re going to make sure that we work
in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this problem [Iran], hopefully
diplomatically.”

Speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March – amid
suggestions that his devotion to Israel was still not enough – Obama again
used the first person in assuring the pro-Israel lobby group: “when the
chips are down, I have Israel’s back.”

By late August, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was suggesting that
Israel might ignore Obama’s sanctions strategy on Iran and launch a
preemptive strike on its own, Obama used Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin
Dempsey to say that he (Dempsey) did not wish to be “complicit,” if the
Israelis chose to attack Iran. In September, Secretary Clinton was publicly
brushing aside Netanyahu’s pleading for U. S. endorsement of his various
“red lines,” and Obama was too busy to receive Netanyahu when he came to
the U.N.

What lies in store for U.S.-Israeli relations in Obama’s second term? It is
too early to tell. But whether or not the President decides to tough it out
and nominate Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense is likely to provide a
good clue.

*Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical
Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  He served was an Army
infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 30 years, and now
serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity.*

*
*
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
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