New SecDef?

For John, BLUF:  How hard will confirmation of the replacement be?  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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From The New York Times we have an article by Reporter Helene Cooper, "Hagel Said to Be Stepping Down as Defense Chief Under Pressure".

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is stepping down under pressure, the first cabinet-level casualty of the collapse of President Obama’s Democratic majority in the Senate and a beleaguered national security team that has struggled to stay ahead of an onslaught of global crises.

The president, who is expected to announce Mr. Hagel’s resignation in a Rose Garden appearance on Monday, made the decision to ask his defense secretary — the sole Republican on his national security team — to step down last Friday after a series of meetings over the past two weeks, senior administration officials said.

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.  A Republican with military experience who was skeptical about the Iraq war, Mr. Hagel came in to manage the Afghanistan combat withdrawal and the shrinking Pentagon budget in the era of budget sequestration.

The first two paragraphs are OK, but the third seems to misunderstand the situation.  Things are, indeed being turned upside down.  Way back in 2008 Afghanistan was the good war (relatively speaking) and Iraq the bad war.  Just this morning, on Democracy Now, Afghanistan was characterized as a bad war.  Well, there are no "good" wars, but freedom for Afghanis seems of some value—educating women, doing away with child brides, giving people a change to accept or reject this or that brand of religion.  The idea of the rights of the individual over the idea of the primacy of the tribe.

My concern is that this is an indication that the Obama National Security Team will be retreating into a bunker, a bunker in which no new ideas will be able to penetrate.  That would not be good.

An administrative question is, will SecDef Hagel go immediately, or wait for his replacement to be confirmed by the US Senate, or will the President go with a recess appointment?  In the mean time, if Mr Hagel steps down, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Bob Work, will step up in the interim.

Regards  —  Cliff