Kristol Launches the Neo-Con Campaign to Stop Hagel

December 17th, 2012 | http://www.lobelog.com/kristol-launches-the-neo-con-campaign-to-stop-hagel/

Jim Lobe

While Marsha Cohen
and Ali Gharib have reviewed some of the reaction to Chuck Hagel’s possible nomination as Secretary of Defense, Bill Kristol, co-founder/director of such august organizations as the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), the Project for the New American Century, and the Foreign Policy Initiative, appears to have officially launched what could be called the neo-conservative stop it. Writing on the Weekly Standard website (of course, he’s the publication’s editor in chief), Kristol quotes at length from “a fact sheet circulating widely on Capitol Hill” (whose provenance he fails to disclose) entitled “Introduction to the Reading of Hagel”, an oh-so-clever reference to the German idealist philosopher of the early 19th century. What is interesting, if not altogether surprising
, is the degree to which the “Reading” quoted by Kristol is centered on the U.S. relationship with Israel — more evidence that Israel and its security and welfare stand at the very center of the neo-conservative worldview, a point that is studiously avoided by most of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, at least when its members are speaking or writing publicly. It doesn’t matter what Hagel thinks about China, for example, or about the “pivot” to Asia, or about treatment of wounded vets, or missile defense, or about the appropriate size of the Navy or Marine Corps; it’s all about Israel and the purported threats it faces. Particularly remarkable is the Hagel quote featured in point number 9 in the section maliciously titled “Israel and the ‘Jewish Lobby’” — malicious because at no point in the quotes that are featured in the “Reading” does Hagel use the phrase “Jewish Lobby”. (You can actually hear the quote if you go to the Politico article
 entitled “Chuck Hagel’s Record on Israel Draws Scrutiny” about the incipient controversy; it’s from an interview presumably conducted by Aaron David Miller for his book.) This is the relevant passage as it appears in the “Reading:”