Mind you, I hope that Hagel is derailed. Obviously, the Secretary of Defense will follow presidential orders, but a better secretary would at least push back to soften the hard edges of the budgetary assault on the Pentagon that will take place the next four years. And a better secretary would carry out spending cuts in a more competent manner that minimizes the harm to our capabilities.
Not that I can't enjoy bouncing the rubble on Hagel, which this opinion piece does with wit.
But what I really enjoyed was the en passant collateral damage inflicted on a man who fancies himself a deep thinker qualified to opine on defense matters:
Until his confirmation hearing last week, Mr. Hagel was touted as a courageous tribune of the hard but necessary truth. His nomination, according to one sycophant, "may prove to be the most consequential foreign-policy appointment of [ Barack Obama's] presidency." He was hailed as a latter-day Dwight Eisenhower, a military hero mindful of the appropriate limits of U.S. power, a real American bold enough to tell the chicken-hawk neocon pretenders where they could stick it.
The slam against Hagel was delightful on its own. But the blast radius took down a sycophant who had touted the ginormous brain power and integrity of the nominee, and that was the real treat of this article.
I almost hate to defeat the elegance of the insult by actually naming the man. But since I sold my soul long ago to gain the concept of the "baker's dozen" for donuts (Mmmm, donuts ...), The Dignified Rant is in no danger of giving publicity--even bad publicity--to the until-now unnamed writer, who must suffer for being insulted--and knowing everyone he knows realizes it is him--without getting the Google hit on his name.
While I don't live a good enough life to have deserved getting Thomas Friedman in the blast radius of this paragraph--or Fareed Zakaria--or at least Lawrence Korb--Bret Stephens did at least get a solid hit on a minor pretender to the throne--Peter Beinart--who crafted those words that do nothing to argue against the contention that Beinart reached his position of relative influence by, if not selling his soul to the Devil, at least putting it in a blind trust under the day-to-day management of Beelzebub or a designated evil minion.
I thought Israel's hits on a Syrian chemical and biological warfare laboratory while the Israelis hit a convoy of anti-aircraft missiles was the most brilliant case of collateral damage so far this year. But I was wrong. If I was more devious than I am, I might suspect that the entire Stephens piece on Hagel was just to get in the oblique shot at Beinart. Nobody is that good, are they?
