I don’t get it. What is it that makes Hagel a liar, excuse me, casuist? That he represents Johnson’s reasoning as further along in the war than it actually was? Is calling it a war before the Tonkin Gulf incident inaccurate? We hadn’t deployed major combat troops or bombed the hell out of a jungle yet by May of 64, but we weren’t playing paddycakes, either. This was after Diem’s assassination, by the way, and we’d had troops there since WWII.
Does ot really come down to when a war is a war? LBJ’s the one to say he didn’t want to be the first president to lose a war (he wasn’t, that was Madison). So he was wrong about it being a war, if anyone. Apparently enough Americans would have seen cutting and running as forfeiting, or at least that’s what he thought.
Isn’t it worse, by the way, for Johnson to have seen it as a loser earlier? Especially considering he lied to get us all in.
A most compelling argument in Hagel's favor is that the neocons over at the Four Seasons---sipping chilled Cristal and munching on room temperature imported Brie---are whining that THEY dont want Hagel.
You remember the neocons---the ones who duped Bush into invading Iraq? A horrendous foreign policy decision devised by the pukeneos on the backs of the 2300 killed on 9/11.
Iraq's in the Mideast---a place the pukes said was "thirsting" for American-style democracy. Now known as a terrorist hellhole where trillions of US tax dollars and rivers of young blood were shed. Where the blood-thirsty Muslim Brotherhood has a stranglehold. Where the WSJ reported neocon godfather, Richard Perle, is starting an oil company with his war profiteering billions (your tax dollars at work).
It took the US about a decade to get out of Iraq....as the globe erupted into Mideast-centered terrorism.....and hate-filled Muslims set sail for America.
But not to worry---at the serene Four Seasons lounge, where the champagne flows, the Iraq War is still seen as a really, really good idea......and opposition to Chuck Hagel is the strongest.
Cheers.