Hagelian Philosophy

Senator Chuck Hagel made a meal out of criticising the BushCo stance on Iraq during this last weekend's TV politico gabfests. You can see his appearance on ABC's This Week via Crooks and Liars. But the American Prospect's blog, Tapped cuts through the bluster a bit:

But lost in the hype over a Republican maverick on an off-message binge is the small detail that Hagel, in his capacity as a United States Senator, supports no policy for actually withdrawing troops from Iraq. For in the world according to Hagel, ‘start figuring out how we get out of there,’ does not actually involve starting to think about how we get out of there. Hagel, for example, has consistently refused to breach what Sen. Russ Feingold yesterday called “the taboo on talking about a timeline.” So before war skeptics consider Hagel one of their own for saying things like "The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have" or “we need to be out of there,” it's important to remember that he refuses to offer any tangible support for making that latter outcome more likely. Not unlike the time that Hagel voiced eloquent concern for the damage that John Bolton could do to American interests as UN Ambassador, then voted for him anyway, Hagel's current jockeying is nothing but empty rhetoric.

I honestly don't know much about Hagel other than his public statements seem to be grounded in some sense of reality--something typically missing from the BushCo point of view. I'll have to do a bit more reading about what his stances are like to get a better measure of the man. If anyone has any thoughts, please do post them in the comments section.