{"id":584,"date":"2013-02-17T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-17T22:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/17\/national-defense-is-no-partisan-issue"},"modified":"2013-02-17T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2013-02-17T22:16:00","slug":"national-defense-is-no-partisan-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=584","title":{"rendered":"National defense is no partisan issue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

I can\u2019t seem to let go of this Chuck Hagel-for-defense-secretary brouhaha. Stop me \u2026 but not until I get one more thing off my chest.<\/p>\n

Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham, both Republicans of Arizona and South Carolina, respectively, have let the cat out of the bag over their fierce resistance to Hagel\u2019s nomination to lead the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

Both men have said they\u2019re angry with their fellow Republican for turning his back on his party \u2013 their party. <\/p>\n

What? When did national defense become a partisan issue? When did the secretary of defense have to toe some party line in order to lead an institution whose leaders insist that the men and women who wear their nation\u2019s military uniform forgo political considerations? These brave heroes take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution without regard to politics. They are bound by that oath to follow \u201clawful orders\u201d issued by anyone farther up the chain of command than they are \u2013 and that includes the civilian commander in chief.<\/p>\n

Now it seems that because Hagel, who served two terms as a GOP senator from Nebraska, is being punished by his fellow Republicans because he changed his mind on whether the Iraq War was a noble effort. The new White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, made a salient point this morning on \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d It is that national security and defense issues belong far beyond the partisan realm.<\/p>\n

Another distinguished Republican, U.S. Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan once offered sage advice that his political descendants should heed as they discuss national defense in the context of overarching foreign policy. He said: “To me, ‘bipartisan foreign policy’ means a mutual effort, under our indispensable, two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with one voice to those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.”<\/p>\n

Are you listening, Republicans?<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t seem to let go of this Chuck Hagel-for-defense-secretary brouhaha. Stop me \u2026 but not until I get one more thing off my chest. Sens. John McCain and Lindsay Graham, both Republicans of Arizona and South Carolina, respectively, have let the cat out of the bag over their fierce resistance to Hagel\u2019s nomination to … Continue reading National defense is no partisan issue<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}