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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Worst Kept Secret in D.C.: Hagel Wasn’t Up for The Job
By Michael Auslin
November 24, 2014 10:28 AM
Heading into Thanksgiving weekend, D.C. is all a twitter with news that
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has been fired, er, asked to step down, er,
initiated talks about leaving. It has long been a staple of Washington news
reporting (read, gossip) that Hagel simply wasn’t up to the job, either
intellectually or physically. Seeing him at various events in person, he
looked perpetually exhausted and distant, while damning rumors of his lack
of attention to the job could be heard in numerous corners. One high-level
source with direct knowledge once told me that Hagel was disengaged in his
morning briefings, and when thick briefing papers were presented to him, he
would thumb through them and push them aside, reportedly saying things like,
“I can’t read this, just tell me what it says.” Those who watched
carefully his underwhelming Senate confirmation hearings knew that this was
not a good choice for one of the most demanding jobs in government.
The New York Times piece breaking the news about Hagel’s departure peddles
the White House line that this is just a boring administrative shuffle:
The officials described Mr. Obama’s decision to remove Mr. Hagel
, 68, as a recognition that the threat from the Islamic State would require
a different kind of skills than those that Mr. Hagel was brought on to
employ [emphasis added].
The truth of course, is that, as the Times put it, Hagel “struggled to
inspire confidence,” code that he was one of the least respected defense
secretaries in recent memory.
Deeper into the Times piece, though, is a much bigger, and more concerning
issue — more evidence of the damage that occurs when a president surrounds
himself with those he knows he can dominate:
But several of Mr. Obama’s top advisers over the past few months have
also acknowledged privately that the president did not want another high-
profile defense secretary in the mold of Mr. Gates . . .
So, as the threats from Russia, China, and the Islamic State developed over
the past two years, the president was more concerned about his image as the
smartest man in the room and who would brook no opposition to his view of
the world. A view, one might add, that shows remarkably little evolution
during his six years as president.
Thus, at a time of extraordinary global danger, America was saddled with a
defense secretary not respected by his president, not expected to bring a
sharp intellectual scalpel to the challenges of the day, and one who simply
wasn’t up for the job. Early, private reports from inside the Pentagon
indicate a sigh of relief, since the thought is it can’t get any worse. |
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