The effort to derail the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense has marshaled every possible argument against him, including claims that his “temperament” is wrong and that he cannot possibly manage such a large bureaucracy because he has no experience doing so. As almost no one has Pentagon-management experience until he actually starts doing it, that is an argument that does not admit any rejoinder.
More recently, however, critics have taken to characterizing Hagel’s strengths as weaknesses. One of the most unusual pieces to take that line was an op-ed in The Washington Post by leading neoconservative Eliot A. Cohen, “Hagel’s military service is a scant qualification for defense secretary,” which was then essentially replayed by Jennifer Rubin on her Post blog as “Old soldiers don’t make for good Pentagon chiefs,” lest anyone miss the point.
The Washington Post blasted the nomination of Hagel even before he was named in a lead editorial on Dec. 18, “Chuck Hagel is not the right choice for defense secretary,” that curiously argued that the former Republican senator was too out of the “mainstream” for confirmation because of his belief that the Pentagon is “bloated” and his unwillingness to use force as a first resort rather diplomacy. Cohen and Rubin continue the character assassination. For Cohen, Hagel’s problem is a case of flawed lessons learned in a bygone age of warfare with an army composed of feckless conscripts. For Rubin, it’s a plan to shrink the military and leave America defenseless, and what she imagines to be Hagel’s politically incorrect thoughtcrimes. She explores Hagel’s views about gays in the service and asks, “What does he think of women in combat?” She then provides her own authoritative answer–untroubled by her apparent ignorance of the fact that most combat Military Occupational Specialties are still barred to women–“It is likely colored by an obsolete vision of combat.”
Cohen argues that Hagel’s wartime service as an enlisted infantryman in Vietnam, where he was wounded twice, should be considered irrelevant or even a defect: “What is it, precisely, that one would bring by service as a sergeant in a war more than 40 years past? … It was an important, even searing, life experience, no doubt. But the technology, strategy, tactics and organization now are all utterly different.”
And what does Cohen know about combat? Well, he was an ardent supporter of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and is a hawk regarding Iran, calling for regime change and a preemptive strike by Washington and Israel to destroy that nation’s nuclear facilities. A protégé of fellow academic and Pentagon number two Paul Wolfowitz, he was appointed a senior adviser to Condoleezza Rice when she was at the State Department during the second term of George W. Bush. Like most other neoconservatives, Eliot Cohen has never actually served in the United States armed forces.
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