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  The Assault on Chuck Hagel
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ContributorCraverguy 
Last EditedCraverguy  Dec 20, 2012 03:20pm
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CategoryCommentary
AuthorRobert W. Merry
News DateWednesday, December 19, 2012 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionIt didn’t take long for the assault on Chuck Hagel to commence, based on the powerfully held attitude of some in the journalistic establishment and elsewhere that he is insufficiently supportive of Israel. The aim is simple and clear—to generate enough political fear in the consciousness of President Obama that he refrains from nominating Hagel to the job of secretary of defense. Barring that, they want to thwart Senate confirmation.

The assault began with The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol, who dismissed the former Nebraska senator and decorated Vietnam veteran as "out on the fringes" because he has questioned some Israeli policies, defied the Israel lobby on various matters, and questioned the wisdom of preventive war against Iran. According to Kristol, the test for Obama on this one is stark: "Is he serious about having Israel’s back? Is he serious about preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons?" In other words, a Hagel nomination would expose Obama as indifferent to Israel’s fate, given Hagel’s "anti-Israel, pro-appeasement-of-Iran bona fides."

Kristol seems particularly exercised over the endorsement Hagel received from Harvard’s Stephen Walt— "junior partner of the better-known Israel hater John Mearsheimer," in Kristol’s back-handed description—who said such a nomination would be a "smart move," in part because of Hagel’s independent stance over the years toward Israel’s right-wing Likud Party. Kristol dismissed Walt as being one of those "anti-Israel propagandists."
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