Administration officials say Obama chose Hagel for mundane reasons — a personal relationship, experience with veterans issues, and even the “tradition” — but they have thrust the combative former combat veteran into a bitter Washington battleground. And the left-leaning foreign policy forces who spent four years disappointed in a the president of drone strikes and surveillance powers are suddenly feeling vindication. They are, in particular, seeing a fellow foe of a military strike on Iran elevated to a key cabinet post — and a president who seems finally willing to pick a fight on that issue.
“The Hagel confirmation battle will show whether the AIPAC crowd has cried wolf too many times and the system is now becoming numb,” said Steve Clemons, a central figure in what he calls “progressive realist” foreign policy and Washington editor at large for The Atlantic. The fight “will also out the fact that the real issue here is not US-Israel relations but rather how fearful defense contractors which suck up a huge amount of defense spending are pulling a lot of these levers,” he said.
“The controversy leading up to the Hagel nomination has tested just how much space there is in Washington for rational and independent thinking on American policy in the Middle East,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the director of the left-leaning Israel advocacy group J Street, which was formed in part to make domestic politcal space for Obama to exert pressure on Israel. “It's good to see the nomination moving forward because it means there's more bark than bite to the intimidation some right-wing groups have tried to exert over those who disagree with them.”
Peter Beinart, the former New Republic editor who’s now a leading voice well to that magazine’s left made a similar case column to be published on Monday on his Open Zion blog at The Daily Beast that “At the heart of the opposition to Hagel is the fear that he will do what Republicans have thus far largely prevented: bring America’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan into the Iran debate.”
Beinart also defended a controversial Hagel jab at the “Jewish lobby,” arguing that it’s a sentiment that many in Washington hold but few say aloud and that Hagel displayed “uncommon honesty.”
“I’ve also heard many government officials, some of them Jewish, say things similar to what Hagel is now being flayed for having [said],” Beinart wrote. “The difference is that those other officials first confirmed that they were speaking off the record. One even lowered his voice and closed the door.”
Their hope — and their foes’ fear — is that Hagel’s confirmation could mean that views outside what is considered the mainstream on Israel and Iran begin to replace the more hawkish Washington consensus. A Hagel confirmation could change the terms of the debate on the Middle East by challenging the Republican Party with the views of one of its own. And Hagel, a Republican whose views were altered by the Iraq war, has the potential to affect the prospect of a war with Iran, some argue.
Administration officials, in public and in private, do not make this case, though they say they’re eager to engage the debate.
“If the Republicans are going to look at Chuck Hagel, a decorated war hero and Republican who served two terms in the Senate, and vote no because he bucked the party line on Iraq, then they are so far in the wilderness that they’ll never get out,” said one administration official.
