There seems to be a lot of gnashing of teeth that Obama decided not to nominate a neo-con Democrat to the Defense post (i.e. people like Panetta and Hillary Clinton).
So what is there response to the Hagel nomination? "He hates gays!", "He is a bigot."
Problem with that view is that they are basing their objections on views held in the 90's, when even a majority of Democrats held the same disgusting views of the LGBT community.
Now they have the audacity to use that smear to try to take the shine off his nomination.
Problem is like most Democrats and a lot of Americans he changed his views:
But Chuck Hagel is pro-gay, pro-LGBT, pro-ending "don't ask, don't tell. The only problem is that no one asked him his views lately -- including the president of the Human Rights Campaign...
Had Hagel been invited he would have told the audience that he valued each and every man and woman who chose to serve this nation, on the battlefield and in other capacities -- regardless of his or her ethnic background, sexual identity, or religion. I'm not sure where Hagel stands on same-sex marriage, but I know that he supports solid legal protections for gay families and is personally supportive of gays and lesbians.
How do I know this? Because I'm a national-security wonk who happens to be gay and who happens to have interacted with and followed Chuck Hagel for years. I have spoken directly about these issues with him over the years -- once for more than an hour by phone from the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs...
We talked about this stuff. At some point, Hagel, although he was not in Congress when the legislation passed, may have been a supporter of don't ask, don't tell, but as of a couple of years ago he was not. He believed that we owed more to those who were climbing up hill to fight for this nation, who were climbing up a hill to be fairly and legally committed to the ones they loved, who were climbing up a hill to be treated fairly at work and to raise children in a loving and accepting environment.
This is the Chuck Hagel I have come to know and have respected for so many years.
Glenn Greenwald, who is also a member of the LGBT community, delves into the absurdities of the objections on the left:
Given how progressives assess other politicians, why should Hagel not be forgiven or at least be given the benefit of the doubt? Look at what Democrats are willing to forgive and forget. They swoon for Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, who in 2002 voted to authorize George Bush's attack on Iraq, surely a far worse offense than Hagel's ugly comments about Hormel. They overlook Biden's obnoxious 2006 comments about Indian-Americans and Obama's patronizing and sexist use of "sweetie" to dismiss a female reporter in 2008. They adore the top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, who opposes a woman's right to choose. They even forgave long-time Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd for his past membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Where does Hagel's 1998 comment rank with those bad acts?
Then there's the issue of Hagel's party affiliation. The perception that Republicans are more trustworthy than Democrats on military issues - and that Democratic presidents thus had to rely on Republicans to run the Pentagon - was indeed both pervasive and baseless. But that, too, has changed: the outgoing Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, is as loyal and partisan a Democrat as it gets, and nobody objected to his selection.
But much more importantly: when it comes to issues such as war, militarism, defense spending and Middle East policy, isn't substance much more significant than whether someone has an "R" or "D" after their name? As Obama himself proves - and as Biden and Clinton before him proved - the fact that someone has a "D" after their name is hardly a guarantor that they will oppose policies of aggression and militarism. Indeed, as Clemons said Friday night on MSNBC, most Democrats in the Pentagon are so afraid of being cast as "soft on defense" that they hug policies of militarism far more eagerly and unquestioningly than Chuck Hagel ever would. Is partisan identity so all-consuming that it completely trumps substance, so that a hawkish Democrat is preferable to a war-skeptic Republican?
All of the Democratic alternatives to Hagel who have been seriously mentioned are nothing more than standard foreign policy technocrats, fully on-board with the DC consensus regarding war, militarism, Israel, Iran, and the Middle East. That's why Kristol, the Washington Post and other neocons were urging Obama to select them rather than Hagel: because those neocons know that, unlike Hagel, these Democratic technocrats pose no challenge whatsoever to their agenda of sustaining destructive US policy in the Middle East and commitment to endless war.