One of the lingering questions about Chuck Hagel’s nomination to the Defense Department has been his failure to produce the texts of speeches he gave to various advocacy groups that had been requested by members of the Senate. One of them was a 2008 address given to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination League. When reporters from the Washington Free Beacon came calling to ask the ADC for a transcript or a tape, they were thrown out and accused of harassment by the group. Meanwhile they refused to make the material public. That caused some raised eyebrows especially after the Free Beacon unearthed evidence that Hagel had told an audience at Rutgers University that the U.S. State Department was taking its orders from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
But today the ADC says it will make the tape of the speech public and assures Politico that there is nothing controversial in it. Hagel had better hope so since barring a last minute compromise in the Senate, it appears his nomination will be successfully filibustered raising the chances that Democrats will finally give up on this unsuitable candidacy.
But ADC isn’t satisfied with doing its part to help clear the name of a politician with a record of hostility to friends of Israel and opposition to being tough on Iran and Islamist terrorists. Abed Ayoub has gone further and claimed the hunt for the Hagel tape was “racist” and part of a campaign to “demonize” the Arab community. This is familiar territory for a group that has done its best to promote the myth of a post-9-11 backlash against American Muslims. But the attempt to divert both journalists and the Senate from the truth about Hagel’s troubling record shouldn’t succeed. Far from seeking to attack Arabs, those trying to unearth Hagel’s statements have revealed that it is President Obama’s nominee who is the one engaging in prejudicial stereotypes.
No one is saying that Hagel can’t speak to the ADC or any Arab or Muslim group. The issue is what they say there or elsewhere.
In the case of Hagel, by speaking of the State Department being run by the Israelis, he expanded on the defamatory Walt-Mearsheimer thesis that claimed American Jews had bought Congress and put forward a new conspiracy theory that is even more false and absurd. After all, if there is any U.S. government agency that has long been a bastion of hostility to the Jewish state, it is those sections of the State Department that were long run by Arabists who viewed the U.S.-Israel alliance with distaste.
The report about Hagel’s speech had resonance because he was already on record as having claimed that the “Jewish lobby” had intimidated Congress. It is those comments and not journalists asking questions about the ADC that is prejudicial. Though he disavowed those remarks at his confirmation hearing, the grudging and non-apologetic manner in which he spoke of it as well as his claim that this was the only time he had such a thing “on the record” made it clear that his only problem was that his appointment to the Pentagon had made it difficult for him to openly speak his mind.
It is only natural and logical to wonder whether Hagel said something similar to the ADC and the group — which is supportive of the Walt-Mearsheimer attack on pro-Israel Americans — should stop trying to play the victim. The ADC poses as an Arab version of the Anti-Defamation League but has a long record of support for radical positions. Those who pay attention to this record aren’t racist. They’re just interested in finding out the truth about both Hagel and his cheerleaders.
No matter what the ADC tape shows there is already more than enough evidence available to show that Hagel’s views on Israel and Iran are way out of the mainstream as well as being inconsistent with the public stands of the Obama administration. Democrats need to abandon him and move on with the business of the country by putting forward a suitable and competent Pentagon chief that won’t carry the sort of troubling baggage that Hagel carries with him.
