Neo-Cons Exploit Hagel Nomination to Refight Lost Wars

[Purveyor]

By Albert R. Hunt - Jan 13, 2013
The nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary could generate an important debate over national security. That will only happen if critics skip sideshows such as ridiculous accusations that he is anti- Semitic or pro-terrorist and avoid cherry picking his votes.

The real debate is whether to return to the early foreign policy of President George W. Bush -- a unilateral, aggressive interventionism requiring a robust military machine -- or adopt a more selective approach in which the U.S. is the dominant force in the world but depends on alliances and sets priorities.

“This battle has not as much to do with Chuck Hagel or any comments he made on Israel,” says Joseph Nye, a former top Defense Department official who teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “This is about re-litigating major changes in foreign policy.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who has supported most Obama administration Cabinet nominees, should have credibility when he assails the choice of his former Senate colleague. “Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream,” Graham says, “on most issues regarding foreign policy.”

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2013-01-13/neo-cons-exploit-hagel-nomination-to-refight-lost-wars.html

[Frustratedlady]

1. I was just thinking this morning, how long have we had to put up with the neo-cons?

I couldn't remember when they became so prominent and nasty. Whose administration?

[patrice]

2. The roots were set with the seeds of the Military Industrial Complex under Harry Truman.

Read up on the Democratic Convention of 1948, which was preceded by the Roosevelt administration, which produced Vice President Henry Wallace, a progressive labor advocate who proposed economic reforms that would have addressed Southern racism. Democrats courted Eisenhower that year, who turned them down, and the convention ran Truman against Wallace, who lost narrowly to Truman (and plans for the Military Industrial Complex and the Nuclear Weapons/Cold War - ARMS RACE age) and also resulted in Southern Democrats, under the leadership of Strom Thurmond walking out of the convention and becoming Republicans. This also later produced the Southern Strategy which became a great political support to Neo-cons, by fracturing Democrats' natural class-constituency, as it helped to betray Labor with a double-cross coming out of the Nixon administration.

You can read about most of this in the very readable story-telling history here: http://books.google.com/books/about/Stayin_Alive.html?id=h9acQrZmpmAC