Chuck Hagel deserves some credit for speaking his mind, opposing the surge, and demanding accountability and honesty from his fellow senators. But is he really all that courageous? Mickey Kaus applies his usual insightfulness to this issue:
Saying “the war was wrong but the surge is worth a try”–that would be courageous. There’s no ready-made constituency eager to cheer a pol who says that.
Bucking your party to actively fight against the war when it would have made a difference–that would have been courageous.
Hagel hasn’t done either of those things. Instead, he let loose at the precise moment when letting loose was least brave and least timely. Lest the MSM miss the point, his eruption took the form, not of arguing that his Republican colleagues were wrong, but of denouncing them for, in effect, being cowards, unlike you-know-who:
If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. … Don’t hide anymore; none of us.
Never mind that the anti-surge resolution Hagel has cosponsored is all about hiding. It has no binding effect. But it does provide Senators who supported the war a convenient bit of late-inning skepticism they can point to when trying to save their skins.
Hagel also deployed the hoary I’ve-been-in combat-so-I-know-these-are-real-men-and-women-”fighting and dying” pitch–as if his fellow senators didn’t realize they were real men and women. The I’ve-Been-There meme is to Hagel (and John Kerry) what the “mommy” meme is to Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer–a guilt-tripping, self-glorifying unique selling proposition that attempts to confer on the speaker a special capacity for insight that renders actual persuasive argument unnecessary.
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