President Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel as the next Secretary of Defense appears to offer a fresh approach to managing the Pentagon and U.S. military engagement. I hope the Senate will organize a careful and respectful confirmation process that provides a forum for understanding his views.

As a two-term Republican senator from my home state of Nebraska, Senator Hagel developed a record of asking deep questions about U.S. foreign policy, including about U.S. relations with Iran and with Israel. While FCNL didn't always agree with his positions, we respected the way in which he approaches these issues.

For example, when my hometown paper the Lincoln Journal Star asked Hagel why he didn't always sign on to all of the resolutions promoted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, he replied "I didn't sign on to certain resolutions and letters because they were counter-productive and didn't solve a problem." He added "What's in Israel's interest is to help Israel and Palestinians find some peaceful way to live together."

Congress did something extraordinary at the beginning of this year. Despite intense pressure from military contractors and billions of dollars spent by defense lobbyists, our elected officials left in place deep cuts in Pentagon spending. If you had polled FCNL lobbyists a year ago, almost none would have predicted that Congress would pass legislation that retained these cuts.

But this struggle to rein in runaway Pentagon spending isn’t over yet. The last-minute, end-of-year budget deal Congress approved on January 1 put off the cuts in Pentagon spending by two months. While the deal keeps the U.S. on track to reduce the planned growth in military spending by $1 trillion over the next 10 years, Congress will return to this debate over the next two months. Their decision-making isn't over.

You may be wondering why I’m celebrating, when the “fiscal cliff” deal that Congress cut with the president is so messy and when, by almost any measure, Pentagon spending is at historically high.

But this legislation might have been far worse. Just a few weeks before, the House voted 215 to 209 to restore money for the Pentagon while making harsh new cuts in domestic spending.

A deal to avoid the tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take place around the end of the year is looking less likely. What are the alternatives?

All of us at FCNL are “holding in the Light” and praying for the families of those murdered in the Newtown tragedy, families who will live the rest of their lives with the profound loss seared into their hearts.

Congressional negotiators and the White House are discussing taxes and cuts in benefits for the elderly, but additional cuts in Pentagon spending are not part of the public discussion. You can help.

FCNL and other pro-diplomacy groups and their allies in Congress successfully included a proviso in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), that "nothing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the use of force against Iran.”

A number of disturbing articles over the past couple of weeks have, yet again, renewed FCNL’s concerns regarding the trend of U.S. policy on the African continent. The Wall Street Journal’s recent report on the topic even goes so far as to state that the administration may pursue a new Authorization for Use of Military Force in Africa – a resolution that could end up allowing for broad military operations in a number of African countries. The article notes that, depending on the language of the authorization, activities could range from increased partnership with local security forces to additional deployment of armed drones and U.S. special operations teams. Either way, a militarized approach seems likely to do more harm than good.

Syria has now been at war for twenty months. By some counts, over 40,000 people have died, hundreds of thousands have sought refuge in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon, and about 1.5 million people have been displaced within Syria.

Today it was reported that the Syrian government has fired Scud missiles at rebels, representing a significant escalation in the fighting. Following reports of Syrian government activity at chemical weapons sites earlier this month, President Obama and Secretary Clinton each publicly warned Bashar Assad not to use chemical weapons, implying that the U.S. may respond with military force. Secretary Clinton said “This is a red line for the United States…suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”

In the face of recent developments and some indications that a U.S. military response may be on the table, we at FCNL reaffirm our conviction that U.S. military intervention would further exacerbate the conflict.

By a vote of 62-33, the Senate endorsed a non-binding amendment (#3096) to the fiscal year 2013 National Defense Authorization Act that seeks to expedite the transition of governance responsibility to the Afghan government by mid-2013, a full eighteen months before the current proposed full transition date of December 2014.

This amendment, while imperfect in many ways, signifies a very important step ensuring the President fulfills his promise to end the decade long U.S. war in Afghanistan. Perhaps more importantly, it puts on record the sense of the Senate—by way of around three-quarters of American public—that endless war in Afghanistan is unacceptable. The Pentagon will undoubtedly try to push the Obama administration, much as it did in 2009, to keep this war going. Yet the Senate has now made clear that this would be unacceptable.