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January 29, 2007HagelHagel interviewed in GQ (Hat Tip: Frank Rich): Q: Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion? Bottom line: If Iraq hadn't turned into a massive debacle, this Administration would have marched us into Iran and Syria in a New York minute, real consultations with Congress or allies be damned. P.S. Readers may be interested in this Charlie Rose interview of Chuck Hagel (Hat Tip: JH). Don't miss the 6:30 mark when Hagel is asked to compare Iraq to Vietnam--a war Hagel served in and where he won two Purple Hearts. (Note the YouTube segment embedded above is only the second half of the interview, the first half can be found here). Posted by Gregory at January 29, 2007 04:31 AMComments
It might have been helpful for Sen. Hagel to have mentioned this, say, in 2002. Or for Sen. Biden (who serves on the Judiciary Committee as well as Foreign Relations) to have discussed the matter during Gonzales confirmation hearings in 2005. This isn't a comment on either man's fitness to serve in the Senate now or to run for President next year. It's just an observation. There are a lot of people looking at the early history of the Iraq was and saying, "Incredible! Unbelievable! Shocking!". Most of them can say truthfully that they knew at the time only what they were able to read in the papers and on the Internet; they have some cause to express not only their disapproval but their surprise at events that were not widely known outside of official circles. Hagel doesn't. Biden doesn't. I'm sympathetic to the idea of energetic consultation between the executive and Congress, but actual, substantive consultation does not just happen unless Congress insists on it -- in practical terms, unless Senators and Congressmen in key positions are determined to make a public issue of an administration's reluctance. I agree with more of what Hagel is saying about the war now than I disagree, but it surely would have been a good thing if he'd spoken up earlier. Posted by: Zathras at January 29, 2007 05:02 AM | Permalink to this comment
It's not a shock that "Corgress voted for the war" is a lie. It's a shock that Sen. Hagel is the first one to say it this clearly, and that not until 2007. Why not Kerry in 2004? Posted by: Mike Schilling at January 29, 2007 05:13 AM | Permalink to this comment
wow..... greg, isn't not having an editor great? you can write whatever the fuck you want, and there it is.....published. BDer's will lap hagel's shit up.....like chocolate ice cream...smiling. Posted by: neill at January 29, 2007 05:17 AM | Permalink to this comment
Neill, I'm with you that Hagel is full of it and the BD comments section is mostly an echo chamber, but don't think that an editor would stop Greg (even if he had one). Peggy Noonan's editor at the WSJ didn't stop her from gushing over Hagel's comments either. What the WSJ letters editor did do, is keep my reply off their Reader Response's section. I think they flagged me for making a few non-fawning comments about Reagan once. Anyhow, here's what I wrote:
Chuck Hagel showed guts when he served in Vietnam, but he's not If Senator Hagel is really against the surge, the honest approach would be to rally his colleagues to use Congress's powers as a co-equal branch of government to stop it. Hagel isn't doing this because he knows he would pay a political price for it. So much for showing guts. Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 29, 2007 06:57 AM | Permalink to this comment
Dave P, do you think it's vital for us to win in iraq? Do you think the chance of success there without more troops is better than 70%? If so, why are you accepting a 30% chance of defeat insteadl of calling for a draft? Why isn't Bush courageously calling for a draft? Why isn't every war supporter in Congress calling for a draft? Perhaps, because they're cowards? Our soldiers are fighting and dying in iraq and their "supporters" aren't calling for the backup they'll need for fear they might pay a political price.
Bush supporters are left in rather the depths of cognitive disconnect. They want to be apart of something big, something bold and meaningful. The most important conflict of a generation! See, we're just like the greatest generation! This is real!
Apparently the dreams of a Pax Americana die hard for some. I was going to be so quick, so easy, so perfect, so foolproof and the world would be our oyster and its oceans of oil our black pearl. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Baghdad to be born? Posted by: jim in austin at January 29, 2007 04:40 PM | Permalink to this comment
BDer's will lap hagel's shit up.....like chocolate ice cream...smiling. Mushroom cloud. Requires a warrant from the FISA court. We don't torture. Turned a corner. Milestone. Last throes. We're winning! Who's lapping up what, neill? Your career could take a thud -- Frank Zappa Posted by: NotMyBush at January 29, 2007 05:30 PM | Permalink to this comment
NotMyBush: You forgot one of the most egregious - "Mission Accomplished". Posted by: Addison DeWitt at January 29, 2007 05:47 PM | Permalink to this comment
An earlier commenter states that the Congress voted for an unconstitutional delegation of the authority to declare war. He's absolutely correct. The Constitution grants to the Congress and only to the Congress, the power to declare war. A declaration of war does NOT go to the President for his signature in order to become effective (a copy may be transmitted to the President as official notice of the action taken by Congress. If the President signs the declaration, his signature merely indicates that he has received the declaration of war--which is effective merely by being passed by a majority of both Houses of the Congress). However, the various "authorizations to use force" which have gone to several Presidents require their signature in order to become effective. The Constitution does NOT grant Congress the power to pass "authorizations to use force." Only the power to declare war is granted. "Authorizations to use force" passed by the Congress are absolutely unconstitutional, and, since they must go to the President in order to become effective, his one and only legal recourse is to veto them, and--if he so believes--request Congress for a declaration of war. If I'm missing something in Article I, please advise! Posted by: JohnH at January 30, 2007 12:56 AM | Permalink to this comment
To see the difference between great blogging and regurgitating the MSM spin on Hagel, compare Greg's post above with this one by Mickey Kaus. I started reading BD because Greg is obviously intelligent and literate, but he seems to have suffered the same fate of late as Andrew Sullivan. Both went from being perhaps-not-critical-enough supporters of the war, to being perhaps-not-critical-enough opponents. Kaus seems more clearheaded and insightful (on other topics as well). Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 30, 2007 05:57 AM | Permalink to this comment
To see the difference between great blogging and regurgitating the MSM spin on Hagel, compare Greg's post above with this one by Mickey Kaus. I think you posted the wrong link. Posted by: David Tomlin at January 30, 2007 07:31 AM | Permalink to this comment
http://www.slate.com/id/2158555/?nav=fix Posted by: David Tomlin at January 30, 2007 08:31 AM | Permalink to this comment
To see the difference between great blogging and regurgitating the MSM spin on Hagel, compare Greg's post above with this one by Mickey Kaus. I've just started reading the Kaus post. I may have some thoughts on it later. For now I just want to point out that it's a lengthy post, while Greg's is mostly cut-and-past with some brief comments. The two posts just aren't comparable in the way you are suggesting. Posted by: David Tomlin at January 30, 2007 09:46 AM | Permalink to this comment
I've finished the Kaus post, and I'm ready to call bullshit. I've never been a fan of Kaus, but this post sends my opinion of him right down into the toilet. The brazeness of its self-contradictions is just strange. Kaus begins by rhetorically interrogating what he will later tell us is an 'angle' of 'the MSM'. 'Why, exactly, is Sen. Chuck Hagel showing "courage" in conspicuously denouncing the Iraq War now that virtually the entire American establishment has reached that same conclusion . . .?' Kaus illustrates this 'angle' by linking to two opinion pieces. I call bullshit on all such operations. Op-eds may be technically part of 'the MSM', in that they appear in mainstream publications. But they are supposed to, and do, represent a variety of viewpoints. It's easy for a pundit to cherry-pick a couple of op-eds that he disagrees with, and that agree with each other, arbitrarily declare their common viewpoint to be that of 'the MSM', and then congratulate himself for his dissent from the imagined crowd. It's easy, but, except for the self-congratulation part, Kaus manages to fail. The pieces he links don't say what he claims they do. [To be continued]
Critique of Kaus, Part 2. Does Peggy Noonan say that Hagel showed courage by 'denouncing the Iraq War now that virtually the entire American establishment has reached that same conclusion'? No. She says: 'Mr. Hagel has shown courage for a long time. He voted for the war resolution in 2002 but soon after began to question how it was being waged. This was before everyone did. He also stood against the war when that was a lonely place to be.' Here comes the first of those brazen contradictions. Later in his post, Kaus writes: 'It wouldn't have been very courageous for Hagel to have supported the war in public while expressing grave doubts safely in private, of course--and pro-Hagel profiles tend to emphasize his early public skepticism (except, of course, when it came to actually voting for the thing).' Kaus provides a link to one of those 'pro-Hagel profiles' with an emphasis on 'his early public skepticism'. Surprise! It's the same Peggy Noonan piece, which Kaus at first represented as calling Hagel courageous for 'denouncing the Iraq War now that virtually the entire American establishment has reached that same conclusion'. He not only cops to the lie, he calls attention to it. [To be continued] Posted by: David Tomlin at January 30, 2007 12:28 PM | Permalink to this comment
Brazen contradiction number two: 'Before the war, Hagel was already widely disdained within his party as a pol who reveled in the "strange new respect" the liberal press typically lavishes on GOP apostates. It's not like he threw away massive Republican backing. And if Hagel really thought the war was a disaster, sending those real men and women into a pointless "meat grinder," there were many things he could have done, aside from giving snippy quotes on Meet the Press, to oppose it. He could have given speeches like the one he gave last week, for example. He could have challenged Bush in 2004. But that might have ended his career!' If 'Hagel was already widely disdained within his party', wasn't his career already over? Didn't Kaus just imply that he had no 'massive Republican backing' to lose? My last point isn't a contradiction. Sometimes Kaus just lies. '[Hagel's] eruption took the form, not of arguing that his Republican colleagues were wrong, but of denouncing them for, in effect, being cowards, unlike you-know-who . . .' In Noonan's piece, the same one Kaus linked to twice in one post, Hagel is quoted: 'Part of the problem that we have, I think, is because we didn't--we didn't involve the Congress in this when we should have. And I'm to blame. Every senator who's been here the last four years has to take some responsibility for that.'
David Tomlin, Your right that Greg's post on Hagel wasn't in depth, though he made clear he agreed with the MSM's embrace of Hagel. Still, Kaus hits on the salient point: there is nothing courageous about Hagel rhetorically railing against an unpopular war. If Hagel voted against it when it was popular, that would have been courageous. If he followed the strength of his alleged convictions and rallied his colleagues to pass binding resolution to end our involvement, that would show some courage. He didn't and he isn't. See also Kaus's recent posts on two different topics -- Kuttner versus GM and illegal immigration. Those posts also show how Kaus thinks critically and honestly about issues and isn't afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom when he thinks it's wrong; that puts him a level above most other bloggers. Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 30, 2007 03:23 PM | Permalink to this comment
J. Thomas: "Why isn't Bush courageously calling for a draft? Why isn't every war supporter in Congress calling for a draft?" Sorry for the delay in responding, just caught your comment. I know something about what a draft would entail. In the late '80's-early '90's, I was a drill sergeant in the Army Reserve. My unit's ultimate mission (in situation of total war) would have been to train three cycles of draftees and then lead the third cycle into war. From what I know of the process and time frames involved, a draft wouldn't be practical at this point (nevermind that the military doesn't want it and it would be a political non-starter on all sides). A draft also isn't necessary. A modest expansion in the size of our ground forces is needed and is underway. I do fault Bush for not enacting this expansion back in 2001, and instead waiting to be prodded by Congress to do it. I still think that reinforcing our troops in Iraq, along with the changes in strategy and senior military and diplomatic leaders (e.g., Petraeus and Crocker) has a chance of success and is worth trying. Whether 20,000 additional troops are the right number is beyond my pay grade. I do think that if Gen. Petraeus thinks they aren't enough he'll ask for more. I also think if he thought he'd need an unavailable number of troops to accomplish his mission, he wouldn't have accepted the mission. Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 30, 2007 03:59 PM | Permalink to this comment
I showed that point to be a strawman as far as Kaus's post was concerned. I don't care what you or Kaus think of Senator Hagel. I took the time to fisk Kaus's post because you offered it as an example of 'great blogging'. See also Kaus's recent posts on two different topics . . . I've had enough of Kaus, thank you. Those posts also show how Kaus thinks critically and honestly . . . I have shown the opposite to be true, and you have not answered a single point. I see you are one of those who is unwilling or unable to actually engage in discussion. You just repeat your assertions, without engaging with anything I have said in response. In your first comment of the thread you complained of an 'echo chamber'. The way to not have an echo chamber is not to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. It is thinking about and responding to one another's points. . . . and isn't afraid to challenge the conventional wisdom . . . He arbitrarily declares what he disagress with to be the 'conventional wisdom' of 'the MSM', so he can preen himself on challenging it. This is one of those points which I made in my critique and you have not answered. You use the same tactic here: Your right that Greg's post on Hagel wasn't in depth, though he made clear he agreed with the MSM's embrace of Hagel. Alluding to 'the MSM's embrace of Hagel' is assuming a fact not in evidence. MSM aside, characterizing Greg's brief remarks as an 'embrace of Hagel' is itself absurd. Posted by: David Tomlin at January 30, 2007 10:05 PM | Permalink to this comment
Dave P, if we had expanded the military at the end of 2001 or in early 2002 we would have had all the volunteers we could have asked for. Not now. A lot of people are reluctant to volunteer into what looks like a feckless occupation, knowing that if they serve their term and quit they may be called back anyway to serve with strangers. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070129/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/gates_troops__tours Remember the days that Bush and Rumsfeld both said that the army had all the soldiers they wanted and if they asked for more they'd get them? What do you think? Did our military walk into this blind, did they not notice they needed more troops until Rumsfeld was gone? I don't have inside information but I don't believe it. I believe that when the Bush administration told the US public that the commanders on the ground said they had no use for more troops, it was a lie. Given that, why would we believe that the current numbers are what's needed? The current numbers are simply all they can get without a draft, after relaxing the quality standards. There's no reason to think it was the number they thought were needed. It's clearly the most they can get. You say the number of troops needed is beyond your pay grade. But you also say that the current strategy has a chance of success and is worth trying. Does that sound like the way the USA wins wars? Imagine Eisenhower doing that. "With a 2 million man army we have a chance of success. It's worth trying." Is it essential that we win in iraq? If not, we should think whether it's worth what it's costing us. And if it is essential that we win then we don't want any more grand strategies that "have a chance of success and are worth trying". It's OK to try such things as a stopgap measure while we train the troops that will be needed for victory. If we can win before the new troops are trained then that's great! And we're likely to find we need the new troops for something else. And if we haven't won by then, we can do it the way that we know works. The current approach is profoundly unserious. You have to use 10 men where standard doctrine says you need 50 -- when you don't have 50 men and you have to win anyway. But that isn't our situation at all. We could get 10 million men if we were willing to. And we don't do it. We try to get by on the cheap, discarding one half-baked scheme after another that sounded like they were worth a try. This is not the way we fight wars when our vital interests are at stake.
David Tomlin, Sorry, but I really didn't have the time or inclination to read all of your three-part magnum opus series of posts. If you want to me to debate you point by point, try to be pithier next time. Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 31, 2007 04:40 AM | Permalink to this comment
J. Thomas: I already said that I thought Bush should have called for more troops in 2001. Still, the military will get the additional troops it needs, it will just cost more to get them. The incentives today are tempting. I'd sign up for OCS at my state's National Guard if I were in good enough shape to handle the physical training. Standards actually haven't been lowered that much. For example, the Army now accepts a max of 4% of recruits with IQs below the 30th percentile instead of 2%. The increase in the maximum age of enlistees can't be dramatically increasing numbers of older soldiers since they still have to meet the PT standards. Regarding the idea of sending dramatically higher numbers of troops to Iraq: First, with the level of comp we are paying our troops today (including tax-free, five-figure reenlistment bonuses for troops in combat zones) and the cost of equipment, we couldn't afford to field a significantly larger force, for any war. No country could afford to. World War II-sized armies are a thing of the past. Our defense budget is already over half a trillion dollars, and no other country's is close. Second, I don't think a huge increase in troops in Iraq (e.g., doubling the number of troops) would be politically acceptable to the Iraqi government, and it might be counterproductive for a number of reasons (e.g., stretched logistics increasing vulnerability to insurgent attacks, increased resentment by Iraqis of being occupied, etc.). I don't think Generals Abizaid and Casey were lying when they said they thought they had enough troops. When they said that, they were implementing a strategy focussed almost exclusively on transferring security responsibility to the Iraqi troops, and their goal was to gradually withdraw American troops as more Iraqi troops proved competent. That strategy probably made sense up until the bombing of the Golden Domed Mosque last year, which unleashed the sectarian violence on a huge scale. I fault Abizaid for not changing his approach in response to these changing circumstances in Iraq, and I fault Bush for deferring to him for so long. As for Eisenhower: World War II analogies to me are inapt to any post-Vietnam War because the media situation is so different now. There is no comparison. Hollywood and the news media during World War II were overwhelmingly jingoistic; there wasn't the adversarial press we have today. Today's media would have ripped Eisenhower a new one for the crappy armor his troops had at the Kasserine Pass debacle; they would have questioned why we were ceding half of Europe to Stalin; they would have questioned our firebombing of cities; and they would have been outraged by our treatment of German POWs at the end of the war (tens of thousands dead of starvation and exposure). It's unlikely Eisenhower would have managed to keep his command for the whole war if the media then were like the media today. Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 31, 2007 05:36 AM | Permalink to this comment
LOL. It would have been longer if I had pointed out all the flaws in your example of 'great blogging'. Posted by: David Tomlin at January 31, 2007 06:47 AM | Permalink to this comment
"LOL. It would have been longer if I had pointed out all the flaws in your example of 'great blogging'." Nice work, Tomlin. That was pithy. That I find some of Kaus's recent work to be great blogging is of course subjective. So is this Times of London column, which judges various bloggers' influence in the Democratic primaries. Coincidentally, Kaus ranks highly. Dave P. Posted by: David P. at January 31, 2007 11:32 AM | Permalink to this comment
David P, you're saying that we can't get the troops we need to do the job, so we have to find a way to make do with what we have. But we don't know how yet. We have to just hope we can find a way. This is disheartening. Should we accept the risks of attempting this with inadequate force, or should we fall back and try something on a more reasonable scale? I don't accept your argument about Abiziad and Casey. They had the maximum number of troops we could sustain there, and their strategy was to find iraqi surrogates because there was no other way to get more troops. (Short of inviting in the chinese, or the iranians, or the egyptians, or somebody like that.) They had to say they had enough troops because there were no more, and because Bush ordered them to say that. We still need large numbers of loyal well-equipped iraqi troops. What are the odds?
J. Thomas: "David P, you're saying that we can't get the troops we need to do the job" I think you misinterpreted what I wrote. I made two points about the number of troops: first, that fielding a World War II sized-army today in any war isn't feasible. It's simply too expensive for anyone to do. My second point was more relevant to Iraq: I said that a huge increase in troop numbers (i.e., doubling the number of troops) would probably be counterproductive. As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't know what the exact number of troops in Iraq should be. As I also wrote previously, I see no reason why Gen. Petraeus wouldn't ask for whatever number of troops he feels he needs (and, if Petraeus thought the number of troops he would need was simply unavailable, I don't see why he would have taken on the new command). According to Abizaid and Casey's statements, the number of troops they kept in Iraq wasn't limited by the number available to them (in fact, they had 'surged' troops when they felt it was called for, e.g., to provide additional security for the elections). On the contrary, they were trying to spur Iraqis to take on greater security responsibilities (which they did). The problem is that when the situation changed radically in Iraq after last February's Golden Mosque bombing, Abizaid & Casey's strategy didn't. Dave P. Posted by: Dave P. at January 31, 2007 02:58 PM | Permalink to this comment
Dave P, it sounds like you're saying the war was going fine until last February, and that the recent unpleasantness was just one of those unforeseeable accidents that could happen to anybody But from my perspective, this was predictable and I predicted it. Iraqis started to systematically fight each other when it became obvious that we were going to pull out. It worked that way for the french in algeria and the russians in afghanistan. We followed the strategy of sitting in our bases marking time, waiting to pull out (and "training" the iraqi army) and they knew we weren't the big threat any more so they started jockeying for position. What result were we looking for that our troop levels seemed sufficient? No need to answer. It's above your pay grade. You believe that Petraeus would have resigned his command rather than accept a likely withdrawal, and let some lesser man handle the difficult war. There may have been some generals who turned it down. Do you know of any? If it turns out that Petraeus doesn't know how to fight this war to a draw either, then you'll have been wrong about him. Maybe it will turn out he's no better than Franks. This is not the kind of thing I'd bet the army on. Sure, they've repeated surged the numbers and then had to make up for it with lower numbers later. We're at the limit of what we can do without a draft. The strategy has to depend on this number of troops because there aren't any more. Which says nothing about our ability to achieve an acceptable solution with this number.
You wrote: 'To see the difference between great blogging and regurgitating the MSM spin on Hagel, compare Greg's post above with this one by Mickey Kaus.' You seemed to think you were pointing out something objective. So is this Times of London column, which judges various bloggers' influence in the Democratic primaries. Coincidentally, Kaus ranks highly. I see Matt Drudge made the list. Posted by: David Tomlin at January 31, 2007 11:09 PM | Permalink to this comment
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