Israel Matzav

Hagel takes the fall for Obama's failed Iran policy? Forced out as US Defense Secretary

Chuck Hagel has been forced out as US Secretary of Defense.

Let's go to the videotape.



The irony is that after we here in Israel were very much opposed to Hagel's nomination, he actually got along with Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon (unlike Obama and Kerry), and seemed to be following Hippocrates' rule of first doing no harm with respect to our country.

The New York Times says that Hagel was the fall guy for Obama's failures to handle ISIS (Islamic State) and Ebola. 

Administration officials said that Mr. Obama made the decision to remove Mr. Hagel, the sole Republican on his national security team, last Friday after a series of meetings between the two men over the past two weeks.

The officials characterized the decision as a recognition that the threat from the militant group Islamic State will require different skills from those that Mr. Hagel, who often struggled to articulate a clear viewpoint and was widely viewed as a passive defense secretary, was brought in to employ.

Mr. Hagel, a combat veteran who was skeptical about the Iraq war, came in to manage the Afghanistan combat withdrawal and the shrinking Pentagon budget in the era of budget sequestrations.

...

“The next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus,” one administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He insisted that Mr. Hagel was not fired, saying that the defense secretary initiated discussions about his future two weeks ago with the president, and that the two men mutually agreed that it was time for him to leave.

But Mr. Hagel’s aides had maintained in recent weeks that he expected to serve the full four years as defense secretary. His removal appears to be an effort by the White House to show that it is sensitive to critics who have pointed to stumbles in the government’s early response to several national security issues, including the Ebola crisis and the threat posed by the Islamic State.

Would it be too much to hope for Michele Flournoy?

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Chuck Hagel, Ebola, Iranian nuclear threat, Islamic State, Michele Flournoy, Moshe Yaalon

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:01 PM