Republican Chuck Hagel was nominated for secretary of defense Jan. 7 by President Barack Obama, who said Hagel would be the very first person of enlisted rank, as well as the first Vietnam veteran, to receive the occupation.
“As I saw during our visits together to Afghanistan and Iraq, in Chuck Hagel, our troops see a decorated combat veteran of character and strength. They see one of their own. Chuck’s a champion of our troops, and our veterans and our military families,” Obama said in a statement.
The former Nebraska senator served in the Vietnam War, where he earned one of his purple hearts for saving his brother’s life.
While he was a member of the Senate, he eventually became involved in the foreign relations committee, where he became the chairman on a panel.
Hagel is also well known for his outspokenness. He has criticized both the George W. Bush administration on the right, and the first gay ambassador, James Hormel, on the left.
Hagel will be replacing 74-year-old Leon Panetta, who had also worked as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and as an Army intelligence officer.
Sen. Lindsey Graham told the BBC that Chuck Hagel would be “the most antagonistic secretary of defense toward the state of Israel in our nation’s history.”
In Hagel’s 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter,” he wrote about both Iran and the Palestinians.
“Isolating nations is risky…It turns them inward, and makes their citizens susceptible to the most demagogic fear mongering,” he wrote, referring to the Israeli’s restrictiveness on the Palestinians.
Reuven Rivel, the speaker of the Israeli parliament, told the Associated Press, “Because of his statements in the past, and his stance toward Israel, we are worried.” But Rivel said the partnership between the two countries is strong because “one person doesn’t determine policy.”
