The US military has long been co-opted by “evangelicals” (i.e., the people we used to be able to call “fundamentalists” before the spineless media agreed to use a nicer-sounding word). Hagel’s role won’t make a damn bit of difference: the military is not friendly to Jews or gays, or to anyone who isn’t a Protestant Christian who sees himself as on a mission to exterminate nonbelievers. Republican, Democrat, tolerant SoD or asshole, won’t change the institution itself without an enormous cultural shift in the U.S. and a willingness to gut most of the current officers, which obviously is not going to happen.
Huh? What exactly are you insinuating here? Nice way to spread insinuations about the guy without having to say exactly what’s wrong with him. Does he hate Jews? Gays? Blacks? Mexicans? Iranians? Spit it out.
And what exactly did he blow? Is the problem that he voted for the Iraq war back in 2002? You only want people who were against the war from the beginning? Or is the problem that he was against the surge?
For crying out loud, if you’re going to take the time to write a post critiquing the guy, would it kill you to spell out exactly what’s wrong with him? Because the way you baby-eating movement conservatives are handling your opposition to this nomination is pretty fucking lame.
He’s insinuating that Hagel isn’t very friendly to Jews and gays. Whether he should be seen as anti-Jewish kind of depends on what you think of AIPAC, apparently, but he’s definitely made some rather insulting remarks about homosexuals.
A nitpick: the two terms are not the same, although some people are both evangelical and fundamentalist. Evangelists are people who feel they must actively preach their religion and try to convert non-believers. Fundamentalists are people who reject modernist interpretations of religious scripture.
Not necessarily, but we need to be open-minded about it. Phobias/hatreds aren’t innate; one can learn one’s way out of them. That’s happened to quite a few people over the last few years in regard to homosexuality, for instance. You never need to be too old to fight your own ignorance. That said, he’s going to be asked about it, naturally, and for another thing it doesn’t necessarily matter anymore for this job. DADT is gone, as you may have heard.
CR, USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz probably has a slightly different opinion on the prevalence of antisemitism in his organization. While the problems with discrimination against non-evangelicals at the Academy have been well-publicized, so has the work to eliminate it.
Or what you think of Hagel’s blunt assessments of AIPAC. But AIPAC itself says it doesn’t take positions on nominations, and Barney Frank and James Hormel himself have made supportive noises. (Hormel was originally unimpressed by the apology.) The Democrats seem to have their ducks in a row here, and only a couple of Republicans have said they won’t vote for Hagel. It sounds to me like they either don’t feel they can vote against a nominee who was a solid Republican for two terms or they’ve already expended most of their anti-nominee gunpowder by opposing Susan Rice.
It is kind of amusing the way the Republicans are trying to play the anti-gay card. I suppose it’s progress, of a sort. And let me know when major jewish organizations come out against Hagel, instead of pundits and anonymous staffers.
There was a fairly long discussion of whether Hagel’s AIPAC comments were anti-semitic in a recent GD thread, that seemed to break down almost perfectly along “party lines”, hence my comment.
I agree with the OP. Obama may be “strong on defense,” but by picking a GOP SecDef two of three times, he’s playing into the idea that his party is not. That’s a slap in the face to other Democrats who might run for the Presidency or Congress.
It’s bad and he should feel bad.
We don’t know that Hagel will serve through 2017.
Let me see if I understand you: Obama, a Democrat, is strong on defense. But that doesn’t count - the party affiliation of the secretary of defense counts.
What are the “party lines” about conflating refusal to unquestioningly embrace AIPAC positions with antisemitism? Are there pro- and anti-ignorance parties, in your estimation?
Marley23, I’m sure you understand it’s about image, not fact. fg does have a point, even if its extent is arguable - this nomination, whatever its merits or other facts, to some degree does strengthen the *image *of the Democrats as soft on national security.
I don’t think that image exists at this point, and I think this concern is based on the logic that somehow the party affiliation of the president doesn’t matter much, but the party affiliation of the secretary of defense does. To me, this makes no sense at all.
It isn’t about logic *or *sense. It’s about image.
I’m glad his nominations has stirred up the rabid right. Once again, the Democrats dare them to punch themselves in the dick, and once again the idiots fall for it, and throw a Republican under the bus because he is not conservative enough.
You seem to be assuming that the meme that Republicans are better for something can’t coexist with a meme that Democrats are better for that same thing. I don’t think that’s how it works. I think the major contrasting ideas here are that Dems are weak on defense and that Repubs are incompetent at foreign policy. I would argue that the latter is stronger right now but that doesn’t mean the former can be safely ignored.
How does this reality change the perception that is our subject here?
Because Obama is seen by the public as strong (perhaps even very strong) on national defense issues- it’s hard to see how the nomination of an ostensibly competent man as SecDef, from whatever party, could make Obama be seen as anything different.
In the OP you appeared to be arguing that this was the widely accepted perception of Democrats, not just “a meme:”
If this is not “the perception” and is just a claim Republicans like to make about Democrats, who cares?
Don’t we normally decry when decisions are made purely for political reasons? If Hagel is the best person for the job it doesn’t matter what party he’s from.
Part of being the best person for the job is the ability to have his actions go without excessive unwarranted scrutiny, and the ability to keep the President from having to spend time and political capital defending him from partisan bullshit. The actual administrative and day to day leadership work in a government department mostly comes from its Civil Service careerists, anyway.
While I understand the image concern of the OP (which perhaps you share), I think it’s about 8 years too old. The tragedy of the Iraq War, and the complete failure of those responsible to take any responsibility for their failures (both their ideas and their execution) is completely understood by the voters at this point. This is amply born out by polling data that shows that Obama (and by extension Democrats) was preferred for handling of foreign policy to Romney (and by extension the GOP).
Now you have Obama nominating a man who supported the war but quickly saw it for what it was. He learned from that (and “evolved” on other issues such as gays serving in the military). And soon you will see the GOP attacking that man, a former Senator from their own party, further isolating them from the majority on issues of foreign policy.
The other option is a Democrat (pick one) who almost certainly also supported the wars. And there appears to be very few people who Obama trusts on foreign policy issues more than Hagel at this point (perhaps Biden, but he’s a bit busy waxing his Camaro and saving us from the fiscal cliff).