Defense! Defense!

I’ve been toying with writing about Chuck Hagel’s nomination as head the Defense Department (once known as the War Department) with some uncertainty. His rejection by the Senate would have precluded treating the matter lightly. Now that he’s been confirmed the subject is fair game.

Had the plot ended tragically Republicans would have provided the comic relief. Since it turned out to be all comedy these guys were the whole show. John McCain asked Hagel if he stood by his statement that the “surge,” (once known as reinforcements) and the Iraq War were our worst mistakes since Vietnam. McCain seems to believe that the success of the whole operation rested on that of the surge. Pressed repeatedly for a yes or no, Hagel could have recanted and admitted that as bad actions go the surge didn’t hold a candle to the war itself. It simply involved more casualties and more resources than otherwise, but in a shorter time. Of course that would have spoiled all the fun that followed.

The star of the show was Senator Ted Cruz of Texas serving his first month in office. If this performance is any indication the next six years could be very entertaining. He repeatedly asked questions of the “do you still beat your wife” nature, requiring Hagel’s denial of things of which he’d never been accused, like belonging to “Friends of Hamas,” a non-existent group conjured up by a humor blog. To those of us who remember Joe McCarthy, Mr. Cruz tactics are reminiscent, and even more far-fetched, if that’s possible. Remember, there really had been a Communist Party in America, we were in a cold war with the Soviet Union, a hot one in Korea, and he had the tacit backing of his party’s establishment. All in all “Tail Gunner Joe”” had the wind at his back while Ted Cruz is running right into it.

This man’s antics bring to mind the other Senator from the Lone Star State which is now represented in that body by two major league doozies, John Cornyn being the other. When Democrats filibustered a few of W’s more extreme judicial appointments (Yes, both parties do it) Cornyn blamed our judicial system for the murder of one Chicago judge, and the mother of a second by losers in two court cases.* In other words these murders were justified, presumably by obstructionist Senate Democrats.

I am of two minds over Texas Governor Rick Perry’s talk about his state’s secession. My ambivalence on this subject also coupled with the thought that there might one day be some serious revisionist thinking involving the Mexican War.


*Has anybody noticed the allusions to Chicago as the Mecca of crime, by partisans of you know which party, since you know who became president?