Chart 'o the day
by digby
From Brandon Friedman:
In nearly eight hours of interrogation and testimony, Israel and its interests were referred to by the Senate Armed Services Committee a total of 106 times. On the other hand, there were a mere 24 references made to Afghanistan and the Americans fighting there—most by Democratic Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the committee.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan—where the U.S. frequently targets militants with drone-launched Hellfire missiles—barely merited mention at all.
It’s difficult to interpret this message any other way: the Senate Armed Services Committee—particularly its Republican membership—is more concerned with the apparent American defense secretary’s relationship with Israel than with the future of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the fate of U.S. troops engaged in both locations.
We are approaching a host of critical and delicate decisions on how many — and how fast — U.S. troops should be pulled out of Afghanistan. Yet, after more than a decade at war there — and nearly 2,100 U.S. lives lost — the people charged with overseeing the operation seem no longer interested.
Hagel was nominated to be the Secretary of Defense and he was hardly asked about the hot war that US military personnel are still fighting. Instead they were obsessed with Hagel's thoughts on Israel, which is something about which he will have very little influence. I'm afraid that's the sort of thing that you have to look to the White House itself for guidance. There's a lesson in this. It was just a few years ago that it would have been considered heresy (and hatred for the troops) to have ignored the theater where American forces are still ostensibly fighting the GWOT. Today, it's an afterthought at best.
Until it isn't. Regardless of these particular political cross winds, never forget that it takes almost nothing to turn the country back to its preferred wartime status. We've been fighting something and someone ever since World War II and I'm afraid we've got a long way to go before that changes.
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