Chuck Hagel's Nomination Is Worth Fighting For [View all]

[Purveyor]

By Dana Milbank, Published: January 7

--CLIP
This is not a man who is going to shrink from a fight with the chicken hawks of the Senate.

President Obama hit the right theme in nominating Hagel on Monday to be secretary of defense — the first enlisted man and the first Vietnam veteran to be so honored. “To this day, Chuck bears the scars — and the shrapnel —from the battles he fought in our name,” Obama said during an appearance with Hagel and other officials in the East Room.

“Maybe most importantly,” Obama added, “Chuck knows that war is not an abstraction. He understands that sending young Americans to fight and bleed in the dirt and mud, that’s something we only do when it’s absolutely necessary.”

--CLIP
And Hagel is worth fighting for. The Republican former senator from Nebraska should and probably will be confirmed by the Senate, despite irresponsible claims that he is anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, anti-gay and a coddler of Iran. Most of that is false and the rest is irrelevant: As head of the Pentagon, Hagel would not determine foreign policy.

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