E-mail a friendSen. Chuck Hagel
airdate March 26, 2008
A fourth generation Nebraskan, Chuck Hagel is the state's senior senator and a key member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He's a highly decorated Vietnam combat veteran and former Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration. Hagel has announced his retirement from the Senate at the end of his term in 2009 and has a new book, America: Our Next Chapter, set for release this spring. Prior to his election, he was president of an Omaha-based investment banking firm.
Sen. Chuck Hagel
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Senator Chuck Hagel back to this program. The Nebraska Republican and decorated Vietnam veteran has been an influential voice in the Senate as a member of both the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees.
His new book is called "America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers." He joins us tonight from New York City. Senator Hagel, nice to have you on the program.
Sen. Chuck Hagel: Tavis, always a high honor to be with you, thank you.
Tavis: Well, I'm honored to have you on the program. Don't know if you know it or not - of course, I'm being tongue-in-cheek here - but I've been reading a lot over the last few hours about a meeting you had in New York City today. You want to share any details about that meeting?
Hagel: (Laughs) I presume you're talking about the meeting I had with Mayor Bloomberg.
Tavis: Oh, yeah, that would be the one. That would be the one, Senator Hagel.
Hagel: Well, he's a great mayor, he's a good friend, and we spent a few minutes just talking about the world and how he was doing and politics, a little of everything. We didn't negotiate any deals. I applied for a job; I am out of the Senate. Maybe I could work as his driver (laughter) or maybe be an escort or a bodyguard for him.
Tavis: So no serious conversation, as many have suspected, about you and Bloomberg, Bloomberg and you running as a team on an independent ticket for the White House?
Hagel: No, Tavis. I think, as you know, Mayor Bloomberg said a few weeks ago that he was not going to run for the presidency, and I think he meant that. We actually didn't even talk about that. We talked, again, about politics, sure, and we talked about my book, and I gave him a signed copy of it. And we talked about sports and education and a lot of things, but not an independent presidential bid.
Tavis: Before I jump into the book right quick, tell me why it is you chose not to run for the presidency yourself. A lot of talk about that some months back, but as a Republican, or for that matter as an Independent, once out of the Senate why did you choose not to run, Senator?
Hagel: Tavis, I think like all things in life, or at least for me, you have to make decisions based on the whole, what feels right. This just didn't feel right for me for a lot of reasons. My wife Lilibet and I have two teenage children. That would have meant that over the last year or year and a half I'd been away from home for a year and a half, raising money, doing what you've got to do to put yourself in a competitive position.
There are some things in the Senate I wanted to try to finish up and accomplish before I left the Senate. The political dynamics for me I didn't think were right to do this, and there were some other reasons, too but mainly a combination of those things. And then when you get right down to it, you've got to be right with it in your own gut, and I just wasn't.
Tavis: Two other quick questions, then, and right to this new book, "America: Our Next Chapter." I note that although Nancy Reagan today came out to endorse John McCain, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has not as yet. Is there a reason for that?
Hagel: Well, I've said that I want to hear from John as to what his program would be, his policies, how he would frame up his presidency as to Iraq, as to foreign policy, reintroducing America to the world. I think these are critical issues for our future and the next president is going to inherit a very significant inventory of problems, and not the least of which will be a country, the United States of America, that I think has suffered greatly in its standing in the world and it's been due to a great extent to this fiasco in Iraq.
And I want John to lay that out. It doesn't mean I'm endorsing anyone, but I've always believed if you're going to endorse someone, Tavis, you should support them. You should do that enthusiastically. And I want to know more than I do know now as to how John's going to unwind our involvement in Iraq and what he has in mind for the next four years, especially in foreign policy.
Tavis: Speaking of Iraq, let me take that, then, Senator, and segue into the book. One of the cases, one of the arguments you make, at least, in this book is that Iraq may go down as one of the five biggest blunders ever with regard to American foreign policy - one of the five biggest blunders ever. I won't walk through the list of the other four, but I raise that only because I wonder, then, what your sense is five years later, more than 4,000 dead and violence breaking out in the country again today, with more Americans being harmed today.
Hagel: Well there were many of us, Tavis, and you and I have talked about this a few years ago, that asked a lot of the tough questions. I remember leading up to the resolution and leading up to the decision by the president to invade Iraq in March of 2003. And one of the basic questions that I continue to ask, what happens after Saddam is gone?
Who will govern, how will they govern, what role will America have, what will our military involvement be, for how long? And like many of us, we were assured by this administration, we've thought through that, we have plans, we have policies, we have structures. They didn't. And I think now we find ourselves in a very dangerous quagmire, very difficult to get out.
Dwight Eisenhower, who I quote in my book on a number of occasions, said once, and I think he was exactly right, easy to get into wars, pretty hard to get out of a war. And we're in a mess now in Iraq. We are doing tremendous damage to our force structure, to our army, to our Marines, undermining our standing in the world.
We've got a Middle East now that is more dangerous, more combustible, more complicated than ever before. And so this was a blunder, in my opinion, one of the most significant blunders in our foreign policy history.
Tavis: The president has been, or is just about to be told, depending on what publication you're reading, has been or is about to be told by his top military advisers in Iraq that they want to see a pause in the drawdown of troops. You make what of that news?
Hagel: Well, I'm not surprised at that, but our military officers and our military are charged with the narrow assignment of the objective, and their role is not to cover the larger scope of the landscape of foreign policy, of our interests, all the other pieces that only a commander-in-chief and a civilian leadership can cover. And if in fact this is the decision by our military leaders, I then ask the question, then what was the surge all about?
If you're going to recommend to the president and the president accepts that recommendation that not only do they want a pause in the drawdown of our troops but in fact we would have more troops in Iraq this year than we had before the beginning of the surge. Now if the surge has had such a significant effect and it's been successfully, militarily, at least tactically, then why are we keeping more troops than we had before the surge?
And in fact, as General Petraeus said a week ago in an interview, there's been no commensurate progress with the political accommodation that's going to be required. Ultimately that's all that matters anyway between the Iraqis leading to a political reconciliation. You mentioned, Tavis, what's going on in Iraq today. That has nothing to do with al Qaeda, that's not terrorism going on today.
That is the Shi'ia warlords in the south that have controlled that part of Iraq for the last two years under Sadr taking on the government of Iraq. And so this is something we've seen play out and I think that it is only going to get more intense with America again trapped in the middle of a civil war.
Tavis: You've said you don't want the job but you obviously took time to write this book, so if you were sitting in the White House next January and you are the person most responsible for writing the next chapter of American history, where would you start writing that next chapter? Domestic, foreign policy, where would you start writing that next chapter of our history?
Hagel: Well I would do two things, and if the new president asked me for my advice I would tell him at least what I think he should do first, and that is reach out immediately to the Congress in a bipartisan way to try to form a consensus of governance with both parties, with the leadership of both parties, prioritizing that.
Second, I would reach out to world leaders immediately, and I would convene a leadership meeting that I would host. I would go to Asia, Europe, if I was the president to bring this coalition of common interests together because these issues, challenges that will write the next chapter for America now that we face in the 21st century are going to require a 21st century frame of reference.
But it's also going to require working with our allies and our alliances because none of these challenges are just indigenous to the United States, whether it's terrorism, whether it's the environment, whether it's energy. All of them are going to require coalitions of common interests. And I think the third thing that the president's going to have to do in regard to Iraq specifically is go back to the Baker-Hamilton report of a year and a half ago, 76 recommendations, make a lot of sense, some of those are a little outdated, but he's going to have to do something totally different, I think, than where we've been. Those are some are the things I would advise the next president to do.
Tavis: In advance, Senator Hagel, of my asking the question, I answer it, at least as I see it. I would assume not - I would assume not, since you took the time to write this book "America: Our Next Chapter," but is some of the damage that's been done over the last eight years irreparable?
Hagel: Well I don't know if it's irreparable yet. It will be irreparable, in my opinion, Tavis, if the next president doesn't address it. Certainly our position in the world, not only our competitive position in the world, which I have a chapter in my book about that, but where we are in the world today, the optics of the rest of the world towards us, our standing in the world today is as low as it's ever been.
We can't lead in a world that doesn't trust us, that doesn't like us. That doesn't mean we give up our sovereignty - we don't give up what we believe. But we have to bring coalitions of common interests together. We have to refortify these alliances to deal with these great issues. The great leaders after World War II did that and knew how to do it and why to do it - Truman and Eisenhower and Marshall.
The common denominators of self-interest should define relationships, not differences. And so that's trade, that's exchange programs, that's so many of the things that we need to address or those damages will become irreparable, and I think with our economy, Tavis, and you know how bad a shape we're in here, and it isn't just a blip, it's not just a housing mortgage issue.
When you've got the kind of problems fundamentally that we have in this country, starting with the debt we're carrying - we ran up a third of the nation's debt in the last seven years. Most people are having problems not just making mortgage payments, but everybody is affected by high food prices, by high energy prices. We've got to address those because if we don't do something in the next four years to address those, then that damage will set in, Tavis, and it will be irreparable.
Tavis: He's decided to retire from the Senate after the term ends. Of course out of Nebraska, Senator Chuck Hagel. His new book is "America: Our Next Chapter: Tough Questions, Straight Answers." Senator Hagel, nice to have you on, we'll do it again, I hope, before you get out of the Senate.
Hagel: I hope so, Tavis, thank you.
Tavis: Thank you, sir.
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