A Secretary of Defense…. UPDATE
….rather than a Secretary of Offense?
Now that the Republicans have cleared the decks of Susan Rice for Secretary of State who will they, and others, go after next?
No sooner was former senator, Chuck Hagel, named as President Obama’s likely candidate for Secretary of Defense than the attacks began. What are his qualifications? What are his disqualifications? Here’s some commentary.
Stephen Walt: Five reasons to appoint Hagel.
Politico: Ten facts about Hagel.
Also on Politico: “Send us Hagel and we will make sure every American knows he is an anti-Semite,” a senior Republican Senate aide told The Weekly Standard. The aide continued, “Hagel has made clear he believes in the existence of a nefarious Jewish lobby that secretly controls U.S. foreign policy. This is the worst kind of anti-Semitism there is.” Just stopped being secret!
Update from Politico: “Hagel has also been blunt in dismissing those who think he’s not sufficiently supportive of Israel. ‘I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator,’ the Nebraska Republican told Miller for his book The Much Too Promised Land…. ‘I support Israel, but my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States, not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that,’ the senator said.”
A couple of my retired diplomat friends, both ardent Dems and Obama supporters, are vastly relieved about Rice’s pull out. They say she is enormously bright, highly ambitious, absolutely convinced that her way is right, and the other people’s are all wrong. Above all, they say, she is undiplomatic, recalling a famous incident in which she raised a middle finger at John McCain, and just the other day (apparently) told a fellow ambassador at the UN that his ideas were crap.
And so they may have been, but there are other ways to make the point.
They (incidentally) are predicting that the nod will go to John Kerry (despite the fact that it will mean losing a Democratic seat in the Senate). If so, I hope he will make a better SecState than he made a presidential candidate some years back.
Pulling Kerry out of the Senate may be penny-wise, but it will certainly be pound-foolish. Obama will need all of the congressional help he can get, and losing a Democratic senate seat will not help him.
If Meehan (said to be Kerry’s choice) or Markey is chosen by Deval to fill the seat before a special election is held, I think either would win the eventual election. But if Deval appoints a placeholder, that could give Scott Brown a chance to return to the Senate. I am sure that this is all being carefully calculated both in Boston and in Washington.
Kerry would be afforded senatorial courtesy, and would then have an easy time in the nomination process. Another Obama pick could run into difficulty, and even if in the end that candidate were to be successful, you don’t want the US Secretary of State to enter office badly battered.
“Just stopped being secret [the existence of a nefarious Jewish lobby that secretly controls U.S. foreign policy]!”
What a despicable thing to say!
Were you trying to be snide? Or cute? Or were you just saying what you believed to be true –that there is an evil Jewish lobby that controls U.S. foreign policy? Or what?
What a despicable thing to say!
Jeff: Given your views previously expressed and your willful misrepresentation of others’ comments, you are invited to stay away from these posts.
Margaret: I decline the disinvitation. Whoever has control of these things will have to kick me off. If its you, you’ll have to kick me off yourself.
I’m not stupid, Margaret. What you were saying was that in the act of accusing Hagel, the accusers had shown that “a nefarious Jewish lobby that secretly controls U.S. foreign policy” in fact existed. Its just that it wasn’t secret any more. The accusers had demonstrated its existence. I allowed for the possibility that you were just being snide, but that was your point.
Do you not have the decency or courage to take responsibility for what you say on your own blog?
And what “willful misrepresentations” and “views previously expressed” are you referring to?
MOBSteinfels:
Jeff’s previously-expressed views added detail and context to threads that were invaluable to this reader and others who said so. His level of knowledge, with copious back-up, added significant depth and balance to threads on the Middle East.
Please do indicate where his research and views previously expressed (one is allowed to express opposing views?) were not apropos to the subject at hand. I do not recall refusals to answer points raised by others, but rather well-documented references supporting his opinions.
I welcomed your cutback in the use of the “51st state” that very often introduced your threads about Israel. I believe that witnessed to a significant, insistent bias. Jeff’s counterpoint here is well-sourced and researched. I see no reason he should not participate further.
Your apparent belief in a secret, nefarious Jewish lobby that controls US foreign policy fits in easily with prior writings here. I am not surprised, but pleased to see some challenge of both the thought and its manner of expression. I had determined some time ago not even to read your posts but began doing so when Jeff exhibited the scholarship to comment so knowledgeably.
Please withdraw your invitation for him to withdraw from dotCommonweal.
Thank you Nicholas Clifford, for your comment on Susan Rice. I read a series of articles in the WSJ that reinforce your opinion. To wit, on her record in Africa:
1) Ethiopia/Eritrea
Ms. Rice was the architect of a policy that invested heavily in a new crop of African leaders—Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia; Isaias Afewerki in Eritrea; Yoweri Museveni in Uganda; Paul Kagame in Rwanda—presumed to be more progressive-minded than their predecessors.
In May 1998, Ms. Rice had an opportunity to prove her diplomatic mettle when she was sent to mediate a peace plan between warring Ethiopia and Eritrea.
“What is publicly known,” notes Mr. Rosenblum, “is that Rice announced the terms of a plan agreed to by Ethiopia, suggesting that Eritrea would have to accept it, before Isaias had given his approval. He responded angrily, rejecting the plan and heaping abuse on Rice. Soon afterward, Ethiopia bombed the capital of Eritrea, and Eritrea dropped cluster bombs on Ethiopia. . . .
“Susan Rice was summoned back to Washington in early June after the negotiations collapsed. Insiders agree that the secretary of state [Madeleine Albright] was furious. According to one, Rice was essentially ‘put on probation,’ kept in Washington where the secretary could keep an eye on her. ‘Susan had misread the situation completely,’ according to one State Department insider who observed the conflict with Albright. ‘She came in like a scoutmaster, lecturing them on how to behave and having a public tantrum when they didn’t act the way she wanted.”
An estimated 100,000 people would perish in the war that Ms. Rice so ineptly failed to end. And the leaders in whom she invested her faith would all become typical African strongmen, with human-rights records to match. Yet that didn’t keep Ms. Rice from delivering a heartfelt eulogy for Meles at his funeral three months ago, in which she praised him as “uncommonly wise,” “a rare visionary,” and a “true friend to me.”
2) The Congo
Human-rights groups have long accused the Clinton administration of acquiescing in the efforts by Rwanda and Uganda to topple the Congolese government of Laurent Kabila in 1998, which by some estimates wound up taking more than five million lives. In congressional testimony, Ms. Rice angrily denied any U.S. role in condoning or supporting the intervention.
But Ms. Rice may not have been completely forthcoming. “Museveni and Kagame agree that the basic problem in the Great Lakes is the danger of a resurgence of genocide and they know how to deal with that,” Ms. Rice is said to have remarked confidentially after a visit to the region, according to reporter Howard French of the New York Times. “The only thing we [the United States] have to do is look the other way.”
Which is what the U.S. did…
“Rice proved herself brilliant, over time, in working the machinery of government. But along the way she burned bridges liberally, alienating and often antagonizing many potential allies. . . . Susan Rice seems not to have convinced colleagues that her real interest was Africa, or even foreign policy.”
3) Sierra Leone
An elected civilian government led by a former British barrister named Ahmad Kabbah had been under siege for years by a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front, led by a Libyan-trained guerrilla named Foday Sankoh. Events were coming to a head.
Even by the standards of Africa in the 1990s, the RUF set a high bar for brutality. Its soldiers were mostly children, abducted from their parents, fed on a diet of cocaine and speed. Its funding came from blood diamonds. It was internationally famous for chopping off the limbs of its victims. Its military campaigns bore such names as “Operation No Living Thing.”
In January 1999, six months before Ms. Rice’s Senate testimony, the RUF laid siege to the capital city of Freetown. “The RUF burned down houses with their occupants still inside, hacked off limbs, gouged out eyes with knives, raped children, and gunned down scores of people in the street,” wrote Ryan Lizza in the New Republic. “In three weeks, the RUF killed some 6,000 people, mostly civilians.”
What to do with a group like this? The Clinton administration had an idea. Initiate a peace process.
It didn’t seem to matter that Sankoh was demonstrably evil and probably psychotic. It didn’t seem to matter, either, that he had violated previous agreements to end the war. “If you treat Sankoh like a statesman, he’ll be one,” was the operative theory at the State Department, according to one congressional staffer cited by Mr. Lizza. Instead of treating Sankoh as part of the problem, if not the problem itself, State would treat him as part of the solution. An RUF representative was invited to Washington for talks. Jesse Jackson was appointed to the position of President Clinton’s special envoy…
“It’s been through active U.S. diplomacy behind the scenes,” she explained. “It hasn’t gotten a great deal of press coverage, that we and others saw the rebels and the government of Sierra Leone come to the negotiating table just a couple of weeks ago, in the context of a negotiated cease-fire, in which the United States played an important role.”
A month later, Ms. Rice got her wish with the signing of the Lomé Peace Accord. It was an extraordinary document. In the name of reconciliation, RUF fighters were given amnesty. Sankoh was made Sierra Leone’s vice president. To sweeten the deal, he was also put in charge of the commission overseeing the country’s diamond trade. All this was foisted on President Kabbah.
In September 1999, Ms. Rice praised the “hands-on efforts” of Rev. Jackson, U.S. Ambassador Joe Melrose “and many others” for helping bring about the Lomé agreement.
For months thereafter, Ms. Rice cheered the accords at every opportunity. Rev. Jackson, she said, had “played a particularly valuable role,” as had Howard Jeter, her deputy at State.
In a Feb. 16, 2000, Q&A session with African journalists, she defended Sankoh’s participation in the government, noting that “there are many instances where peace agreements around the world have contemplated rebel movements converting themselves into political parties.”…
Three months later, the RUF took 500 U.N. peacekeepers as hostages and was again threatening Freetown. Lomé had become a dead letter. The State Department sought to send Rev. Jackson again to the region, but he was so detested that his trip had to be canceled.
The U.N.’s Kofi Annan begged for Britain’s help. Tony Blair obliged him.
“Over a number of weeks,” Mr. Blair recalls in his memoirs, British troops “did indeed sort out the RUF. . . . The RUF leader Foday Sankoh was arrested, and during the following months there was a buildup of the international presence, a collapse of the rebels and over time a program of comprehensive disarmament. . . . The country’s democracy was saved.”
Today Mr. Blair is a national hero in Sierra Leone. As for Ms. Rice and the administration she represented, history will deliver its own verdict.”
I am thankful Susan Rice will not be secretary of state…at least this time.
I fine myself compelled to wonder: Under what theory does the party that loses a presidential election get to choose whom the president may and may not appoint to the Cabinet? I have heard, “Well, they did it to us,” but that, of course, is a playground retort. It is not a theory.
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution requires senatorial advice and consent appointment of public ministers, but it does not say when the Senate should withhold its consent. In any case, the Senate majority right now is of the president’s party, so one would expect the president to be able to appoint pretty much anyone he wishes without having to clear the choice with Sen. McCain, Politico or Rush Limbaugh. Apparently, that is not the case?