Former Sen. Chuck Hagel performed poorly in his confirmation hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services last week. But the Republican Party performed worse, demanding the secretary of defense nominee adhere to a failed foreign policy strategy.
The questions asked by the Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed a party committed to interventionist foreign policy, regardless of its relevance or efficacy.
The GOP senators have made no effort to consider the convoluted results of U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, as evidenced by their verbal chest-thumping on Feb. 1 praising, in the words of Sen. Ted Cruz, the United States spending “more blood” and “more treasure standing up for freedom liberating people across the world.” The United States has spent more blood and treasure in other countries than any other nation in the world, but is this a legacy we should continue?
The results would suggest not. The casualties of Operation Iraqi Freedom numbered 4,400 U.S. soldiers, with 32,000 more wounded. 110,000 Iraqi civilians died as well.
In Afghanistan, 2,200 U.S. soldiers lost their lives, and 18,000 were wounded. The lives of our men and women in the military are too precious to sacrifice for marginal to no tangible benefit.
Sen. John McCain attacked Hagel for a comment he made to The Financial Times in 2011.
Hagel called the troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan “the most dangerous foreign policy decisions since Vietnam.” McCain expressed no less than disgust at Hagel’s refusal to respond with a yes or no answer to McCain’s subsequent question about the surges’ success.
Hagel said he would allow “the judgement of history” to sort out whether the surges were successful and that he would stand by his statement, which he said “was about not just the surge but the overall war of choice going into Iraq.”
The point Hagel was trying to make, albeit inarticulately, is that maybe the surge worked, but why should it have had to work in the first place? Was 1,000 U.S. casualties during the Iraqi surge worth it for what we got: a foreign country less on the brink of civil war?
McCain ended that line of questioning with “so you don’t believe the surge should have been required?” and a sarcastic “OK.”
Along with the rest of his Republican colleagues, McCain, at least while playing politician for the Hagel hearing, refused to concede any legitimacy to Hagel’s restrained and modest foreign policy philosophy. Their insistence upon ideological purity weakens their position’s credibility further.
As wars in the Middle East persist, the Republicans should distance themselves from the increasingly unpopular neoconservative-madness run rampant through the party in the past 12 years — and not be beating the stuffing out of an acceptable candidate for defense secretary just because he doesn’t consider Israel the 51st state.
Hagel probably won’t suffer any long-term consequences for his poor showing in the confirmation hearings. The Republicans can’t, however, say the same.
