Chuck Hagel

When the U.S. Senate finally confirmed Chuck Hagel to head the Department of Defense yesterday, Religious Right leaders who actively campaigned and prayed against his nomination were sorely disappointed.

The Family Research Council’s prayer team today warned that Hagel, along with President Obama, have put America “on dangerous ground” as “those in power have forgotten God's covenant with Abraham: to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her.”

Indeed, FRC suggests that Hagel’s confirmation may even bring about the judgment of God: “Students of Bible prophecy have said that amid America's declining American faith and morals, our support for Israel has slowed the advance of God's judgment since 2001. But each step we take farther away from Israel has repercussions with respect to that balance.”

Chuck Hagel Confirmed - Today, former Senator Chuck Hagel began his new job as Secretary of Defense.Senate Republicans had rightly criticized Hagel as unqualified based upon his historic disdain for Israel, support for the Palestinian cause, favor of negotiation with Hamas and Iran, lack of any managerial experience, and more, yet 18 Republicans chose not to use their cloture vote to prevent his confirmation. Four supported Hagel directly in the final vote: Thad Cochran (Miss.), Richard Shelby (Ala.), Mike Johanns (Neb.) and Rand Paul (Ky.). With a President and Defense Secretary who have often shown hostility toward Israel and favor toward our mutual enemies, Bible believing Christians know the U.S. is on dangerous ground. Those in power have forgotten God's covenant with Abraham: to bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse her. Christians must keep extra vigil, standing in the gap for Israel and America, that our leaders will keep faith with our historic friendship and alliance. Students of Bible prophecy have said that amid America's declining American faith and morals, our support for Israel has slowed the advance of God's judgment since 2001. But each step we take farther away from Israel has repercussions with respect to that balance.

May God's people, who understand God's severe warnings against nations that oppose His plan for Israel, pray, stand boldly and speak out to preserve our nation's commitment to God's covenant people and land! (Gen 12:3; Ps 137: all, Is 40:1-2; 59:15-16; 62:6; Zech 12:3-9; Eze 36:24, 35; 37:11-12, 21, 25; 38:8; Hos 3:4-5; Joel 3:1-2; Amos 9:15; Zech 2:12; 8:7-8; Lk 21:24; Rom 1:16; Eph 6:10 ff)

Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance also chided Hagel for allegedly supporting the disarmament of the US.

The confirmation of former-Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the next civilian head of the United States Military doesn't make American families feel safer, because we as a nation are more vulnerable under his leadership. Hagel does not have a sound understanding of the global threats facing America, nor does he have the discernment needed for a workable defense policy.

The Senate has failed to properly vet this candidate. As if his shaky, inconsistent committee hearing wasn't enough to show his lack of qualifications, we can also add his failure to submit critical documents. Motives follow money, and Hagel's refusal to submit financial documents, as well as his omission of funding sources, reiterates his real motives.

Our national security interests stand at a threatening juncture. Hagel's record shows his lack of knowledge when it comes to nuclear disarmament, and his vision for how to deal with these issues is dangerous to American families. While in the Senate, he voted to adopt Global Zero and reconfirmed his opinion by saying, "How can we preach to other countries that you can't have nuclear weapons but we can and our allies can?" Countries like North Korea and Iran are on the verge of nuclear power; it's naive to put false hope in the fact that anti-American countries would cease their pursuit of nuclear capability if we disarm ourselves.

By confirming Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, the Senate has catered, once again, to the president's wants and overlooked the needs of the American people.

Gary Bauer of the Campaign for Working Families and the Emergency Committee for Israel, who earlier claimed that Hagel will “invite acts of aggression and terrorism” against the US, said he can no longer trust Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) after he voted in favor of Hagel’s confirmation.

Sadly, the Senate voted yesterday 58-to-41 to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. I say sadly because I never thought I would see the day when a nominee for Secretary of Defense endorsed by Louis Farrakhan would be confirmed! But that day has arrived.

Every Senate Democrat voted for Hagel. They were joined by four Republicans -- Thad Cochran (MS), Mike Johanns (NE), Rand Paul (KY) and Richard Shelby (AL). All four votes are depressing, but I want to comment on Senator Paul's vote.

When Rand Paul ran for the Senate three years ago, there were concerns about his views on Israel and the Middle East. He has tried to dispel the doubts.

In January, Paul traveled to Israel and said, "I came here to show that I am supportive of the relationship between Israel and America." He later said, "I think we should … announce to the world … that any attack on Israel will be treated as an attack on the United States." That is why his vote for Hagel yesterday was so disappointing.

And it is disappointing for another reason too. Paul explained his vote for Hagel by saying, "The president gets to choose political appointees." That's true to a point, but Paul is under no obligation to vote for them.

Rand Paul's claim to conservative support is that he is a champion of constitutional government. The Founding Fathers could have easily said that the president gets to appoint his cabinet and left it at that. But after a protracted debate, they decided that the president's nominees must receive the consent of the Senate.

Paul's explanation implies he is ignoring the clear words of the Constitution in exchange for a formulation that suggests presidential appointments are essentially guaranteed. That doesn't pass the straight face test.

I don't see how anyone who claims to support a strong national defense, who wants to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons and who believes that Israel is our best ally could vote to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. If Rand Paul wants to be a serious contender for the Republican nomination in 2016, he has some explaining to do.

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media appeared on TruNews with host Rick Wiles last week to discuss the nominations of Chuck Hagel and John Brennan. The two agreed that the U.S. would have arrested Barack Obama by now if only he weren’t the president.

Kincaid: We’ve got a President who couldn’t pass a background check, you know it’s not too surprising when we got a President like this putting into place people like Brennan, Hagel, we can go down the list, Van Jones, tick them off. It’s just that he gets away with it and the Republicans, I remember at our conference in Washington before the election, we had Congressman Lamar Smith there saying ‘well we’re not going to pursue impeachment because we hope the American people vote this guy out on November 6.’ Well, that didn’t work out so well, did it?

Wiles: No it didn’t. You know Barack Obama, if he wasn’t president, if he just worked into a government agency and said he wanted to apply for a job and he filled out an application, I think while he was sitting there and they were doing a background check on him I think agents would come out and handcuff him.

Kincaid: Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I mean, this is the guy—we don’t have to go through the whole history—this is the guy who Sarah Palin put it, ‘palled around with terrorists.’

Wiles also embraced John Guandolo’s conspiracy theory that Brennan is a Saudi secret agent while Kincaid claimed that Hagel is working for those “facilitating this global jihad against America.” Kincaid called Obama the “Marxist Muslim in the White House” and accused him of assisting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Wiles: [Guandolo] said, ‘his conversion to Islam was the culmination of a counterintelligence operation against him to recruit him.’ ‘As a Muslim,’ Mr. Guandolo, the FBI agent, said, ‘Mr. Brennan became friendly with members of Hamas.’ Last November, former CIA covert operations manager Claire Lopez was a guest on TruNews, she described the infiltration of Muslim Brotherhood members into U.S. government jobs as ‘massive.’ So is Mr. Obama quietly orchestrating an Islamic takeover of the American government? The two big appointments before the U.S. Senate, our CIA nominee John Brennan, accused by an FBI agent of secretly converting to Islam, and Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, Cliff Kincaid has been on the trail of Chuck Hagel and he’s on the telephone from Washington to tell us wear the rabbit trail leads us…. So Cliff, when you went down the bunny trail following Chuck Hagel’s tracks, what did you discover?

Kincaid: Rick, everything leads back to the global jihad. All elements of Obama’s foreign policy involve support for the Muslim Brotherhood, including its mouthpiece, Al Jazeera. Chuck Hagel is part of the puzzle. Brennan, that you just mentioned, is another but of course ultimately, the buck so-to-speak stops with Obama, the Marxist Muslim in the White House.

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Kincaid: Hagel goes before these Arab institutes and Arab audiences and basically badmouths Israel, attacks the United States, attacks the relationship with Israel and we’re just trying to get more information and evidence about what motivates this guy. Clearly, he’s in the pay of those who are part and parcel of facilitating this global jihad against America.

While it is becoming extremely unlikely that the GOP will be able to muster enough votes to filibuster Chuck Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary, Religious Right groups and their Republican allies continue to make new and more over-the-top overtures to activists hoping to block his confirmation.

For example, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) told Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council that “we can’t afford to allow someone who has been that cozy with the terrorist groups that are out there to become Secretary of Defense.”

Inhofe went on to say that Hagel wants to “disarm us” and shows “hostility” toward the U.S. and Israel. Inhofe also cited Sen. Ted Cruz’s questioning of Hagel where he egregiously misrepresented the nominee’s speeches and interview with Al-Jazeera.

Inhofe: That is what is so scary about this; we’d be confirming a secretary of defense—

Perkins: That wants to basically disarm.

Inhofe: Who wants to disarm us. Before I run out of time, Cruz came up with something just great, he’s a new senator from Texas and he’s on my committee, the Armed Services committee, and he came out and he actually used…a spot that came from Al-Jazeera, this was Chuck Hagel being interviewed on Al-Jazeera a short time ago when he agreed with the call-ins at that time that Israel committed war crimes; Hagel admitted that Israel committed ‘sickening slaughters’; admitted that America is the world’s bully. And this is the guy that is trying to become the secretary of defense; it’s a scary, scary thing.

Perkins: Senator before I let you go, just one question: do you know why he seems to be so indifferent if not hostile toward Israel?

Inhofe: And the United States, Tony. I just don’t understand it. Of course, he denies that he is and you know the record confirms that he has this hostility to it. By the way, almost every group in Israel is lobbying us and calling us and saying, ‘please don’t let this happen.’ They’ve been just as concerned about Obama, this is the first time that any President of the United States has trashed Israel in my memory. So I can’t answer that question.

Matthew Hagee, the son of televangelist John Hagee who has been lobbying with Christians United for Israel against Hagel and called him “dangerous to America’s security,” said on the Hagee Hotline that Hagel’s contentious confirmation hearing was an answer to their prayers.

At the end of the day, Pastor Hagee and those 400 [pastors] who joined him were very confident that what they had done was all that was in their physical power to do to not only represent their views as Americans but the views of the body of Christ and the kingdom of God and to stand up on behalf of God’s chosen people, Israel. All that was left to do was to remain in prayer and to be hopeful that the actions that they had taken would make a difference. If you saw any of the headlines following the Senate committee’s interview of Chuck Hagel, you know that a difference was made. You saw that the Senate firsthand was able to expose Hagel’s weaknesses and you saw the difference that the prayer of the righteous and faith in action can make.

Just today the Family Research Council asked activists to pray for Hagel’s defeat and FRC senior fellow Ken Blackwell said Hagel’s nomination invites “chaos and confusion at a time of international peril.” Eagle Forum told members in an action alert that “Chuck Hagel is a threat to America’s strength and safety” and Rick Santorum claimed “his confirmation would be a direct threat to our national security.”

American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer also weighed in, saying that Iran “loves” Hagel because he wants to “disarm” the U.S.

As the Obama administration continues to be a complete nightmare for antifeminist activist Phyllis Schlafly, the Eagle Forum president is out with a new column attacking Defense Secretary Leon Panetta over his decision to end the ban on women in combat. She claims the policy shift is “lacking in common sense and it is toadying to the feminist officers who yearn to be 3- and 4-star generals based on the feminist dogma of gender interchangeability and on their desire to force men into situations to be commanded by feminists” and even makes a bogus analogy to the NFL.

Schlafly said that the rate of sexual assaults “will skyrocket” if the ban is removed and also attacked the “feminist ideology” for blaming men for such incidents: “Only men will be deemed at fault because it is feminist ideology that men are innately batterers and women are victims.”

In a newsworthy act of political cowardice, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta ran through the Pentagon’s exit door as he announced he is striking down the 1994 Combat Exclusion Law. His timing means his successor, presumably Chuck Hagel, will inherit the task of defending the order to assign women to front-line military combat.

Of course, Panetta doesn’t want to be grilled about his order. It’s lacking in common sense and it is toadying to the feminist officers who yearn to be 3- and 4-star generals based on the feminist dogma of gender interchangeability and on their desire to force men into situations to be commanded by feminists.

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Military women are already complaining about increased sexual assaults, and of course those problems will skyrocket. Only men will be deemed at fault because it is feminist ideology that men are innately batterers and women are victims. [emphasis added]

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How do you answer the fact that women do not have an equal opportunity to survive in combat situations, and did you consider the fact that women in the military get injured at least twice the rate of men? Please explain why the National Football League does not seek diversity or gender equality with female players.

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A lot of people have a very sanitized view of what battlefield fighting is all about. They seem to think it means a quick gunfight and then returning to the base with separate shower and toilet facilities and a ready mess hall.

Frank Gaffney appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday to warn that President Obama’s Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel is not only “a guy who cannot be all that concerned about the men and women in uniform” but also a “shill” for Iran. Gaffney, whose anti-Muslim activism is so extreme that it has even drawn the ire of many Republican groups, told Mefferd that Hagel is acting just like an Iranian spy.

“You couldn’t find a guy who has been more active in terms of promoting the interests of Iran at the expense of the United States than Chuck Hagel other than somebody who is actually an Iranian agent,” Gaffney said, “I’m not suggesting that he is, I don’t know, but I certainly think that’s the point of comparison here because it’s almost that full-throated.”

Mefferd: Obviously people have been talking about Chuck Hagel and his anti-Israel position; he also has a lot of interest in disarming us, doesn’t he?

Gaffney: He is a man who served in the military with distinction in Vietnam, by virtue of that I think many, including veterans groups, have been inclined to think he’ll be a formidable ally of the men and women in uniform. I think that’s anything but the case. To be frank about it, a guy who believes that you can further eviscerate the funding for the Defense Department suggests to me he’s a guy who cannot be all that concerned about the men and women in uniform because it ensures that they will not have the wherewithal that they require to protect us. That’s obviously not good for us but it isn’t going to be very safe or healthy for them either as they go into war without that kit.

Mefferd: Right and you would think that Iran getting excited about Chuck Hagel’s nomination would tip off a few people that this is probably not in the best interest of the United States to have Chuck Hagel in this job.

Gaffney: He’s earned the support of the Iranian regime. I have to say, over many years he has shilled for them it seems at just about every turn. He has objected to sanctions, I guess there have been one or two votes where he played along with it, but mostly he’s been objecting to it certainly since he left the Senate. He has categorically rejected the idea that we might have to use military force to prevent the sort of threat that I believe is now imminent in terms of a nuclear armed Iran. He has been exceedingly aggressive in promoting the idea that we need to engage with them on essentially whatever terms they demand. In other words, you couldn’t find a guy who has been more active in terms of promoting the interests of Iran at the expense of the United States than Chuck Hagel other than somebody who is actually an Iranian agent. I’m not suggesting that he is, I don’t know, but I certainly think that’s the point of comparison here because it’s almost that full-throated.