Hagel: Even More Powerful Than We Thought

by hilzoy

Earlier in the week, we learned that Senator Chuck Hagel, along with his trusty sidekick Ted Kennedy, was placing our success in Iraq at risk by expressing concern about how it was going. I was impressed: what an estimated 16,000 insurgents cannot accomplish with suicide bombs and IEDs, Senator Hagel can do simply by exercising his constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. Surely, I thought, this is no ordinary Senator: his words are words of power, and at his command, our wills falter and our hopes fail.

And now comes one more demonstration of his control over the national will:

"Several Senate Republicans denounced other lawmakers and the news media on Thursday for unfavorable depictions of the Iraq war and the Pentagon urged members of Congress to talk up military service to help ease a recruiting shortfall.

Families are discouraging young men and women from enlisting "because of all the negative media that's out there," Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said at a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Inhofe also said that other senators' criticism of the war contributed to the propaganda of U.S. enemies. He did not name the senators. (...)

"With the deluge of negative news that we get daily, it's just amazing to me that anybody would want to sign up," said Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican."

Inhofe did not speak their names, no doubt out of a desire not to draw their dark power closer. But I think we can all guess who he meant.

Personally, I think that John Cole has the right take on this, as he often does:

"The real problem I guess, is that the prospective recruits are hearing this is dangerous work, if you believe Sen. Inhofe and Sen. Roberts. So what should we do? Dress up all our recruiters like large Boy Scouts, and tell kids they are going off for two years of smores, nature hikes, homoerotic male bonding activities, and campfire tales? Oh, and by the by, you might get killed. Here is a signing bonus."

Comments

[rilkefan]

"wills falter, hopes fail" would be parallel.

Ditto re Cole.

[hilzoy]

Thanks, rilkefan! -- by the way, my parents just got back from the Galapagos, which they loved.

[xanax]

Smores? Now you're talkin'! Where do I sign?

[John Thullen]

Senator Imhofe wears a masturband and has undergone intensive training to purge his war wetdreams of all offensive imagery.

[Opus]

I know that I think Senator Inhofe is an idiot, but I can't remember why. He said something in a speech, about 2-3 years ago. It was just ridiculous. Can anyone remind me?

Of course, based on these recent remarks, I don't have to remember to continue to think he's an idiot.

[ral]

Re. Inhofe, outrage at the outrage, perhaps?

[hilzoy]

Well, I keep a little list of things people have said that are not just run-of-the-mill bad, but I-really,-really-want-to-remember-that-X-said-this-dreadful-thing bad, and outrage at the outrage is what got him on there.