Chuck Hagel,
who co-chairs the Obama administration’s Intelligence Advisory Board, says the United States should offer Iran “face-saving ways” out of the nuclear crisis and let Arab countries to take the lead in ousting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
In a wide-ranging interview March 9 with Al-Monitor Washington correspondent Barbara Slavin at Georgetown University, where Hagel teaches a weekly class, the former Republican senator from Nebraska hinted that private approaches to Iran were already occurring. He praised President Barack Obama’s handling of foreign policy and said Obama could do even better in the first two years of a second term.
Al-Monitor:
Do you still consider yourself a Republican?
Hagel: I don’t know what the Republican Party is. I know why I registered a long time ago; my first vote was in the Mekong Delta absentee in 1968. But we’ll find a new center of gravity... After the American people speak in November, that gives us some new possibilities. If the president is re-elected, like most two-term presidents, your fifth and sixth years can be your most productive.
do think Obama’s done a good job overall. There are a lot of things I don’t agree with him on; he knows it. I have the honor and privilege of seeing those guys a lot. [Vice President] Joe [Biden] is a good friend. Obama and I got to know each other pretty well in the Senate even though he wasn’t there very long. As you know, he asked Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) and me to go to the Middle East with him so we spent a lot time [together]… I have the highest regard for him in every way. I think he’s one of the finest, most decent individuals I’ve ever known and one of the smartest… I try to remind my Republican friends when they hammer him that this is a guy who inherited the biggest agenda of problems in this country ever inherited by a president since Franklin Roosevelt and maybe worse. Roosevelt didn’t inherit two wars that were messes with a global financial crisis. Everywhere you look, this guy had problems to try to dig his way out of it. And I think he deserves some credit.
Maybe we aren’t as far down the road as we could be, but I don’t think we’ve gone backward. We’ve gone in the right direction. Any president … first two years of his administration he’s really dealing with the previous administration’s budgets… That’s why I said it’s the fifth and sixth years of a two-term president that give him the biggest window.
Al-Monitor: If he’s re-elected, what would you like to see him concentrate on in terms of foreign policy?
Hagel: I think he would put some real time into…
a Middle East peace and I had a long talk with him and I know he wants to do that. . . He will try to put a lot of effort into that because he knows that that’s such a big part of everything.
Al-Monitor: There’s a big painting of former president Dwight Eisenhower in your office. Is he one of your heroes?
Hagel: Every year that goes by, I admire him more and more [for his] wise, steady leadership.....snip~
Read more:
Hagel Praises Obama on Syria; Chides GOP on Iran - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East
It seems Hagel doesn't know what he is, let alone who he himself is......but then talks about how he has a Picture of Eisenhower in his Office. So what he has a Pic of Eisenhower in his Office. He even admits the first 2 years into a Presidency that President is dealing with budgetary problems in those first two years. So Chuck Wagon.....got an answer as to what happen with you fessing up to who this Economy now falls on. Did he want to have a talk with Obama about that too?
A Middle East peace brought on by Obama????? "Say What"????? Is Chucky Cheese here delusional?
I don't have any problem with Hagel being a Moderate Republican who says he is Conservative. But could he please take his tongue out of Obama's azz!!!!!