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President Obama announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel today. USA TODAY's Shannon Rae Green interviews Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page who shares that Hagel was pushed out and that is a sign of a changing war strategy.
President Obama speaks as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel looks on during a press conference announcing Hagel's resignation in the State Dining Room of the White House on Nov. 24, 2014.(Photo: Alex Wong, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON – President Obama's decision to replace Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reflects, among other things, the administration's reluctant return to a wartime footing.
When they served in the Senate together, representing Illinois and Nebraska, Obama and Hagel shared a skepticism of U.S. military engagements abroad and opposition to the surge of American troops in Afghanistan. Two years ago, when Hagel was nominated, the biggest challenges facing the Pentagon during Obama's second term seemed likely to be managing the budget cuts under sequestration and completing the withdrawal of combat troops from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That has changed.
Now the rising threat of the radical terror group that calls itself Islamic State has prompted Obama to order the bombing of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria and deploy 3,000 U.S. troops to Iraq after the Iraqi military all but collapsed. The New York Times first reported this weekend that Obama had approved an expanded combat role for U.S. troops in Afghanistan next year.
Republican critics, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, have hammered Obama's national-security team for failing to foresee global problems and respond to them decisively. The Cabinet heavyweights of his first term, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta at the Pentagon and Hillary Rodham Clinton at the State Department, have left. And neither Hagel nor such officials as national security adviser Susan Rice has emerged as the sort of spokesman who could effectively explain and defend the administration's course.
Critics and allies of Obama cite the need for a strategic thinker and more forceful advocate – although the president may be wary of appointing someone with the stature to publicly question his leadership, as Gates and especially Panetta have done in memoirs this year.
In the wake of this month's elections, which cost Democrats control of the Senate and underscored the president's lame-duck status, Obama also has indicated he'll make changes among his senior advisers at the White House.
The fact that Hagel, a decorated Vietnam war veteran, was the top Republican in his administration hadn't done the administration much good. Only four GOP senators had voted for his confirmation.
Announcing the resignation Monday, Obama lauded Hagel's service and his friendship "since I was a green-behind-the-ears freshman senator." In his remarks, Hagel called his Pentagon tenure "the greatest privilege of my life."
Hagel's resignation wasn't expected – but it also turned out to be not much of a shock. "I'm not saying I expected it," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said on CNN, "but I was not surprised."
The Defense secretary, who previously had indicated he planned to serve to the end of Obama's term, hedged his response last week when asked by interviewer Charlie Rose on PBS whether he was going to stay in the job.
"First of all, I serve at the pleasure of the president," he said. "It's not unusual by the way, to change teams at different times." At almost precisely the same point in his tenure, President George W. Bush pushed out Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had become a lightning rod for criticism of the Iraq war.
"What I'm saying is, it wouldn't be unusual to do that, first of all, historically," Hagel said. "But, second, I've got to stay focused on my job...and I do. And I am very fortunate that I have some of the best people in the world to work with and whatever the president decides, he's the president; he makes those decisions."
With Monday's announcement in the State Dining Room, he did.
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