Who is John Brennan?

A month has passed since Obama’s announcement that John Brennan was his pick to take over the CIA after the outing of David Petraeus during which there has been more news reported on Lance Armstrong’s doping confession on the Oprah show than on the nominee who will head a powerful agency few Americans understand.

I had heard so little about the guy on the MSM that I had to Google his name to see what was out there on the Internet. Plenty, it turns out. Brennan has made statements and speeches that are, on the surface, sympathetic to Islamic jihadism and, in my opinion, sufficiently out of the mainstream to have justified a tougher examination than Senate intelligence committee chaired by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) seemed willing to give him. This is the guy who has been running the war on terrorism as a White House adviser and will supposedly continue that role as the CIA chief. So, why is what is known about him being kept quiet?

A little background.

Brennan has a 25-year record in the CIA, rising through the ranks from a Middle East analyst to become the intelligence briefer of President Clinton and then a member of the executive suite as Deputy Executive Director of the CIA. When his boss and mentor, George Tenet, left the agency in 2004, Brennan followed the next year to take a higher-paying private sector job in intelligence. He got behind Obama’s 2008 campaign, which was supposed to make him a shoo-in for the top CIA post in the first Obama administration. But sullied by having served in the administration of the hated George Bush, the Lefties would hear of it, and Brennan was forced to ask Obama to withdraw his name. Nevertheless, a grateful Obama found a place for him in the White House as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

Early in his career, Brennan served in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia and Egypt – where he supposedly became fluent in Arabic, although one observer called his fluency “rusty.” Nevertheless his language skills were sufficient to allow him to mix and mingle with the locals, especially young sometimes radical college students eager to exercise their influence in the world. More than a few people say he converted to Islam during his assignment in the Middle East, although there is no way to prove – or disprove – that assertion. His pro-Arabic sympathies and his anti-Israel antipathies are less subtle.

In a number of his speeches Brennan embraces Obama’s commitment (no doubt reinforced by Brennan himself) to expunge words like “jihadist” and “war on terror” from the public lexicon. Brennan asserts that

[Terrorists] are not jihadists, for jihad is a holy struggle, an effort to purify for a legitimate purpose, and there is nothing … holy or pure or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children. [The US] is not waging a war against terrorism because terrorism is but a tactic that will never be defeated, any more than a tactics of war will.

Brennan has also said,

… the President does not describe this as a ‘global war’ …. It plays into the misleading and dangerous notion that the US … is somehow in conflict with the rest of the world. It risks setting our nation apart from the world, rather than emphasizing the interests we share. Worse, it risks reinforcing the idea that the US is somehow at war with Islam itself. And this is why President Obama has confronted this perception directly and forcefully in his speeches to Muslim audiences, declaring that America is not and never will be at war with Islam.

Brennan often recycles the hackneyed and vapid assertion that “violent extremists” are victims of “political, economic and social forces” and that

… there is no denying that when children have no hope for an education, when young people have no hope for a job and feel disconnected from the modern world, when governments fail to provide for the basic needs of their people, then people become more susceptible to ideologies of violence and death.

This is unadulterated horse hockey. Look at the 9/11 attackers and the terrorists leaders scattered among the Islamic groups committing mayhem around the world, especially to Jews and Americans in the Middle East, and you see children of privilege, college-educated fanatics with advanced degrees in medicine, law, and science. They aren’t ignorant, disconnected lunatics who aren’t equipped intellectually and socially to get their dark deeds done. They are smart, well-connected, and well-financed political and religious zealots who are trapped in an 8^th century Islamic time warp.

Brennan’s views on Hezbollah should have been especially worth probing if Senator Feinstein’s committee had any inclination to do what it was elected to do – and that applies equally to Republicans and Democrats.

Describing that Hezbollah had emerged from a terrorist organization sponsored by Iran to one that has members in the Lebanese Parliament, Brennan has said,

Hezbollah is a very interesting organization … there is certainly the elements of Hezbollah that are truly a concern to us what they’re doing. And what we need to do is to find ways to diminish their influence within the organization and to try to build up the more moderate elements.

How can the word “moderate” be used in the same sentence with Hezbollah, which along with Hamas, wages almost continual war against Israel? And as for killing Americans, Hezbollah is second only to al-Qaida. Yet Brennan claims Hezbollah has “evolved.” It certainly has. Now it is able to recruit the professional class into its ranks.

… within Hezbollah, there's still a terrorist core. And hopefully those elements within the Shia community in Lebanon and within Hezbollah at large – they're going to continue to look at that extremist terrorist core as being something that is anathema to what, in fact, they're trying to accomplish in terms of their aspirations about being part of the political process in Lebanon. And so, quite frankly, I'm pleased to see that a lot of Hezbollah individuals are in fact renouncing that type of terrorism and violence and are trying to participate in the political process in a very legitimate fashion.

Tell it to the Israelis.

In last week’s hearing several Senators asked Brennan about the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) which the CIA used when the Bush administration – aka the Dark Side – was first learning how to fight the war on terror. Let’s admit that terrorists who willingly kill 3,000 people are probably not going to divulge a lot of useful information in a chat over a cup of coffee. So I’m on record in saying that bad guys need a little incentive to cough up their evil plans and knowledge. EITs involve sleep deprivation, uninterrupted loud noise, (remember how Panama’s Manuel Noriega was persuaded to surrender?), heat, standing or squatting for long periods – hardly the tools of the Spanish Inquisition. Yet, these enhanced techniques were sufficient to loosen the tongues of most of the evil doers. Waterboarding was used on just three holdouts.

Waterboarding involves strapping someone to a board with his feet above his head and covering his face with cellophane or a towel onto which water is poured. It creates the sense that the person is drowning even though no water enters his nose or mouth. Panic is almost instantaneous. Anyone who administers this technique must first endure it himself to know firsthand what it is like. The average time of tolerance is 14 seconds. It seems to me that 14 seconds of panic is worth whatever information you can get from an avowed enemy of this country – especially if he knows there will be another session if he lies.

Waterboarding isn’t torture. Torture inflicts bodily pain or damage. Waterboarding doesn’t. Reporters have volunteered to undergo waterboarding to understand its affect. No sensible reporter would subject himself to painful torture to write a story about it.

In a 2007 interview, Brennan defended enhanced interrogation saying.

There [has] been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hardcore terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.

In the same interview, however, Brennan was critical of the use of waterboarding because “inconsistent with American values” and “something that should be prohibited.”

Really?

My son is a police officer and carries standard issue pepper spray and a taser stun gun. Each officer has to be pepper-sprayed and “tasered” before carrying these devices. The pepper spray or taser experience is far worst in terms of pain or discomfort than 14 seconds of waterboarding and their use is usually sufficient to incapacitate a bad guy in order to avoid having to shoot him. I wonder if Brennan thinks pepper spray and trasers are inconsistent with American values (since they are used on Americans, not terrorists) and should be prohibited.

The entire line of reasoning concerning how uncivilized one may be when dealing with someone who is a killer is insane.

Brennan's being on record for repudiating EITs wasn’t sufficient for the Lefties on the Senate Intelligence Committee, however, who sent their staffs to generate a 6,000 page report on the ineffectiveness of EITs. Only Democrats were involved in this project, and the end product was summarized in a 350-page report which Brennan was asked to read before his hearing.

Asked by Feinstein what he now thought about the EITs instituted by the hated Bush CIA, Brennan said;

I must tell you, Senator, that reading this report from the committee raises serious questions about the information that I was given at the time and the impression I had at that time. Now I have to determine what, based on that information as well as what CIA says, what the truth is.

Huh? Brennan was asked to comment on a partisan report whose conclusion was foreknown but the Senate committee did not asked him if the CIA program saved lives. If lives were saved, why aren’t we still using these techniques? Is valuable information being missed which could cost American lives in the future because we are too civilized to realize what kind of an enemy we are dealing with – one who is willing to kill himself in order to kill others?

It seems oddly paradoxical that the high-minded Obama administration, which put waterboarding off limits and would dearly love to close the Gitmo prison, has no compunction about vaporizing a target in a sovereign country that has not given permission to fly in its air space.

The extent of Obama’s drone program architected by – none other than – John Brennan and its “kill list” is just coming to light, even though drones have been used for assassination for years. So here’s my question: If you catch a bad guy you can’t waterboard him … you gotta’ be nice to him … but you can blow him into eternity, which is a lot worse than waterboarding, and you get no intelligence from him? How does that work?

We’re told that the collateral damage in loss of life from drones is in “single digits” each year according to the Obama administration. Well, that’s comforting. But non-governmental groups, who are probably wrong, say that up to 15% or the 2,500 to 3,000 killed by drones are non-combatants. I’m not saying collaterals are innocent or else they wouldn’t be hanging out with terrorists, but they weren’t the target. They were in the wrong place. Too bad the lot of them weren’t captured. Then we couldn’t do anything to them. Too uncivilized, you know.

 

On Christmas Day 2009 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab made news by setting his underwear on fire in a botched attempt to blow up an airplane in flight. Three years later a similar incident was thwarted by another underwear bomber. Trying to get credit for being part of a British and Saudi intelligence operation which only marginally involved the US, Brennan blew the cover of an underground mole who tipped off authorities that a non-metallic device would be worn. Brennan made the information known to former intelligence operatives who were appearing on TV news programs as experts. Although he referred to the mole indirectly by saying there was “inside control” no former intelligence agent could miss a clue that large. As a child I recall World War II posters warning “Loose lips sink ships.” Who knows what else the mole would have learned if Brennan hadn’t blown his cover in order to grandstand.

We now know that when Obama was running for reelection Brennan and others disclosed the identity of Seal Team 6 to Hollywood movie makers who were producing a film that would be released fortuitously when it would do the Obama campaign the most good. The administration had stonewalled efforts by others who wanted Osama bin Laden death photos, claiming secrecy, security, and the usual run-arounds. Only after nine months and a federal lawsuit was Judicial Watch able to get their request released under the Freedom of Information Act from the Defense Department and CIA. Documents revealed that Brennan, the president’s counter-terrorism adviser, had briefed the film-makers on the Osama raid.

I guess secrets become un-secret only if it serves a political end.

Colleagues who formerly worked with Brennan describe a man who will say whatever his bosses want to hear in order to advance his own career. He is, by his own actions, a man who will blow covers and reveal secreted information to hype his self-importance and put politics above principle to curry the favor of his boss. Is this the kind of guy we want running our intelligence operations?

It is incomprehensible to think that Brennan was not in the loop as the US Benghazi mission was under attack and the ambassador and security detail were calling for help. For a person so inclined to terminate targets with drones, why weren’t they used here? Normally not camera shy, Brennan was MIA after this tragedy. Yet not one question in the confirmation hearing probed what he knew about the Benghazi fiasco.

And the cockamamie yarn about a anti-Islam video setting off a spontaneous riot? Susan Rice didn’t think that up on her own, nor did Hillary. Brennan’s fingerprints are all over it, although that can’t be proved. But his role as the president’s counterterrorism adviser would have put his name on the list of the first people to be called when the Benghazi mission came under attack. Since Obama had decreed al-Qaeda out of existence to improve his reelection, a cover story had to concocted to protect King Canute.

Thankfully Lindsay Graham has a hold on the Brennan and Hagel confirmations until the White House releases information about the Benghazi debacle.

For his second term, Obama is installing second string players in the selection of Kerry, Hagel, and Brennan. Not one of the three is an independent thinker – just what Obama wants because he is going to run their agencies from the White House. But drone targeting and kill lists are a lot of power to put in an agency whose mission is to gather intelligence. Its growing paramilitary role is typical bureaucratic mission creep – and dangerous at that. CIA should be confined to intelligence and let Defense do the killing. But the committee didn’t probe that issue either.

There are many questions about the suitability of John Brennan to head the CIA. Too bad the Senate Intelligence Committee didn’t see the need to ask them.

Harriet Hagel

In October 2005, George Bush 43 surprised everyone, most of all his own party, by nominating his personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, to fill the vacancy of retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. While Ms. Miers was no doubt a nice person, she was totally unsuited for a judgeship on the Supreme Court (as was Elena Kagan) and a firestorm erupted on both sides of the aisle, most particularly on the Republican side. Conservative talk show hosts and talking head pundits went on a tear. The late Robert Bork, nominated by Ronald Reagan and savagely rejected by a Ted Kennedy-led smear campaign, called the nomination a "disaster" and "a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years."

Four days after Bush’s nomination, he announced that he was withdrawing Miers at her request. Sam Alito replaced her as Bush’s choice and was confirmed, after which he has proven to be a worthy justice, one who respects the Constitution.

On January 7 Obama announced that he was nominating former Republican Senator Charles T. “Chuck” Hagel for Secretary of Defense to replace Leon Panetta, who is allegedly retiring, though some close to him hint he is quitting rather than preside over the budget-gutting of our national defense arsenal. Like Miers, Hagel is totally unsuited to fill the position for which he was nominated. Why would Obama repeat the Bush blunder and choose a third-rate candidate like the enigmatic Hagel when there are so many candidates who are eminently better qualified?

Although Miers never made it to the hearings phase of her confirmation before she was withdrawn, Hagel has, and his sorry performance showed him to be Obama’s Harriet Miers redux. We may as well call him Harriet Hagel.

Only Obama, the smartest man to hold the American presidency, truly knows why he would put forward so weak a candidate for so important a post as Defense. But the nomination of Hagel – along with Kerry at the State Department – sends a clear signal that a second-term Obama, unrestrained by the handicap of reelection, is fully committed to remake America’s role in the world.

Hagel’s supporters say his qualification to be Defense Secretary is his Vet Nam service They underscore his military record with phrases like “highly decorated vet” and “front line combat experience.” In fact, Hagel’s military service record is unremarkable and his military achievements are underwhelming. He served in Viet Nam as an Army enlisted man for one year in the mid-1960s, rising to the rank of sergeant (E-6), a squad level position that reported to a platoon leader – a second or first lieutenant.

Due to a clerical error, he and his brother were in the same unit. In combat he was wounded and injured for which he received two Purple Hearts, one for a shrapnel wound in the chest and the other for burns he received while saving his brother from a flaming vehicle. While not insignificant awards, Purple Hearts are not uncommon in a combat theater. Hagel was also awarded the Vietnam Gallantry Cross, an award also awarded to Tom Ridge, former Pennsylvania governor and Homeland Security Director, and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

If he becomes Defense Secretary, Hagel will be the first enlisted man to hold the cabinet position and many far more bemedaled generals and admirals will report to him.

After his brief military stint in Viet Nam, Hagel returned to finish college, became a congressional staffer, a lobbyist, and a participant in Reagan’s first presidential campaign, which was rewarded with an appointment to the position of deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. A spat with his boss led to his resignation. Perhaps that was a personal blessing because, reentering the private sector, Hagel co-founded a cellular company that made him worth multiple millions.

Encouraged to run for Virginia governor, where he had lived for 20 years, he returned instead to his home state of Nebraska where he became president of an investment banking firm and later the Chairman/CEO of one of its portfolio companies, making him richer still. He resigned to run for the vacant Nebraska US senate seat against former government Democrat Ben Nelson, which he won becoming the first Republican senator in two dozen years. He ran for office with the understanding that he would serve only two terms, which he did, but during those two terms he made few friends among the Republican caucus.

Currently, Hagel is a professor at Georgetown University. He is a Director on several boards, including Global Zero US Nuclear Policy Commission which seeks to make the world nuclear-free, an aspiration similarly held by Obama.

While Hagel was in the Senate, he was an unrelenting critic of Bush 43’s Iraq war policy even though he supported the invasion. As the war began to go badly with the terrorist insurgency, he signed on to a 2007 Democrat-sponsored bill that required troop withdrawal in 120 days. When the military strategy and leadership on the ground changed and the surge was adopted to get military units out of armed compounds and put them traveling among the villages and people, Hagel opposed it, saying it would fail.

Hagel is blunt, abrasive, and critical with colleagues – not demeanor normally found in the cluby culture of the US Senate. He had the second highest staff turnover in the Senate – a good indication that he’s not a fun guy to work for and probably not a good team man.

Calling the surge an escalation of the war and “the most divisive issue since the Viet Nam war” he inferred in a Senate hearing that the Senate lacked courage for not signing on to a non-binding bipartisan resolution which he, Carl Levin (D-MI),  Biden (D-DE), and Olympia Snow (R-ME) had crafted calling the surge strategy "not in the national interest." In the hearing he baited his fellow Senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who wouldn’t sign the resolution, “C’mon, what were you elected for? If you want to play it safe, go sell shoes!” Wow! Great sales technique, Chuck!

His anti-Israel comments while in the Senate bordered on anti-Semitic. Out of 100 Senators, he was the only Senator to refuse to sign a letter to Russian president Boris Yeltsin warning that the US foreign aid would be halted if Russian anti-Semitism continued.

He said a Clinton ambassadorial nominee was unqualified to serve because he was “openly, aggressively gay,” a remark for which he later apologized. He opposed military intervention and unilateral sanctions against Iran, favoring diplomatic negotiations instead. In his second senatorial term he shifted left, becoming more liberal in his political views. He floated the idea of a third political party in a book.

So it came as no surprise that when his nomination hearings were held last week, Hagel’s former colleagues on the right side of the aisle had tough questions for him. Few on the Senate Armed Services Committee, regardless of political stripe, however, could have been encouraged by his jaw-dropping, ghastly performance before the Committee. Notwithstanding three rehearsals before a mock committee, Hagel seemed unprepared, his answers lacked cogency, and he was unstudied and uninformed about the ins and outs of running the largest federal agency in government.

When it fell the turn of the most senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), to question Hagel, Inhofe announced that after serving with Hagel in the Senate and speaking with him during his pre-hearings courtesy rounds with each committee member, he would be voting against his confirmation.

On many of the security challenges facing U.S. interests around the world, Senator Hagel's record is deeply troubling, and out of the mainstream. Too often it seems he's willing to subscribe to a worldwide view that is predicated on appeasing our adversaries while shunning our friends.

Inhofe was troubled by Hagel’s turnabouts from previously-held positions, saying that they “seem based on political expediency rather than on core beliefs."

When the turn to question passed to John McCain, a one-time a close friend until the surge issue divided them, McCain asked Hagel if he now believed he was right or wrong in calling the surge a “dangerous foreign policy blunder.” Hagel refused to answer and tried to take the question in a different direction, and each time McCain cut him off, finally saying that Hagel was not free to sidetrack the issue until he had answered “yes or no.”

"I'm not going to give you a yes or no – I think it's far more complicated than that. ... I'll defer that judgment to history," Hagel responded, to which McCain snapped "I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you're on the wrong side of it," adding that refusing to answer would impact McCain’s vote for confirmation.

The newest Senator on the committee, Ted Cruz (R-TX) seemed to have caught Hagel off guard by playing two tapes from an Al Jazeera broadcast that featured Hagel as a guest. A caller asserted that Israel was guilty of war crimes and that America is “the world’s bully,” neither of which Hagel disputed. Cruz asked Hagel if he believes Israel has committed war crimes. Hagel said “no” but he wanted to see the “full context” of the interview. For what purpose? He didn’t refute the caller.

Hagel’s testimony became more muddled when he said that he supported Obama’s containment policy regarding Iran’s nuclear capacity. Hagel’s inner George Kennan had led him astray. Obama has publicly committed to prevent Iran from having nuclear arms, not to contain them. Oops!

It took a note handed to him by one of his confirmation handlers to get him on the correct course. Hagel acknowledged that he had just been handed a note, as if none of the Senators noticed, and that he had misspoken; "We do have a position on containment, and that is we do not favor containment." Democrat Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Levin tried to make the best of the confused mess, saying for the record,

We do have a position on containment, and that is we do not favor containment. I just wanted to clarify the clarify.

The faux pas would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so pathetic.

Seeking more clarity on the issue, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS.) asked Hagel to elaborate on the accusation that the Jewish lobby intimidated congressional legislation to favor Israel over Palestine and the Arab league.

So when you talked about the Jewish lobby, were you talking about AIPAC? Were you talking about NORPAC? Were you talking about Christians United for Israel? And do you still believe that their success in this town is because of intimidation and that they are, as you stated, ‘urging upon our government that we do dumb things’?

Hagel scrambled like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

I’ve already said I regret referencing the Jewish lobby. I should have said ‘pro-Israel lobby.’ I think it’s the only time on the record that I’ve ever said that. … On the use of intimidation, I should have used ‘influence,’ I think that would have been more appropriate. … I should not have said ‘dumb” or stupid,’ because I understand, appreciate there are different views on these things.

Not good enough for Lindsay Graham (R-SC) who went to work like a prosecuting attorney: “You said the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here … Name one person in your opinion who’s intimidated by the Israeli lobby in United States Senate.”

“I do not know,” Hagel said. “Well, why would you say it?” Graham replied. “I didn’t have in mind a specific person,” Hagel confessed. “But you said, back then, it makes us do dumb things,” Graham contined. “You can’t name one senator intimidated, now give me one example of the dumb things that we’re pressured to do up here.”

“We were talking in that interview about the Middle East, about positions, about Israel…” Hagel responded. “So give me an example of where we have been intimidated by the Israeli-Jewish lobby to do something dumb regarding the Middle East, Israel, or anywhere else,” said Graham. “I cannot give you an example,” Hagel said.

Graham followed up with another topic about which Hagel is on record as outspoken – our “bloated” defense budget. “How much do we spend on defense?” Graham asked. Sergeant Hagel didn’t know; he guessed about 5%. (The true number is 4% soon to be less than 3%.) Not as much bloat as he thought, it seems. And not as well informed as Sergeant Hagel thought he was.

“Is that historically high or low?” Graham asked. “Well, I think, generally, it depends on real dollars and wars…” Hagel answered. “Are we at war?” Hmm. Yeah, there’s that thing going on in Afghanistan.

The soon to be ex-Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) pursued Hagel’s refusal to sign a letter designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. Hagel explained;

We have never made any part of a legitimate independent government, designated them or made part – made them part of a terrorist organization. We’ve just never done that … We were already in two wars at the time and I thought that this made sense, and so I voted against it.

Oops again! The mullahs and their apocalyptic front man, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, stole a legitimate election as I have twice blogged. The people rioted, some were killed, and others imprisoned. That doesn’t sound like a legitimate independent government to me!

Graham sorta’ summed it up for any undecideds on the committee by asking Hagel:

Do you believe that the sum total of all of your votes, refusing to sign a letter to the EU asking Hezbollah to be designated a terrorist organization; being one of 22 to vote [against] designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization; being one of two, on two occasions, to vote against sanctions that this body was trying to impose on Iran; the statements you’ve made about Palestinians and about the Jewish lobby – all that together, that the image you’ve created is one of sending the worst possible signal to our enemies and friends at one of the most critical times in world history?

The soon-to-be Secretary of Defense disagreed with Graham’s conclusion, and waffled when asked if he would reconsider those votes if he had it to do again. As far as I’m concerned I’ll take the waffle to mean “no.”

The man performed like, and probably is, a dimwit. Obama would have had to look far and wide to find a more unsuited candidate. Yet, Hagel will likely be confirmed because Democrats outnumber the Republicans and two Republicans have also lined up for confirmation. Senate Democrats seem more concerned about marching in lockstep with Obama and Reid than about their constitutional role to advise and consent on nominations independently of party affiliation and Senate leader “recommendations.” This will be proven when not one Democrat “nay” vote is cast. Not one.

Dissenters will be forced to filibuster. That will delay things but not change the outcome. But a filibuster would be symbolic, even to the marginally-informed American public, that there are some Senators who still take their job seriously. And it would force Reid to find three more Republicans (assuming he holds on to all of the Democrats) to overcome the filibuster. Shame on these Senators! Shame on John McCain, who is talking down a filibuster – in other words, go along in order to get along. Is this a club or a legislative body?

A better solution, one which Obama’s ego and motives in this case won’t allow, would be to withdraw the nomination as was done in the Miers case. In fact, Hagel would serve his legacy better by asking to withdraw – as Harriet allegedly did.

Graham has asked Obama to send a new candidate. Even the New York Times friend-of-the-White-House David Brooks suggested that Harriet Hagel should confirm that Obama still has confidence in him after his miserable confirmation performance. That would at least give Obama an out. Harriet Hagel might be surprised that he’s no longer wanted. After all, following the hearings, the White House issued no ringing endorsement of their bruised and hapless candidate.

If the Republicans accomplished anything in the hearings they showed how unsuited and unqualified this man is for the job. In fact at the conclusion of the hearings, Hagel said:

A number of questions were asked of me today about specific programs: submarine programs, different areas of technology and acquisitions, and our superior technology. And I've said, I don't know enough about it. I don't. There are a lot of things I don't know about. If confirmed, I intend to know a lot more than I do. I will have to.

No doubt he will. And who is going to teach this novice what he doesn’t know? He will be in remedial training during one of the most dangerous times in world history with Iran about to go nuclear and China flexing its muscles. Additionally, the Pentagon is about to undergo a major do-over just about the time Sergeant Hagel moves into the corner office. His boss has promised to slash defense spending, the Army will have to shrink 13% – about 75,000 – to get rid of its “bloat” – the Navy will be left with its smallest fleet since World War I – yes World War ONE not two – and the Air Force is flying bombers that go back to the Harry Truman era, no match for a China committed to expand its influence and maybe fire a few shots to test American readiness and resolve. And then there’s Korea whose Maximum Leader is a child. All the while, Sergeant Hagel will be practicing on his Big Wheels tricycle to drive a 200 mph vehicle in NASCAR.

As I asked at the outset of this blog, what was Obama thinking when he nominated Hagel to fill the shoes of many really great Defense Secretaries we’ve had since World War II ended – men like General George Marshall, Robert McNamara, Clark Clifford, James Schlesinger, Don Rumsfeld (at least his first term), Caspar Weinberger, and Dick Cheney? There must be a dozen better qualified people for this cabinet position.

I think the answer is simple and straightforward. Obama must have a pliable front man for his draconian downsizing of the military – necessary to make national defense a blood donor to his second term domestic agenda. Who better than a Republican anti-nuke, anti-war dove, a Secretary who isn’t going to start thinking independently, and someone who will be little more than a hood ornament. Besides, the fact that he is a Republican (in name only) makes Obama look bipartisan. Like a good soldier, Hagel will salute and execute. In the final analysis, Obama is going to run the Pentagon out of the White House, just as he did in his first term.

Hagel is the ideal person for Obama but not the country. The country needs a strategic thinker who will sift intelligence data and collaborate with experts to identify the security threats we are going to likely face from our enemies. The country needs an arms expert who has a grasp on how to defend our country and its citizens ten years from now, which is about the cycle to research, develop, test, train, and deploy new weapons systems. The country needs a Pentagon leader who can work with egocentric four-star general officers to get them functioning as a team and assure they are spending the taxpayers’ dollars wisely – not on silly and expensive green projects that are pushed on the military by Obama because the military can’t push back against its Commander-in-Chief. The country needs a Defense Secretary that will stand up to Obama as Panetta did to advocate against enfeebling the arsenal of democracy so much that it can no longer fight a two-front war as we had to do 70 years ago.

That’s what the country needs. That’s what the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way need. That’s not what Obama needs.

That’s why he chose Chuck Hagel.

The President’s Speech

On March 4, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address. Thirty-eight days later he would be dead, felled by an assassin’s bullet.

Although less than 700 words in length, it was a magnificent and charitable speech that has been the subject of several books. It was a speech spoken by a tired and humble man who personally felt the burden of a four-year long war even though he never fired a weapon or witnessed a battle. The personal toll of 600,000 casualties on both sides weighed on him as if he were responsible for them. In a little more than a month, although Lincoln did not know it at the time of his speech, General Lee would surrender at Appomattox, ending the war in the north. But Lincoln knew as he wrote his inaugural address that the South was beaten and the end of the war was only a matter of time.

The Union had been saved. Yet Lincoln’s speech contained no verbal strutting, no uncharitable accusations against the South, no vilification of the vanquished army. To the contrary, the speech said of both North and South,

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully…

As he grappled to give an explanation for the war to his inaugural audience, he recalled the role of slavery as its cause (though not the only cause) for the war.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

While Lincoln considered slavery immoral, he was no abolitionist. The widely misunderstood Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln authored, freed no slaves in the border states which were under Union control. Only the slaves residing in the states and counties in rebellion were emancipated, but since the Union Army was not in control of that territory to enforce the Proclamation, no slaves were freed and the edict was largely symbolic.

Normally, the victor in war assumes no responsibility for the war. The loser caused it. What is remarkable about Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address is that it pins the blame for the war on slavery, and to that end, Lincoln believed, the North was as culpable as the South. He argued this point so subtly that it’s often overlooked in his speech.

The North had participated in the slave trade from the founding of this country and only ended its overt practice a few decades before the war. But Northern industrialists created the market demand for Southern cotton (as did abolitionist England), and while the North had discontinued the ownership of slaves, it perpetuated the institution by buying the product of the slave-owning plantations. Thus, Lincoln’ speech harks back to Matthew 18, quoting Jesus verbatim:

“Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.”

The offense came not only from the slave owners but also their enablers – the North. Both should be punished for the woe of slavery and the war was the chastening rod.

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

This is lawyerly argumentation. Lincoln, hoping that four years was sufficient atonement for the sin of slavery, pined that the war would end. But he recognized the long history of slavery in this country – dating it 250 years to the time of the Jamestown Settlement – and reinforcing “the divine attributes which believers in a living God always ascribe to Him” by reaffirming David in Psalm 19 that God’s judgment is fair:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

The measure of the man is revealed in the concluding appeal for reconciliation among North and South:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Lincoln’s Second Inaugural is a truly remarkable speech – introspective, free of vainglory, and devoid of corrosive blame.

Obama’s Second Inaugural last week stands in stark contrast to Lincoln’s, although he has strained mightily to create parallels between himself and the 16^th president since his 2008 election. He arrived in 2009 by train for his first swearing in as Lincoln did for his in 1861. Criticized during the 2008 primaries for his inexperience, Obama noted that Lincoln was inexperienced also. He took his second term oath on the Lincoln bible and asked to deliver the first State of the Union of his second term on Lincoln’s birthday. Aides say that he frequently goes to the Lincoln bedroom to look at the handwritten draft of the Gettysburg Address which hangs on the wall there. In an interview he boasted that he keeps a copy of Team of Rivals – Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best seller on the Lincoln cabinet – in the Oval Office.

But there the diaphanous and cosmetic likenesses end. Unlike Lincoln, people would hardly describe Obama as humble, possessed of a charitable spirit, or given to reconciliation. Lincoln was mercilessly criticized and caricatured in ways that could not be publicized today and shrugged it off. Obama once took to task a columnist for mentioning his Dumbo-like ears. His thin-skinned self-absorption is renowned. More than once he has reminded Republicans “I won.” While Lincoln took the initiative to invite critics to the White House to make their case so he could better understand their point of view, Obama ridicules his critics – often while he is negotiating with them. Obama may have come from the Land of Lincoln, but there the similarity stops.

The 2,100-word text of Obama’s Second Inaugural Address is amply posted on the Internet for those who wish to read it. I have neither the space nor inclination to parse it paragraph by paragraph. But, while it is not a particularly good speech – because its abundant platitudes and clichés are distracting – the speech is noteworthy in revealing how Obama intends to govern (or rule) in his final term.

One cannot read the text of the address without being struck by how often Obama directly and indirectly impugns individualism and by inference glorifies government. Note the frequent references to “together” in this part of his address:

We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

Together we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. Together we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Together we resolve that a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Curiously this follows a reference to the founding documents – the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution – both of which stressed individualism and the latter of which expressly limited the role of government. Rather than partnerships of government and private initiatives which Obama claims built this country, history plainly shows individual and small group achievements engaged in private enterprise largely created it while government is benignly insignificant. The Founders never envisioned American achievements as a duopolistic enterprise between government and private parties.

Obama’s enchantment with government was highlighted in a speech he gave in Roanoke VA last year in which he asserted that nobody could claim credit for their individual achievements because in almost every respect their achievement was made possible by government. The laughable caricature of Julia created by the Obama campaign last year portrays a woman who is dependent on government virtually from cradle to grave – apparently without help from family, friends, church, or society. The hijacking of the US healthcare system, done under the cloak of cost management, was in fact founded on the belief that government can manage a complex enterprise better than free, profit-motivated citizens can – despite the stark contrary examples of the US Postal Service and Amtrak.

Obama continues his collectivistic vision for America:

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future. Or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.

Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.

This is Julia on a national scale, a modern-day rehash of Soviet philosophy. “The American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone” … is he kidding? Tell that to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and countless millions of individuals who didn’t need the government or a village to “meet the demands of today’s world.”

The word “than” is meant to introduce a comparative proof. How is American individualism made impotent because American soldiers couldn’t “have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias?” Nor could they have used fly swatters and nunchucks! What kind of logic is this? That we have to do things collectively – implicitly partnering with, if not directed by, activist government – because soldiers can’t fight with obsolete and inadequate weapons? I would have gotten an “F” in logic class for that kind of reasoning.

And look at the sentence beginning, “No single person can train all the math and science teachers,” etc. What a banal argument. Does he really expect someone to show up and say, “Hi, I’m Bill. I’m here to train all of the math and science teachers.”? The issue isn’t how many people are required, the issue is does government do it, manage it, or participate in it. I say no. Obama says yes.

Asked in 2009 if he believed in American exceptionalism, Obama answered "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." Yet early in his speech he states:

What makes us exceptional, what makes us America is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago. We hold these truths to be self-evident …

So, it’s hard to know if Obama believes Americans are exceptional or not because he’s such a master of weasel wording. But apparently, Americans aren’t exceptional enough to take care of their own affairs:

For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing. That while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by his people here on earth.

Self-executing? That’s a term I’d expect to find in a user’s manual. I suspect what Obama meant in the context of his government panegyrics is that God gave the gift but not the means to secure our liberty. For that we need more government. Because of …

… the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall …

This is the fallacy of argumentum ad antiquitatem – because something was done in the past we ought to do it today. This comes hard on the heels of having said above that, “For we have always understood that when times change, so must we.” Does this guy ever read his speeches before delivering them?

Nonetheless, appealing to history Obama veers off into the politics of gender, race, and sexual preference. For that he called up images of the Seneca Falls Convention, the Selma civil rights marches, and the Stonewall Inn riots. While the audience undoubtedly knew about the 1965 Selma marches, I doubt that many knew the meaning of Seneca Falls – an 1848 women’s suffrage meeting in the state of New York – or Stonewall, which I had to Google to learn that it was a gay bar in Greenwich Village. In 1969 Stonewall Inn was regularly raided by the police and arrests were made because it was owned by the mafia and had no liquor license and male prostitution was openly for sale. On one occasion a riot broke out during a raid and continued for several days. The raids ended and were outlawed, and marches for Gay Pride Day throughout the nation are held today to celebrate the Stonewall riots.

While I would hardly call people who participated in events in 1965 and 1969 “our forebears” as Obama does, Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall were seminal events in three social movements whose rights are protected in law today. A fact that Obama conveniently failed to mention is that the suppression of these rights in their day were sanctioned by government – not protected by it. So in using these examples as a rationale for more government to protect the liberty of specific groups is nothing more than pandering.

Like most of his speeches, the inaugural was conspicuous for its straw man arguments and false choices. Here is a sampling:

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.

The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few, or the rule of a mob.

We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few.

We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.

… for our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts.

Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.

We cannot mistake absolutism for principle or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.

I could comment on each of these non-existent injustices, inequities, and forced choices but you get the point. These circumstances exist only in Obama’s quixotic mind. He is the knight-errant in a world of non-functioning windmills. The psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” In like manner, if you are selling activist government, you see every social ill as inadequate federal intervention.

After the straw man assertion noted above that “the patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob,” neither of which has ever existed, Obama went on to say:

They gave to us a republic, a government of and by and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.

This is undeniable. It is also undeniable that Obama’s first term is marked with attempts to subvert the “founding creed,” most recently losing an appeals court unanimous decision for unconstitutionally, and therefore illegally, making recess appointments (about which I blogged in January 2012.)  Why should we expect he will “keep safe our founding creed” in his second and final term when the restraint of running for reelection no longer exists? I don’t.

This is germane because, near the end of his speech, he says:

Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time.

I absolutely disagree. A good deal of mischief by the Obama administration and administrations going back to Franklin Roosevelt, if not beyond, is due to the unsettled debate about the role of government, especially the federal government.

Obama admits that the Founders “gave to us a republic, a government of and by and for the people.” Yet this very president ignores of, by, and for the people, forcing them to buy government-specified insurance and forcing organizations and businesses to violate their religious beliefs and pay for procedures and medications that are morally repugnant to them. The Founders would be shocked.

The Obama inaugural speech is peppered with references to citizens and citizenship. He doesn’t understand the meaning of those words. Though he off-handedly states that Americans are exceptional, he is on record for impugning American exceptionalism. A republic that has endured for 225 years, albeit in an increasingly eroded form, is exceptional in the history of the world’s governments. Citizenship means something in a 225-year constitutional republic that is different from its meaning in other countries and governments. It is exceptional!

Yet Obama says we can ignore debates about the role of government and that the lack of consensus is not an impediment to moving ahead – an attitude, to paraphrase Admiral Farragut, like “damn the disagreement, full speed ahead!”

With the role of government unsettled, can a government force its citizens to violate their conscience in the name of insurance reform or not? Can it restrict the gun ownership of its citizens or not? Can its agents touch or image its citizens in humiliating ways in the name of airline security or not? Are the President and Congress restrained by the Constitution and the Enumerated Powers of the Bill of Rights or not? May the government mortgage the incomes of unborn generations to avoid taxing the current generation for their expanded benefits or not? May the government divert taxes from paying its bills and into social engineering programs or not?

Many important questions are unanswerable without a consensus on the role of government.

Obama is no Lincoln. If his speech last week said anything, it said that he is committed to replacing “We the People” with “We the Government.”

It will be a long four years.