Graham, Cruz, DeceptiCONs Foolishly Oppose Hagel Nomination

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Email | RSS

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – So Hagel has actually seen the horrors of war.  He’s got a couple Purple Hearts to prove it.  He does not desire for his country to dispatch any more of its young men abroad in search of monsters to destroy.  Then you have the new allegedly conservative upstart senator from the State of Texas.  What are you people in Texas gaining by continuing your obeisance to the military-industrial complex in Washington, DC?  Those of you out there chortling on about Texas seceding, is Texas going to secede and become an empire that’s also going to have an openly and supportive policy towards the State of Israel as you just heard Senator Cruz talk about?  Is that what serves Texas’ interests?  I don’t understand this, I really don’t. Check out the rest in today’s audio and transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I see we have Lindsey Graham digital media file.  We have the debt ceiling clip.  Are there any other ones in there?  Wasn’t he asked about Hagel?  Didn’t he say that, while we’re on the subject of foreign policy, [mocking Graham] “I don’t see that Chuck Hagel could be Secretary of Defense.  I think he’d be a real threat.  He’d have mad men running all around the world.  America’s interests would not be served by a Hagel nomination as Secretary of Defense.”

[start audio clip]

Senator Lindsey Graham: Quite frankly, Chuck Hagel is out of the mainstream of thinking I believe on most issues regarding foreign policy. I expect the president to nominate people different than I would think. I’m going to vote for Senator Kerry. I don’t agree with him a lot, but I think he’s very much in the mainstream of thought. Chuck Hagel, if confirmed to be Secretary of Defense, would be the most antagonistic Secretary of Defense toward the State of Israel in our nation’s history.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  He would be the most antagonistic?  Let me see if I understand this.  Because he is less inclined to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, he is more antagonistic?  [laughing]  That’s the sound of yours truly beating his head against the microphone.  I’m going to have to hear that one again.

AG:  The interesting part, Hagel, in his 2006 biography, “Not that I’m a pacifist, I’m a hard-edged realist. I understand the world as it is, but war is a terrible thing. There is no glory, only suffering.”  That shouldn’t be viewed as an extreme comment.  It boggles my mind how that is viewed as somewhat out of the mainstream, the idea that you can be a realist and not want to go to war because of the terrible consequences that happen as a result of being involved militarily with fighting and death.

Mike:  Do you think that the lust — it’s not just Lindsey Graham.  There are many little Lindsey Grahams sitting out there in their 18-wheeler cabs driving across I-85 right now going, [mocking] “That’s one thing I disagree with you about.  It’s all them wars.  We gots to fight them wars.  We gots to go over there and get the Muslims otherwise they come over here and get us.  You need to wake up, Church, you’re wrong.”  The bellicose nature and statements of Lindsey Graham have anything to do with the fact that warfare is a game for the people of these United States.

It used to be, when I was a little boy, if you wanted to play war, you couldn’t actually participate in any of the carnage.  You couldn’t take a gun and blow someone’s head off and then watch the blood splatter all over the place.  You couldn’t throw grenades at them.  You couldn’t climb in a helicopter and attack them or fly a drone over them and drop a bomb on them.  I’m not talking what actually happens out there in the real world.  I’m talking about what happens in Call of Duty 2.  When I was a little boy, you had these little plastic guys.  They’re in the Toy Story movie.  They’re the little plastic army dudes.  You might make your battlefield up.  When I was little, I’d build two little hills.  I’d have one army on one hill and the other army on the other hill.  It was kind of like, what was the movie, Chris Farley when he destroys all the things on the desk pretending like he’s playing war.  You presented like you’re blowing things up.  You pretend.  We had the Stratego game where you roll dice and actually strategize on a cardboard board with little plastic blue or red pieces on what country you were going to occupy.  It was purely theatrical or theoretical.

Today, we’re all involved in playing wars.  It’s some of the most fun that we have.  I watch my stepson intermittently whipping out a gift which was the Call of Duty 2 Black Ops and all the missions you get to go on and the people you get to shoot.  Maybe, at the end of the day, there is a desensitization of the people out there and they don’t see the horrors of war.  Instead, they see the video game glory of it.  If you can make it through this gauntlet, if you can get around this little army, if you can undermine or take down this band of marauders, you advance to the next level.  There’s achievement in war.

It used to be, back in the early days of video games, for those of you that are old enough to remember, the closest thing you got to destroying something was that little asteroid-looking thing.  At the bottom of the screen, you had this little triangle, didn’t even look like a spaceship, and it would fire these digital projectiles to the upper part of the screen and you would blast away at the incoming spaceships.  Even when it blew up, it was just a little cloud.  Today’s video games, you get all the graphic violence and horror of it but it doesn’t really seem that horrific.  How many of you have stood around and watched some youth playing Call of Duty or whatever the military shoot ‘em up game is and have cheered wildly when a gun goes off wielded by your son, your nephew, whoever the case may be, who has just put an M16 or AR assault rifle bullet into an enemy’s head and watched the splatter behind?  Maybe these things are interlinked.  I have always been a fan, if I do play those games, of the strategy games where you have to go through and pick up clues and work out puzzles and advance to the next level while outsmarting the game or being as smart as the game.

Ted Cruz on Fox News Sunday — those of you that supported the candidacy of Cruz, the new Senator from the State of Texas, I was told and assured by some people that Cruz was not one of them.  He was not a McCain or Graham type when it came to foreign policy.  I was cautioned at the same time: That’s not what I have heard.  It kind of surprises me that Ted Cruz has now emerged as a vocal opponent of Chuck Hagel.  I’d like to hear why.  Here’s Ted Cruz on Fox News Sunday explaining.

[start audio clip]

Senator Ted Cruz: If Hagel is nominated, it is very difficult to imagine a circumstance in which I could support his confirmation. It’s interesting, the president seems bound and determined to proceed down this path despite the fact that Hagel’s record is very, very troubling on the nation of Israel. With respect to the nation of Iran, he has opposed sanctions over and over again. The job of the Secretary of Defense is to be a serious, credible strength and deterrent. Unfortunately, I think weakness in a Secretary of Defense invites conflict.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  Invites conflict where, Senator Cruz?  Do you really think Texas is going to be invaded — hell, Texas already has been invaded.  It’s been invaded by Mexicans.  Are they wielding arms or are they wielding brooms and shovels to take jobs?  I’m surprised by that, I really am.  He sounds very Marco Rubio-ish, very Lindsey Graham-ish, very Joseph Lieberman, very John McCain-ish, very foolishly internationalist, globalist, hawkish.  That is not a conservative position.  You see, folks?  You see what happens?  We’re told during campaigns, [mocking] “He’s reliable.  I’m telling you, he’s one of us,” that they’re reliable and conservative, this, that and the other.  The conservative position shouldn’t have anything to do with any of the — again, the term conservative, what does it mean anymore?  The conservative position should not have anything to do with things that Senator Cruz was just droning on about on Fox News Sunday.  Just to recap, we know that Chuck Hagel — AG, can you read that quote from Senator Hagel’s book again, about him not being a pacifist?

AG:  In his 2006 biography, “Not that I’m a pacifist, I’m a hard-edged realist. I understand the world as it is, but war is a terrible thing. There is no glory, only suffering.”  This is from Chuck Hagel, who won two Purple Hearts serving in Vietnam.

Mike:  So Hagel has actually seen the horrors of war.  He’s got a couple Purple Hearts to prove it.  He does not desire for his country to dispatch any more of its young men abroad in search of monsters to destroy.  Then you have the new allegedly conservative upstart senator from the State of Texas.  What are you people in Texas gaining by continuing your obeisance to the military-industrial complex in Washington, DC?  Those of you out there chortling on about Texas seceding, is Texas going to secede and become an empire that’s also going to have an openly and supportive policy towards the State of Israel as you just heard Senator Cruz talk about?  Is that what serves Texas’ interests?  I don’t understand this, I really don’t.

End Mike Church Show Transcript