Baltimore Post-Examiner Chuck Hagel’s fall means war in Mideast

Chuck Hagel’s fall means war in Mideast

By Martin Sieff · November 26, 2014 ·|  ·http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/chuck-hagels-fall-means-war-mideast/2014/11/26
      

 

The sacking — let us mince no words, for that is what it really is — of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense is a bellweather moment for embattled President Barack Obama. Along with his reckless decision to go ahead with sweeping immigration reform at the worst possible time, it marks the beginning of what promises to be a catastrophic final two years for what until now had been a remarkably successful, robust and underestimated presidency.
Hagel’s sacking opens the way to an open-ended, reckless and ill-defined rekindling of America’s open-ended war in the Middle East.
Hagel was fired after only two years running the largest, most expensive and infinitely most powerful department of the United States government for three reasons:
First, he was too old, too cautious and too unfashionable to penetrate the president’s exceptionally tiny inner circle.
Second, he was fired as the scapegoat for now widely criticized policies ranging from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to Ukraine that he had no hand in shaping but loyally tried to implement.
In short, he was fired as a scapegoat for the failings of Susan Rice, the most incompetent and unsuccessful national security advisor of modern times.
But Rice, a study in ignorance and incompetence — not to mention extreme arrogance in everything she touches — remains untouchable. She is a personal favorite of the president and first lady.http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/chuck-hagels-fall-means-war-mideast/2014/11/26