It seems nobody wants to be Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration.
The president's first two Defense Secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta,
both complained bitterly this month about their time in the administration.
The president's National Security Council staff micro-managed the Pentagon,
they said at a forum last week.
Former Secretary Gates revealed that while he was running the Defense Department,
the White House established a line of communication to the Joint Special Operations
Command to discuss matters of strategy and tactics, cutting the Defense Secretary
out of the loop. His successor at the Pentagon, Leon Panetta, made similar
complaints.
Last week President Obama's third Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, was forced
out of office after complaining in October that the administration had no coherent
policy toward Syria. He did have a point: while claiming recent US bombing
in Syria is designed to degrade and destroy ISIS, many in the administration
continue pushing for "regime change" against Syrian president Assad - who is
also fighting ISIS. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey,
has spoken out in favor of further US escalation in Syria and Iraq despite
President Obama's promise of "no combat troops" back to the region.
Shortly after Chuck Hagel's ouster, the media reported that the president
favored Michelle Flournoy to replace him. She would have been the first female
defense secretary, but more tellingly she would come to the position from a
think tank almost entirely funded by the military industrial complex. The Center
for a New American Security, which she founded in 2007, is the flagship of
the neocon wing of the Democratic Party. The Center has argued against US troops
ever leaving Iraq and has endorsed the Bush administration's doctrine of preventative
warfare. The Center is perhaps best known for pushing the failed counterinsurgency
(COIN) doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan. The COIN doctrine was said at the
time to have been the key to the US victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now that
the US is back in Iraq and will continue combat operations in Afghanistan next
year, you don't hear too much about COIN and victories.
Flournoy turned down Obama before she was even asked, however. She is said
to be waiting for a Hillary Clinton presidency, where her militarism may be
even more appreciated. With the next Senate to be led by neocons like John
McCain, a Hillary Clinton presidency would find little resistance to a more
militaristic foreign policy.
So President Obama cannot keep defense secretaries on the job and his top
Pentagon pick is not interested in serving the last stretch of a lame duck
administration. There is bickering and fighting within the administration about
who should be running the latest US wars in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Here is one thing none of them are fighting about: the US policy of global
intervention. All sides agree that the US needs to expand its war in the Middle
East, that the US must continue to provoke Russia via Ukraine, and that regime
change operations must continue worldwide. There is no real foreign policy
debate in Washington. But the real national security crisis will come when
their militarism finally cripples our economy and places us at the mercy of
the rest of the world.
