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The Meaning of Hagel
(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - Defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel has called the Pentagon "bloated" and needing "to be pared down." Just the man you'd want to carry out a U.S. disarmament that will shrink America to what Obama thinks is its proper size on the world stage; i.e., smaller. Hagel won't make foreign policy. Obama will run it out of the White House even more tightly than he did in the first term. Hagel's importance is the message his nomination sends about where Obama wants to go. Iran's official media have already cheered the choice of what they call this "anti-Israel" nominee. And they fully understand what his nomination signals regarding administration resolve about stopping them from going nuclear. The rest of the world can see coming the Pentagon downsizing - and the inevitable, commensurate decline of U.S. power. Arab countries will understand that the current rapid decline of post-Kissinger U.S. dominance in the region is not cyclical but intended to become permanent. Hagel matters only because of what his nomination says about Obama.