Is it all that matters? NO. Charlie Pierce had an interesting piece, a few weeks ago, who was about Hagel, but applies here too.
Pitt is right as he said it was the WRONG vote (IMHO. at least), but he also says he would be a good SOS. I know some here will disagree when I say it is the wrong vote, but I strongly believe it (and both his speech and Hagel speech before the vote confirm it was the wrong vote).
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Echoes_Of_Iraq
I have noticed a certain line of argument popping up on the port side of things regarding the new Secretary Of State, John Kerry, and the Secretary-designate of Defense, Chuck Hagel, as regards their unfortunate votes in favor of what (admittedly inevitably) became the Iraq War. (In Kerry's case, this line of argument popped up repeatedly in another historical context. This was called 2004.) In retrospect, the votes are indefensible. Not as indefensible as the howlingly mendacious case for war itself, or as indefensible as St. Colin Powell's farrago of what he knew was "bullshit" in front of the U.N. But it is undeniable that Hagel and Kerry should have known as much as, say, the Washington bureau of the McClatchy News Service knew.
That said, both men turned against the war itself when it became plain that the country had been lied to. Both were resolutely outspoken — in Hagel's case, against an administration of his own party — in their opposition. I mention this, not simply because Kerry was confirmed by the Senate yesterday and Hagel's nomination hits the road today, but to ask the question — how long should a vote for that misbegotten investment of Other People's Children remain the mark of Cain? Hell, the people who planned it, fashioned the lives, stovepiped the intelligence, and invested Other People's Children are still respected policy thinkers. (Shouldn't the entire Kagan family be running a Gas 'n Sip outside Needles at this point?) They still have their drum majorettes writing in major newspapers. How much more of a penalty should the people who voted for the war pay than that paid by the people who designed it?
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I would ask the people who are lined up against Kerry and Hagel because they voted for the resolution that produced the Iraq war, should Fulbright's shepherding the Gulf Of Tonkin Resolution through the Senate have disqualified him in 1966 from leading the first serious congressional investigation into what in the unholy hell had resulted from it in Southeast Asia? Did Church's vote on the Gulf Of Tonkin resolution devalue the work his committee did in exposing the crimes of the CIA eleven years later? Were the only senators with sufficient credibility to challenge the war in 1972 Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse, since George McGovern also had voted for the resolution out of which sprang the war? How long a penance is long enough?
He did not quote Kennedy in this list, but if Kennedy was in the Senate at that time, it also applies to him. BTW, you find numerous quotes by Kennedy concerning Iraq and WMD. He ended with the right vote, but the reasoning was pretty similar to Biden and Kerry.
It means people can have been wrong for a vote, and still be relevant. Forget the notion of stain. The best we can hope is that he (and Hagel) will learn from this experience just as they learned from Vietnam, and do the right thing, by not sending us in a war with Iran or Iraq, or, if this happens, take the right decision and speak out.
BTW, OTOH, Kennedy could have done nothing anymore than Reid or Feinstein can. This is a political game the GOP has.
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