Krauthammer Drivel

More Krauthammer Drivel -  The Meaning of Hagel

I can imagine Charles Krauthammer gnashing his teeth at the thought of a Department of Defense organized by a Chuck Hagel.  As if things will really change that much.  I mean how much influence can a DoD Secretary have?  However, this doesn't stop Republican Hawks like Krauthammer from spitting more venom out of his mouth when the word Chuck Hagel for DoD Secretary is brought up.  He apparently believes that if Hagel is nominated that America will become like Penn State after the Sandusky ordeal.   Weakened, isolated, and having little morale left to tackle the world's most pressing problems.  Here are Krauthammer's problems with Hagel, and my many critiques of them.

Military Spending:

Krauthammer apparently has fallen for the line and hook that most Americans have fallen for when it comes to actually figuring out baseline budgeting.  First, the sequestration would reduce Pentagon largess by $600 billion as Mr. Krauthammer correctly said, but he left out the important detail that this would have to be absorbed over the next DECADE and only cut into the Pentagon's proposed increases.  So you have to understand that there really isn't any CUTS if sequestration happens.  This is language trickery by the Washington elites to mislead Americans into thinking that they are actually trimming down their waistline.  This brings me to my other point.  Krauthammer thinks that whenever there is any "reduction" in Pentagon spending by the current administration that this is to grow the "bulging welfare state" and to "recalibrate America's role in the world."   Even Sen. Tom Coburn (not a dove by any means) supports a $1 trillion in spending from the Pentagon in the next decade.  You should read his report about spending cuts for the DoD.  Most of the things that he advocates are reforming veteran care, weapon purchases, staffing personal, cutting troop deployment in non-combat areas, and cutting redundant programs already covered by some other government program.  In his plan he does call for downsizing the military in Europe and Asia.  Apparently for Krauthammer places that are hotbeds of terrorism and anti-American militant fever.  I don't understand how that would "recalibrate our role in the world."  If anything it would make our military stronger since we aren't all spread out in areas where there is little national interest.  Also Sen. Coburn's plan is already happening to some degree.  My favorite cut is the closing of the Department of Defense's elementary schools.  No, not overseas, but here in the U.S.  Apparently, children of military families can't go to "free" public education in their own districts so Congress created the DoD school for them.  Nice.  This could save $10 billion in the next 10 years.

Bear in mind too, that the U.S. DoD spending is not the total amount that we spend on defense.  Most critics will say that we spend close to $1 trillion on our military operations.  Also the U.S. accounts for 41% of total WORLD military spending.  Plus just our DoD ($671 billion) spending per year exceeds the next 10 nations defense spending in 2012.  I guess I am just a liberal hippy to want to have America not be the policeman of the world. 

Israel:    

I have already complained about Krauthammer's views on Israel and the Palestinians in an earlier post.  The perennial problem that I face with Krauthammer is that his writing completely leaves out any Palestinian claims and probably dismisses them.  The fact he leaves out is that the 2000 Camp David Accords completely broke down which were an attempt to settle the agreements made during the Oslo Accords.  The talks broke down on the issue of Palestinian statehood.  Ehud Barak offered a Palestinian State consisting of the Gaza Strip and 91% control of the West Bank.  Now I can hear the NeCon rabble about how this was a "great" deal and Arafat should have taken it.  Well maybe he should have, but the point it is that it wasn't what he, and many Palestinian's wanted.  They wanted the return of the pre-1967 West Bank which would include Eastern Jerusalem and the "Western Wall." The Palestinians were offered "custodianship" of East Jerusalem.  Other issues that Arafat would have had to sell to the Palestinian's was that the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Palestinian airspace would remain in Israeli control, even with accepting Barak's deal.  Also the issue of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refuges wasn't settled either since Israel did not want them moving back to Israel proper and changing the demographics of that nation.  Granted Ehud Barak made the deal at their next meeting at Taba in 2001 much easier for Arafat to swallow, however none of that was going to happen.  Barak offered a 94% control of the West Bank with a Israeli 6% annexing and then an eventual 3% compensation for total of 97% control of the West Bank.  Robin Wright whose article from the Slate I have been sourcing said in her article, "Was Arafat the Problem?", 
 
Taba was a big step forward. A 2-to-1 land swap sure beats a 9-to-1 swap. But it still left Arafat having to answer the obvious question: Um, why not 1-to-1? If Israel really accepts the principle that pre-1967 borders are a valid goal except where rendered impractical by demographic "facts on the ground," then shouldn't it offer fair recompense for the land being withheld—especially since it created those facts on the ground, in some cases cynically?

Plus add to the fire the famous visit to the Temple Mount by Ariel Sharon in September of 2000, which actually ignited much, (not all), of the Second Intifada.  This did create a series of attacks on Israeli's and Palestinian's.  However, the subsequent excessive use of force displayed by the Israeli Air Force against the Palestinian people by the end of 2001 one can begin to understand why Hagel said his quote that Krauthammer quoted, " Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace.”  

It just so happens that Chuck Hagel at the time might have saw the conflict through a Palestinian's perspective, rather than a Krauthammer Israeli centric perspective.  As Robin Wright said about the Camp David and Taba negotiations.  "They (Israeli's) have never looked at things from the Palestinian point of view."  It is quite obvious that Krauthammer hasn't either.


Iran:  

First of Krauthammer save some enamel on his teeth because Hagel is starting to sound more and more like Krauthammer on sanctions.  However, let's examine Hagel's actions as a Nebraska Senator in regards to Iran.  It isn't a damaging as Krauthammer makes it out to be.

It seems like his views about Iran, for Krauthammer, were beginning to grow soft around 2001.  But his voting record seems conflicting.  The below information was gathered from Ileana Ros-Lehtinen piece on Politifact. 

1.  He voted against Iranian Sanctions in 2001, but then in 2006 he voted in favor of the Iran Freedom 
      Support Act.

2.  He also voted against an amendment that would have labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a
      Terrorist group.

3.  In 2008 he voted against a measure in the Banking Committee called the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, 
     Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2008.

All of these "NO" votes could be considered very rational in the light of the events that were important at
the time.  The Iraq War was beginning to become very unpopular as of 2006 and even though Hagel voted
in favor of the war in 2003.  Hagel began to become a fierce critic of the unilateral handing of the Iraq War and all of the problems that began to occur because of the conflict.

I imagine with the vote against the Iranian Revolution Guard as a Terrorist group it was quite plausible that he was concerned that the Bush Administration might use this new classification as an excuse to head down the same path with Iran as it had with Iraq.  Of course Congress made similar pronouncements against Iraq prior to 2003 and then latter used that as an excuse to invade Iraq.   Heaven forbid we not get the U.S. embroiled into another conflict based upon a faulty assumption that would risk American lives, and treasure. 

The Sanction issue is an important one.  So often the sanctions are used as a way to get the people to realize that their suffering is due to their own leader and therefore the hope is to create a movement within the people to remove the leader and therefore end the suffering.  The only problem is that history doesn't have a lot of positive examples of this working.  Take Cuba for example.  Sanctions have been placed on this country since 1962 and the country is still communist and the Castro's still control the central government.   The sanctions did not cause the people of Iraq to rise up against  Saddam Hussein.  Too often the sanctions have the opposite effect of unifying the people against the country imposing the sanctions.  Plus the sanctions are responsible for moral travesties.  The Iraq sanctions of the 90s were said to have killed hundreds of thousands of lives.   Plus the Iran Sanctions are causing problems for the chronically ill due to the shortage of pharmaceuticals.  Not to mention the horrendous state that the sanctions put their economy in.  High inflation rates, foreign good shortages, also cause the Iranians to suffer.  These sanctions create resentment towards the country, or countries, responsible for them.  This creates the fuel to endure these horrible conditions and direct the hatred towards the country responsible. Sanctions are an act of war and they shouldn't be used since they attack the citizens of the country and not the regime. 

I am realist to understand that nothing will change with the direction of American foreign policy if Chuck Hagel is nominated.  I just don't understand why many Americans, (or Nebraskans for that matter) are suckered into the Neoconservative (Krauthammer) foreign policy mindset.