MEET YOUR PROSPECTIVE NEW SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Chuck Hagel's Greatest Hits

So long, Israel: it was nice knowing you.

• "The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here."

• "I'm a United States Senator, not an Israeli Senator."

• In 2002, a year in which 457 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks (a figure proportionately equivalent to more than 20,000 fatalities in the U.S., or seven 9/11s), Mr. Hagel weighed in with the advice that "Israel must take steps to show its commitment to peace." This was two years after Yasser Arafat had been offered a state by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David.

• In 2006, Mr. Hagel described Israel's war against Hezbollah as "the systematic destruction of an American friend, the country and people of Lebanon."

• In 2007, he voted against designating Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.

• In 2009, Mr. Hagel urged the Obama administration to open direct talks with Hamas.

• In 2008, Mr. Hagel and John Kerry co-authored an op-ed in this newspaper titled "It's Time to Talk to Syria."

• "The United States and Israel must understand that it is not in their long-term interests to allow themselves to become isolated in the Middle East and the world," he said in a 2006 Senate speech. It's a political Deep Thought worthy of Saturday Night Live's Jack Handey. Does Mr. Hagel reckon any other nation to be quite so blind to its own supposed self-interest as Israel?

I don't think we've ever had a SECDEF with such a, eh, predilection for terrorists before. But, then again, this administration is historic.