That headline is somewhat garbled in translation. Hagel, who didn't seem to have a problem with the war when there were "only" 2000 dead Americans, has now reached his
personal tipping point about Iraq. He's told CBS News that "It is very wrong, Bob, to put American troops in a hopeless, winless situation, just keep feeding them in to--to what's going on. That's irresponsible and that is wrong."
I welcome anyone who's seen the light on the Mesopotamian meatgrinder back in to the world of the sensible. But what I don't get is,
why now? All the problems we're facing in Iraq, the general direction away from stability and toward murderous chaos, were perfectly plain to see three months ago, six months ago, two years ago. The course of events from March 2003 to today has been perfectly predictable all along. But at all those august points in time, Senator Hagel kept his mouth mostly shut. He's expressed reservations and been cautious; he's offered frequent caveats about our policy there. But otherwise, he has supported the overall policy of the war and the president's leadership of it.
But now it's "very wrong" to put troops in a hopless situation. Some of us saw this problem coming to more or less this state of affairs before the invasion. I can accept that Hagel was snowed by the administration's spurious use of distorted evidence (e.g. "lies") to get the invasion authorized in the first place. In times of danger Americans have traditionally accepted the leadership of their president in foreign affairs. But Americans should never
blindly accept leadership... that's what democracy is all about.
But my question comes back to what changed to make Hagel finally understand the obvious, that if there's no plan to win, no plan to exit, and no plan to reduce the numbers of American dead in Iraq, then the whole operation is a literal meatgrinder. I was being chartible in saying what changed in the "far-sighted" senator's mind was that we've reached an unacceptably high number of American casualities.
I think the more logical number to look at is an unacceptably low number of Americans thinking that Bush has his head screwed on right. When Bush is at 40+% in opinion polls, Hagel can ignored the human consequences of this vanity war. When Bush drops below that magic number, it's time to dust of the ol' backbone and see if it can't save Chucky's credibility.