Foreign Policy

On the merits, Chuck Hagel is wrong for secretary of Defense, and that’s all that should matter. With Americans in the military serving across the globe, and at a time of growing challenges to national security and extraordinary pressures on the defense budget, there’s no time for the irrelevant partisan distractions that have diminished the debate over the Hagel nomination. When it comes to whether Sen. Hagel should be confirmed by the Senate, all that counts is that he’s the wrong person for the job.

America is historically widely known and recognized as a safe heaven, for refugees, migrants and all those moving from the “Old World” and elsewhere in pursuit of justice, stable legal and political environment and greater economic opportunities. After all, the majority of people do not just venture far and abroad out of good life.

One of the calamities that led to generations of people to emigrate to America in search of a better life is war and fighting in their birthplace — including war crimes, massacres, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. One such horror, the biggest war crime at the time in all of Europe, the Khojaly Massacre, happened on the night of Feb. 25, 1992, when the armed forces of Armenia, led by its current president and defense minister, committed a crime against humanity in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly, massacring nearly 800 of mostly ethnic Azerbaijanis as well as Meskheti (Ahiska) Turks, Kurds and others.

Two years to the day after the anti-Gadhafi uprisings began in Benghazi, the populace has again taken to the streets. This time they are protesting the new authorities failures to bring economic development and its prerequisite, security. Over the last two years, wide swathes of Libyan territory have been transformed into a non-governed space has indirectly facilitated the Islamist takeover in Mali and the attack by Al-Qaeda affiliates on Algeria’s In Amenas gas facility. If Libya is the fabled ‘gateway to Africa’, then the gate has been left wide open.

In today's Libya, heavy artillery and extremist militants flow across the country's porous borders with ease. Since the killing of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, Libya's extreme east is currently being monitored by American drones in search of jihadist training camps.

The Afghanistan orchestra that recently appeared at the Kennedy Center represents the future of our country. A future based not on hatred and war, but on a life full of harmony and joy promoting the highest human values of tolerance, culture and education.  

While extremists and others are trying to tear us apart, these youth are demonstrating the wishes of the Afghan people and the future they envision for themselves complimenting one another and working together to create a strong Afghan voice combining Eastern and Western tools while appreciating the international director assisting them with taking the best of the Western culture and merging it with the Afghan culture in a beautiful collaboration. 

President Obama announced in his State of the Union on Tuesday that over the next year, half of the U.S. combat force in Afghanistan will leave the country: by February 2014, 34,000 out of roughly 68,000 troops will have returned home. It is good news that additional American troops will come home after years of debilitating combat.  And it was gratifying to see the President dedicate time during a key speech to a conflict that has become known as America’s “forgotten war.”
 
However, the speech is also a reminder that the war is not ending as quickly or as completely as Americans hoped. A year from now, 34,000 troops will remain in combat – more than when President Obama took office.

This week, Bahrainis from across the political spectrum resumed a National Dialogue with the aim of producing consensus on how to move forward as a nation. The politics of the street are incapable of producing long-lasting solutions to political problems. Despite a number of unrealized opportunities for dialogue since the events of two years ago, it is encouraging that members of the political opposition have now returned to the negotiating table.

The political situation in Bahrain is much more complex than the binary choice between the government and the opposition. Although there are many actors that are critical of the government, there are also those that strongly disagree with the opposition’s political program. All voices must be heard on fundamental questions about political reform and the type of society Bahrain will become.

One of the most important impacts of last November’s elections is that freedom is again under attack. This time, the assault on our freedom is not being led by our enemies abroad, but rather by Republicans and Democrats alike in Washington, buoyed by an increasingly complacent American public all too willing to sacrifice our liberty under the false guise of security.

In recent days, we have learned that the Obama administration has approved the use of drone warfare – often referred to as remote control assassination – to hunt down and kill terrorists, including American citizens.

This month marks two years since the start of the Syrian crisis. The civil war has claimed at least 60,000 lives and sent 755,000 refugees fleeing to neighboring Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey. Nearly half of the refugees in Jordan are younger than twelve years old, and women outnumber men two to one. Over two million Syrians are internally displaced and unable to cross borders. The United Nations reports that more than four million Syrians are in urgent need of assistance. President Bashar al-Assad’s “iron fist” has responded to global condemnation and the rise of opposition forces with increased violence and overwhelming force.

This week marks the five-month anniversary of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.
 
By now, we should know which terrorist groups were responsible. We should have identified, detained and interrogated suspects. We should know the connections between the attack in Benghazi and the series of other attacks on U.S. embassies in Cairo, Tunis and Sana’a the same week, where American flags were torn down and replaced with al Qaida flags. We should have held the State Department officials responsible for the internal failures described in the Pickering Report accountable.  
 
Yet we have nothing.

Since President Obama nominated Senator Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense in early January, an ugly barrage of mudslinging and name-calling has ensued on Capitol Hill. While every presidential nominee should be thoroughly vetted by the Senate, tarnishing the name of a decorated Vietnam veteran to score political points is disgraceful. The misrepresentation of Hagel's sound foreign policy positions has now given way to ceaseless tactics to delay a confirmation vote. On Sunday, Senator Lindsay Graham threatened to hold up the confirmation vote unless the administration provided additional details on Benghazi. Sen. Graham should remember the Senate is in session, not the circus — this sideshow must end. Sen. Hagel should be promptly confirmed as secretary of defense.