Senator's strongly pro-military voting record, Vietnam experience and potential presidential run make him a voice that is being heard.
Last week Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) spoke with strength, clarity and emotion about the need for every senator to take a stand on the Iraq War. There are moments in the Iraq War dialogue that create a paradigm shift in the Congress and the nation, e,g, when Rep. Murtha called for withdrawal. The statement by Sen. Hagel, whose comments are rooted in the experience of Vietnam, should be one of those moments. And, if he runs for president he may turn the election upside down with a Republican anti-war candidate running against a Democrat who is fuzzy on the war.
Hagel's Military Experience
Hagel has one of the most pro-military voting records in Congress. He scores a mere 5% on the authoritative Peace Majority Report scorecard on peace and security issues. To get a sense of where he stands in relation to other senators, McCain scored 4%, Lieberman 26%, Clinton 56%, and Feingold 74%. So, Hagel is not someone who votes against the military, in fact he is a loyal supporter of the Department of Defense.
He is also someone with military experience that grounds him in the realities of war. His official biographies describe Hagel as a Vietnam War veteran who served in the U.S. Army infantry, attaining the rank of Sergeant (E-5) from 1967-68. He received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, Purple Heart, Army Commendation Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge. But that perfunctory report does not tell the whole story and the impact it has had on Senator Hagel.
By coincidence Hagel served in Vietnam, in the bloody year of the Tet Offensive in 1968, with his younger brother Tom. Chuck Hagel was 21 and Tom was 19 and the two nearly died together twice. They fought in the 9th Infantry Division south of Saigon. The first time they almost died was when the soldier in the lead position on patrol triggered a bobby trap. The Hagel brothers had just been rotated off the lead position a few minutes earlier and when the blast occurred not only did it kill the soldier in the lead, but it left Chuck with a major wound to his chest, that bled until his brother stopped it with bandages. Tom then found out that he had shrapnel in his left arm.
The second near death experience involved a mine blowing up under the Armed Personnel Carrier in which they were being transported. The explosion set Chuck on fire, burning his face so it was covered in bubbles and bursting his eardrums. His brother was knocked unconscious and Chuck managed to drag him out of the APC. They found themselves under attack from machine gun fire, but fellow soldiers had heard the blast and returned to save them.
Vietnam shaped both Chuck and Tom. Tom reacted strongly and bitterly feeling guilt about participating in what he saw as war crimes, suffering from depression and alcohol abuse. He became a criminal defense lawyer and a law professor. He also became a liberal Democrat who supported Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 election.
Sen. Hagel had a different reaction. For years he continued to believe that the Vietnam War was a noble cause. This created such a division between the two brothers that the topic was off-limits at family dinners. Chuck suppressed his feelings and took the approach of getting on with his life, claiming he was just fine. He continued to have an ideological view of the world including the belief that U.S. involvement in Vietnam was for the right reasons. Suppression of the war's effects did not work well. He lived in a small house on the edge of Omaha, Nebraska while he went to school, had no social life and didn't talk to anybody. During that year somehow he dealt with the war and began a more normal life. He started to read about the history of Indochina, the French, the Vietnamese, and U.S. policy. He began to realize there was a lot of dishonesty in the Vietnam War and connecting the deaths with the dishonesty.
The final straw was listening to White House tapes of President Johnson. They made him cringe. He realized that the U.S. strayed from its "noble" origins into a war that was false and fought to save face. The Washington Post reports that Hagel remembers especially a conversation between LBJ and Sen. Richard Russell (D-GA), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who thought Johnson should get out of Vietnam: "It isn't important a bit," Russell said. Johnson said he didn't want a war, but he worried: "They'd impeach a president . . . that would run out, wouldn't they?" He wrote in the Omaha World-Herald that "the tough questions were not asked when we sent young men and women into Vietnam. Where were our elected officials then? Eleven years and 58,000 deaths later, we lost. I don't want that to happen in Iraq."
Hagel tells fellow Senators: Facing up to Iraq is "the essence of our responsibility"
When Senator Hagel speaks about Iraq he is speaking with strong sincerity based on the real life experience of war, and understanding that sometimes the United States has been dishonest when it has fought wars. He also speaks as someone who understands the challenge of veterans who have served in war. His first federal political appointment was as Deputy Administrator of Veterans Affairs under President Ronald Reagan. He continues to be active in veteran's organizations, e.g. Disabled American Veterans, Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign War and Vietnam Veterans of America.
His criticism of the Iraq War before the Foreign Relations Committee was personal "This is a ping-pong game with American lives. These young men and women that we put in Anbar province, in Iraq, in Baghdad are not beans. They're real lives. And we better be damn sure we know what we're doing - all of us - before we put 22,000 more Americans into that grinder. We better be as sure as you can be," he said on January 25th. He co-sponsored the Hagel-Biden Resolution opposing the increase in troops in Iraq saying the planned troop surge is "not in the national interest."
Hagel, however, is not going as far as many peace advocates are urging, saying "We are not talking about cutting off funds, not supporting the troops. This is a very real, responsible addressing of the most divisive issue in this country since Vietnam. Yes, sure, it's tough....If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business. But is it any tougher, us having to take a tough vote, express ourselves, and have the courage to step up on what we are asking our young men and women to do? I don't think so.... Can't we debate the most critical issue of our time, out front, in front of the American people?"
And Hagel specifically addressed fellow Senators "I think all 100 senators ought to be on the line on this. What do you believe? What are you willing to support? What do you think? Why were you elected?" He concluded his comments saying:
"And I want every one of you, every one of us, 100 senators to look in that camera, and you tell your people back home what you think. Don't hide anymore; none of us.
Kevin Zeese is Executive Director of the Campaign for Fresh Air and Clean Politics (www.FreshAirCleanPolitics.net) whose projects include Voters for Peace (www.VotersForPeace.US., True Vote (www.TrueVote.US and www.TrueVoteMD.org) and Climate Security (www.GlobalClimateSecurity.org). He is also president of Common Sense for Drug Policy (www.csdp.org).
"Senator Chuck Hagel's Comments Should Be a Wake-Up Call to
Oh really?
Chuck Hagel's remarks to his fellow Senators to take a stand came in advocacy of a non-binding sense of the Senate resolution stating their disagreement with the President's surge policy.
The Senator's position, like the Resolution itself, has a large content of yada yada yada.
Has the anti-war movement become so myopic that it is willing to sacrifice every progressive political principle to follow this man, Hagel, who otherwise supports only hard core conservative extremism?
Let's focus instead on ending the war without immersing Iraq in a bloodbath or the Persian Gulf in regional war and get back to enhancing the Homeland's security by defeating and destroying Islamic terrorism.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, NY
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 556 comments)
on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 9:02:08 PM
1 comments
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