The Soapbox View: Are The Big Issues Only Faced When The Repercussions Are?

Perusing yesterday, Why Hagel Was Picked, by David Brooks in The New York Times, seemed a reasonable source to have answer that question. Why was Chuck Hagel picked for The Pentagon position in the Cabinet? I'd avoided the manufacturing of the nomination into a news event, even though, of course, weekends are always cute watching South Carolina's Senator Lindsay Graham repeat political wisdom. But other than that, was there a point to knowing that this particular political round required a Chuck Hagel-ian nuanced extra-long, long-weekend of headlines?

So Mr. Brooks' essay was a pleasant, so to speak, surprise, to the point, summation. Beyond last week's soap opera headlines that the would-be nominee said something once, so it wasn't certain whether he'd be ruthless enough defending our friends. Seems there's a political itch to push us toward more cliffs to bring us back from the brink of, huh? Still, Mr. Brooks' straight-forward headline inclined me to indeed wonder, Why Hagel Was Picked.

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Mr. Brooks begins - Americans don’t particularly like government, but they do want government to subsidize their health care. They believe that health care spending improves their lives more than any other public good. In a Quinnipiac poll, typical of many others, Americans opposed any cuts to Medicare by a margin of 70 percent to 25 percent.

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Which has what to do, at least, surface-wise, with why Chuck Hagel will eventually be the Cabinet member in charge of The Pentagon? Fine though, Mr. Brooks has our attention on the truth that, especially when political, tends to be roundabout.

As Mr. Brooks points out, popular or not, Medicare will cause us to go broke. “No conceivable tax increases that can keep up with this spending rise,” according to Mr. Brooks who, while not discreet, nudges his reading public as if we're being prepared in a private underground parking garage to hear the secret name Chuck Hagel is the financial key to saving his country's money.

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Mr. Brooks implies let's get on with it.

Yet there's this awkward silly question to wonder. If a lot of public money is spent, where does it go? Money just doesn't disappear. Solving circulation, without sending everyone to jail, will fix the financial crisis.

Then Mr. Brooks makes his incision, bringing the dual topics of Chuck Hagel and Medicare together, writing - Oswald Spengler was certainly correct when he told European leaders that they could either be global military powers or pay for their welfare states, but they couldn’t do both.

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Mr. Brooks explains how today Europe can't afford troop movements and we'll have to bite that bullet too and do the same thing.

Find out how to be patriotic without being the most capable military power on the planet? Take our thumbs off the scales when measuring how many bombs are enough? Because really, we could never spend enough to keep everyone safe.

So you have to love that snide conservativ-istic grin of Mr. Brooks beaming on national TV? Shown in print in The Times sticking it to both parties' political game.

Mr. Brooks - As the federal government becomes a health care state, there will have to be a generation of defense cuts that overwhelm anything in recent history.

Bold, to the point. No one can say criminal terrorists will be trusted. But rational living must be defended from humans' tendency to be cruel. It's hardly worth noting as there's so much in the world worth fighting for, but violence is when things have gone too far. No?

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Another serious military issue requiring tranquilization for everyone's benefit. RT reports Flying towards war? Drone race signals escalation in Sino-Japanese tensions. An historical feud of grand proportions. How will the two countries ever work it out?

RT prints - The development and acquisition of drones has become crucial to the ever-expanding arms race between China and Japan, as tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea could soon reach boiling point.

Sounds as if negotiation is a really difficult science.