Hagel: America’s Weaker! Yay!
Hagel: America’s Weaker! Yay!
We’ve commended Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) many times for being one of the few Senate conservatives to stand up to the most regressive elements of President Bush’s foreign policy. But with Hagel eyeing the ‘08 election, he’s apparently decided to soften his tone and embrace the Bush record. During a discussion of whether the Iraq war had left the American military stretched too thin, Hagel told ABC’s “This Week”:
The United States is no longer the dominant power on earth as we have been the last 60 years. That’s good news, I think.
Look, the U.S. losing its relative power around the globe could be a good thing — say, if it means the rest of the world has become more prosperous and stable. But that’s not what Hagel was talking about. Stephanopoulos was asking whether the Iraq war has made us weaker, and it has. Our military is dangerously overstretched (as Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Myers pointed out this week), we’ve created a training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists, and we’re suffering from historically low recruitment and retention rates.
Sen. Hagel, please step away from the Kool-aid. These are not good things.
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No one will make a peep about this. But imagine if John Kerry or Harry Reid had said this. We’d never hear the end of it.
May 8th, 2005 at 7:33 pmditto what jack said. Reminds of the “sensitive” foreign policy scam – when Kerry said it, they said he was a wimp and weak. When bush said it – he was a deep strategic thinker.
And our loser press made sure everyone knew which was which.
May 8th, 2005 at 10:45 pmI seem to remember a certain Howard Dean saying something very similar that the press made a lot of noise over…
http://slate.msn.com/id/2088896/
May 8th, 2005 at 11:04 pmDid he say whom he thought it was good news for? I’d say it is pretty good news for the rest of the world….
NewsMax is not a reliable source, BTW. Isn’t there a transcript of this on ABC’s site that you could link to?
May 9th, 2005 at 12:07 pmI can’t tell which comment has more propaganda in it — Hagel’s or yours.
To say that the US is no longer the dominant power it once was ignores the fact that we spend as much on our military as almost every nation on earth combined. The reason is not because we need to defend ourselves more than the rest of the world, but rather because the government wants to be able to project military power at will in every corner of the globe. This is our dominance, unmatched by any nation.
But for you to say that the Iraq war has made us weaker implies that we need to have a dominant military offense. Invading Iraq is wrong for many reasons, but not because we are somehow more at risk at home.
If anything, the US might be less able to invade Iran because our military is bogged down in Iraq, but that’s a good thing. We need to stop wasting our money on a military largely designed to enfore US corporate interests across the world.
As a supposed purveyor of progressive thought, it is disappointing to see you support US imperialism.
May 9th, 2005 at 1:06 pm