It is often remarked that the Ship of State is the one ship which leaks from the top. Thus even before the blatantly theatrical political funeral dirge conducted at the White House in which President Obama announced that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, the sole remaining Republican in his cabinet, would be leaving of his own accord after serving only 22 months, the usual "unnamed senior sources" representing the administration were already telling their media contacts that Hagel was, in effect, fired.
The New York Times reported that "officials characterized the decision as a recognition that the threat from the militant group Islamic State will require different skills from those that Mr. Hagel...was brought in to employ." (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/hagel-said-to-be-stepping-down-as-defense-chief-under-pressure.html?_r=0) The implication was that Hagel was a timid man, originally brought in to implement Obama's stated policy of withdrawing from first Iraq and then Afghanistan, while downsizing the Defense Department. With the emergence of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a new policy was called for, and a new defense secretary, the unnamed White House source proclaimed, one more muscular and forceful in confronting the Islamic State.
While the passage of time will undoubtedly provide more leaks, perhaps a book of memoirs by Chuck Hagel and further context, this much is clear; President Barack Obama's national security strategy in relation to Islamist threats stemming from the Middle East, in particular the Islamic State, has been an unmitigated disaster, and soon-to-be former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam combat veteran and moderate Republican with a strong streak of bipartisanship, has been set up as a scapegoat for the administration's failures.
What we do know for sure is what both the President and his Defense Secretary had stated on the public record in connection with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, and which President Obama insists on calling ISIL.
In January 2014 Obama told David Remnick of The New Yorker, after Islamist forces in Iraq seized Fallujah and raised the Al-Qaeda flag, "The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant." (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/annals-of-the-presidency)
In contrast, Chuck Hagel had this to say about the Islamic State at a Pentagon press briefing conducted on August 21, 2014: "They are an imminent threat to every interest we have, whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else... They are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we've seen." (https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/21/us-usa-islamicstate-idUSKBN0GL24V20140821)
While the President was initially dismissive of the Islamic State, and has remained tentative and uncertain in his at times awkward responses, Hagel was far from the passive and timid defense secretary he is now being portrayed as by the masters of spin in the White House. His very forceful and articulate warning displays an impressive level of sober realism that is sorely lacking within the President's national security council, and from Obama himself.
Turning Chuck Hagel into a scapegoat cannot obfuscate the glaring failures cascading out of the ruins of the administration's inept foreign policy and national security strategy. Obama is a president who loudly proclaims red lines in the sand, such as use of chemical warfare agents by the Syrian regime, and when President Bashar al-Assad defied those red lines with a grotesque massacre of innocents in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Obama grasped onto the flimsy straw tossed at him by Russia's President Putin, rendering his red line invisible. His is an administration which sends presidential letters proclaiming friendship to the tyrannical "Supreme Leader" of Iran, who almost daily dishes out hatred and contempt for America, while permitting--perhaps encouraging--a senior unnamed official to tell journalist Jeff Goldberg of The Atlantic that Israel's Prime Minster Netanyahu was, in effect, a fool for trusting President Obama's pledges on preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, because what the administration really sought was to delay an Israeli military operation until the Iranian nuclear program progressed to the point where it was beyond the capacity of the Israel Defense Forces to take it out. (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/the-crisis-in-us-israel-relations-is-officially-here/382031/) No wonder few world leaders maintain trust in the President's word and integrity.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheldon-filger/president-obama-fires-sec_b_6214802.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
couldn't agree more