Courtesy of
The American Prospect:
At any rate, what happened yesterday wasn’t about Hagel at all. It wasn’t even about the Iraq War’s 2007 “surge,” which McCain is desperate to justify because he can never justify the war itself that finds Hagel moved to the right side of history while McCain remains stubbornly on the wrong. It’s about that junior senator from Illinois who crossed McCain early in some obscure backroom Senate deal no one can remember anymore, then denied McCain the presidency in no small part because Obama understood the folly of Iraq better than McCain can allow himself to. McCain’s personal honor in Hanoi was too hard won to be stained now by almost anything he does, including how he’s allowed temperament, pique and ego to steamroll the judgment and perspective that we hope all of our elected officers have, let alone presidents. But his political honor, not to mention whatever might once have recommended him to the presidency, has fallen victim to the way that Obama has gotten fatally under his skin. Even if this once-noble statesman should succeed in denying Hagel’s nomination as he denied Susan Rice’s prospects for Secretary of State (and even the most devout Hagel supporter would have to acknowledge that the Defense nominee’s performance before the Committee was often a shambles), McCain’s unrelenting obsession with the grievance that Obama has come to represent to him is the saddest legacy in memory. The very fact of Obama and all things Obamic has turned McCain into something toxic, maybe even to himself.
You know we often condemn Sarah Palin for her constant, and never ending, attacks on the President, but truth be known John McCain is equally aggressive in going after Obama at every opportunity. And in fact has been a key figure in helping to block many of Obama's policies and appointments.
Even after four years these two petty little bitches, simply CANNOT let anything go.
However it is one thing for Palin to throw her sad little fits on Fox News (A venue that is now closed to her) and Facebook, while it is quite another for a sitting Senator to use his office to exact revenge on a political foe.
Besides in my opinion, Chuck Hagel got the best of McCain yesterday. While the Arizona Senator was trying to shame Hagel for not supporting the surge in Iraq, Hagel turned that around and used the opportunity to
condemn the whole Iraq war, which of course in the minds of most Americans should never have been fought in the first place:
MCCAIN: Are you going to answer the question? Were you right or wrong? That’s a straightforward question. Answer whether you are right or wrong and then you are free to elaborate.
HAGEL: I’m not going to give you a yes or no answer.
MCCAIN: Let the record show he refuses to answer the question. Please go ahead.
[...]
HAGEL: I’m not going to give you a yes or no. It’s far more complicated than that. I will defer that judgment to history. As to the comment I made about the most dangerous foreign policy decision since Vietnam, that was about not just the surge, but the overall war of choice going into Iraq. That particular decision made on the surge, but more to the point, our war in Iraq, I think was the most fundamentally bad, dangerous decision since Vietnam.
You know what? That is EXACTLY the mindset that I want the Secretary of the Defense to go into his job with.
Thank you Senator McCain for giving this man the opportunity to express such an important, and welcome point of view.
Now you should probably hurry off, I understand there are some kids playing on your lawn.
