In FrontPage today I speculate on why Obama fired Hagel:
Chuck Hagel is out at the Department of Defense, and one administration official explained that it was because “the next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus” – apparently one that doesn’t shed such a bright light upon the smoking ruin that is Barack Obama’s foreign policy.
Hagel may have sealed his fate last week, when Charlie Rose asked him in an interview about the decline of the U.S. military. “I am worried about it,” Hagel responded with unexpected candor, “I am concerned about it, Chairman Dempsey is, the chiefs are, every leader of this institution” – as Bryan Preston of PJ Media has noted, he perhaps pointedly left Obama and Joe Biden off this list of concerned officials.
Yet who is the single individual most responsible for the decline of the military? Hagel must have known the answer to that question when he added: “The main responsibility of any leader is to prepare your institution for the future. If you don’t do that, you’ve failed. I don’t care how good you are, how smart you are, any part of your job. If you don’t prepare your institution, you’ve failed.”
Did Obama take that as a reference to his steep defense cuts at a time when the world is on fire? Or did he object to Hagel’s surprisingly cordial relations with Israeli officials?
We may never know what the true story is. It may be that Obama chose Hagel, the sole Republican on his national security team, to be the one to take the blame for his spectacular misjudgment of the Islamic State, which he famously dismissed in January 2014 as a “JV team.”
Did Chuck Hagel whisper that notorious analogy in Obama’s ear?
Or maybe Hagel is walking the plank for Obama’s insistence upon referring to jihad terrorists in Syria as “vetted moderates.” “We have a Free Syrian Army and a moderate opposition that we have steadily been working with that we have vetted,” said Obama in September 2014. What was he working with them for? To get them to fight the Islamic State. Yet long before that, in July 2013, Free Syrian Army fighters entered the Christian village of Oum Sharshouh and began burning down houses and terrorizing the population, forcing 250 Christian families to flee the area.
This was not an isolated incident. Worthy News reported that just two days later, Free Syrian Army rebels “targeted the residents of al-Duwayr/Douar, a Christian village close to the city of Homs and near Syria’s border with Lebanon….Around 350 armed militants forcefully entered the homes of Christian families who were all rounded-up in the main square of the village and then summarily executed.”
Then in September 2013, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry praised the Free Syrian Army as “a real moderate opposition,” the FSA took to the Internet to post videos of its attack on the ancient Syrian Christian city of Maaloula, one of the few places where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken.
And now the U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State are reportedly being used by FSA fighters as a pretext to join the Islamic State. If this is true, they were never going to fight the Islamic State, and were never “vetted moderates.” Obama’s whole Syria strategy is based on fantasy.
Is that Hagel’s fault?It is November 2014. It is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for Obama at this late date to blame George W. Bush for his foreign policy disasters. Another scapegoat had to be found. Hagel, with his unexpectedly warm relations with Israel (in sharp contrast to the chill between Israeli officials and Barack Obama and John Kerry) and concern over the gutting of the military as the jihad rages more violently than ever and the JV team controls a land expanse larger than Great Britain, was the logical stand-in. He is even a Republican!
And so he will be gone from the Department of Defense, as soon as Obama peers at his gaggle of sycophants and chooses one of them for a big promotion. Likely gone with Hagel will be any remaining obstacle to an increasing chill with Israel, and any murmur of dissent from Obama’s mad plan of demolishing the military while simultaneously expecting it to hold back the Islamic State, Ebola, and a host of other threats.
Times are tough when Chuck Hagel looks like a voice of reasoned pro-American foreign policy. And times are indeed very tough, and about to get a great deal tougher.
Lookmann says
Hagel’s clear and forthright stand cost his job.
Perhaps he should ‘ve learnt a lesson or two from Kerry.
One more link here to prove Spencer’s contention that FSA= ISIS
US-Backed ‘Moderate’ Free Syrian Army Factions Join ISIS Terror Group
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/08/US-Backed-Moderate-Free-Syrian-Army-Factions-Join-Islamic-State-Terror-Group
Jay Boo says
Obama can’t even secure the FBI from his incompetent leadership against stealth Islamo-terrorists.
At the CAIR website:
“Now in its fifth year, the Citizens’ Academy is a stimulating eight-week (10-session) program that gives business, religious, civic, and community leaders an inside look at the FBI”
http://www.cair.com/press-center/press-releases/2516-cair-chicago-director-graduates-fbi-citizens-academy.html
Darren says
I wonder how they got that inside information into the FBI. I wonder what other agencies they have an inside look into. Don’t worry once the NSA levels up their horde characters and finishes up the raid they are having they will get on it. Remember the NSA mantra is For the Horde!
John C. Barile says
All the while, our beloved Fuerer remains deeply entrenched in his bunker, isolated from hard realities and fixed in his views.
Darren says
And golfing don’t forget golfing. Obama is the Joker in batman he golfs while the world burns.
KrazyKafir says
What Hagel does and says in the next short while will shine a light on his true character, if he has any.
Gail Griffin says
Perhaps a clone of Susan Rice.
Wellington says
Apparently Hagel ran afoul of Susan Rice and that might have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Of course, Rice is a total screw-up, as is Valerie Jarrett, as is John Kerry, as is Kerry’s predecessor at State whose initials, I believe, are HC.
But the ultimate screw-up is the profoundly deficient human being currently occupying the Oval Office. The buck stops with him and, to be sure, he ain’t a Truman or anything remotely akin to a Truman. Oh no, he’s in a category all by himself and it is not a laudatory one. Quite the opposite in fact. And there’s still two years left to this man’s term in the White House.
Dostoyevsky reputedly said that without God anything is possible (this is sometimes attributed to Turgenev). Well, here’s my variation on this sapient assessment (which militant atheists remain forever clueless of): With Obama anything is possible.
Kepha says
Just a quibble, Wellington.
In _Brothers Karamazov_, Dostoevsky wrote that without God, everything is lawful. This realization is what ultimately drives Ivan (Vanya), the middle brother, insane.
Wellington says
Just a quibble, Kepha. It’s this: How is saying without God everything is possible in any way truly different from saying that without God everything is lawful? Put another way, law should follow ethics more than ethics follows law.
Actually, and on a related note, I’m inclined to think God is a legend, that no religion accords with ultimate reality in any meaningful or accurate way, but that societies as a whole need to believe in a just, omnipotent, omnisicient higher force lest they descend to a dog-eat-dog world on streroids more than they already do, I think it sad that man needs religion to act properly, but I think it necessary for man nonetheless (those who hate religion have this truth fly over their heads with continued regularity).
For me, the existence of religion, contra a wise philosophical approach to life (which the ancient Greeks in the West came the closest to achieving—-though they still failed), is itself a sad commentary on man’s existence. The “trick” from my perspective is not ever trying to figure out what religion is the true one, since I think none are, but rather which are the best that go along with democratic tenets.
Islam is wretched here. The Eastern faiths are subtle and tolerant, to their credit, but only Judaism and Christianity are, I submit, completely compatible with true democracy, with real equality under the law, with the right to be wrong in this world (to hell with the next, which I think a total fiction) without society, the law, et al. coming down on the individual, and with an encouragement par excellence to better the human condition rather than just passively accepting and observing it. That’s why no religious Jew of Christian will find a greater non-religious person than myself supporting their respective religion of choice. It has nothing to do with the next-world stuff or “ultimate truth” (understandably of paramount importance to the devout Jew or Christian) but rather everything to do with the this-world stuff—-and most paticulalry with liberty.
I might add here that I find the entire concept of faith a non-starter for me. I accept nothing on faith. Nothing. I must have evidence. Religion doesn’t like this approach of mine and indeed threatens punishment for holding to such a take on things. I like the way Durant put it in his volume, “Caesar and Christ,” where he noted that Jesus could forgive anything except unbelief. Well, I submit that “unbelief’ should be forgivable since it is so human to be skeptical. Don’t think Jesus got this. But he should have. But to his credit he only threatened dire punishment in the next world for this “failing.” Mohammed, by contrast, and this is his greatest sin as far as I am concerned (and thus the single greatest contrast between Islam and Christianity), theatened punishment not only in the next world but in this one as well.
Hope you and yours are doing well. May you have a memorable and pleasant (and tasty) Thanksgiving. Take care, my friend.
Wellington says
A corrective to my above staement. When I wrote, “a greater non-religious person than myself,” I chose ineptly. I meant to say, should have said, something to the effect, “a stauncher non-religious person than myself.” The word “greater” here smacks very much of an exaggerated sense of one’s own self-importance. This was not my intention though I can readily see how it could have come across this way. Mea culpa.
Michael Roberts says
Just to say, Wellington, what an excellent post. Pretty much my own apprehension of the Great Existential Question, rarely seen so succinctly expressed. Thank you. Filed for future reference.
I might only add that in response to the usual knee-jerk tu quoque “yes, but what about Christianity?” response to any criticism of Islam, we can certainly admit that plenty of terrible things did happen up to,say, three hundred years ago. But nothing in the core teachings of Christianity sanctioned the sectarian and anti-heretical obscenities of earlier centuries, whereas Islam is as Islam did, does and always will do if good men continue to do nothing.
Darren says
Well stated. My viewpoint is since we have never even left the solar system and the universe is so large we have we can’t even conceive of what god is. I see things like the food chain, or DNA and it to me screams intelligent design, and no I’m not claiming we were made by aliens. The way the universe operates, sentient life, all of it to just happen by some random event seems harder to swallow than some random event doing it all for no purpose. Even if the big bang supposedly created the universe, no one ever asks was their thought behind that bang.
Who started the bang in the first place? Is there an after life though that is a question none of us will known until it is our time to go. I believe in god, I just don’t think any of mans religions can properly describe this force properly. As intelligent as we think we all are, we are still like children when it comes to learning about the universe. Knowing we are so ignorant even on worldly issues, how could we possibly understand a realm other than our own. Knowing how ignorant you are is the first step to true knowledge in my opinion. I doubt I’ll ever gain knowledge on this issue though, and will only find out when I die I guess.
pumbar says
Kepha
As Oscar Wilde said, “why quote when you can paraphrase”?
Jimmy says
Our “intelligence” community and Our Chiefs of staff at the Pentagon are traitors, for not protecting the United States of America from domestic hostile political elites and foreign enemies. Foreign enemies who bribe and influence our government leaders and American based multinational corporations to weaken America and it’s constitutional government..If Obama is a indead a radical jihadi/communist muslim helping to form a caliphate in the middleeast while at the same time putting America,it’s people,military and resourses at the disposal of enemies like the Saudi Wahabbis and Chinese communists…..Then the intelligence community like the NSA,CIA,FBI,homeland security and the US military command know that he is and they are still serving in the betrayal of America to Globalist communists and Jihadis.There are no American heroes left.
ron says
Nothing should get in the way of the O, Rice, Jarrett agenda of reversing ’48 ’67 and ’73 so in their view there will be peace.NO there will not t!!
This will only encourage the beast to go for more.
Jack Gordon says
Obamae gubernatio delenda est. Vir proditor.
luciano says
I don’t know why this is all that surprising???
Barack Obama came into office to defang America and build up the Islamic world.
He’s doing wonderfully well with this program.
After all Islam has not had a caliphate since 1921. And…now with the help of our president they have a caliphate going. And….I believe that Barack Obama if fine with that!!!
EvaGirl says
I can’t wait to read the book Hagel will pen. There is hatred on his face as he stares straight ahead refusing to look at, the one, as he rattles off tiresome platitudes. This could prove to be a blessing. We have Panetta, Gates and now Hagel. He might just prove to be the one who spills some beans that Congress could sink their teeth in. The American public have their pitch forked sharpened all they need is a little fodder.