In all the articles I’ve read that try to figure out what’s up with the Hagel ousting, I’ve been impressed by how little is actually known about it. What does it signal? My opinion is that it signals nothing more than the fact that Hagel had criticized Obama and disagreed with him on occasion, and that he was therefore somewhat lacking as a rubber-stamping yes-man. After all, politics and the reputation of the president, as well as strict ideological and behavioral obedience to his rule, appear to me to be the only qualifications necessary to work under Obama.

This article in The Hill re-stated something highly disturbing that we’ve all known for quite a few years [emphasis mine]:

Defense insiders also say some within the Pentagon view the NSC [National Security Council] as full of staffers who are politically loyal but lack expertise in managing defense policy.

In his memoir Duty, Gates writes that he felt like a “geezer” in the Obama administration, where many influential appointees below the top level were undergraduates or high school students when he was CIA director.

“Those appointees, drawn mostly from the ranks of former congressional staffers, were all smart, endlessly hardworking, and passionately loyal to the president. What they lacked was firsthand knowledge of real-world governing,” he wrote.

Hagel reportedly grew frustrated with the NSC’s micromanagement, “endless gab sessions” and for taking too long to make decisions, such as providing Ukraine with even non-lethal military assistance.

Experts say the lack of experience in managing defense policy has led to a reactive posture and perpetual crisis management at the NSC.

“It’s like second graders playing soccer,” a second national security expert said. “They get overly involved in a small number of things, and as a result, large parts of the organization go untended.”…

Candidates to replace Hagel might want assurances from Obama that they will not be steamrolled by his closest aides in national security debates, defense experts said.

“The question is not why the White House can’t keep a Defense secretary for two years, it’s what quality of person the White House can get,” said the national security expert.

Actually, the question is what quality of person the White House wants to get, and it’s not really a question, nor has it been one for years. The answer is known: a person who will do what Obama wants. Conventional qualifications go against that requirement, because the more experience and knowledge an advisor has, the more likely he/she is to defy the other amateurs in the White House and the President.

The goal is to get someone in there who sounds qualified (Hagel teetered right on the cusp) but who really isn’t, and who will defer to Obama no matter what. So we know the type of person Obama is looking for; the only question is who it will be this time, and it hardly matters, because we know his/her input will be disregarded unless it’s mere rubber-stamping.

As I wrote in 2013:

Other presidents have been inexperienced, but they have made efforts to choose experienced and knowledgeable people to make up for their own shortcomings. Obama does not believe he has any shortcomings, and so he does the opposite. For the most part, his advisors tend to have several characteristics in common besides their lack of substantive knowledge about their new fields: (1) they are good with words; (2) they are young; (3) they are focused on politics; (4) they revere Obama.

I’ve written before about this phenomenon, but we keep being reminded of it, and so it bears repeating: Obama prefers to be surrounded by politically astute sycophants who are in way over their heads and don’t realize it. That way he is less likely to be threatened or challenged.

If I were still a liberal, I believe I’d nevertheless be upset by this phenomenon. Today’s liberals, however, don’t seem to bat an eye about it. It’s not just that the Democratic Party has moved to the left, although that’s true. It’s that the interests of the country are now completely subordinate to spin and solidarity.

Oops, did I say “subordinate”? That may be true of some Democrats, but for others—including our current president—the goal is to purposely go against the interests of the country, to defang and punish it for its supposed sins.

Remember Reverend Wright, the pastor whose ideas Obama cited as formative, and in whose church he sat for twenty years? Of course, Obama had his ears stopped up at the time, but if they’d been open he would have heard sermons such as this one from 2003:

…This Government lied about their belief that all men were created equal. The truth was they believe all White men were created equal. The truth is they did not believe that even White women were created equal, in creation nor in civilisation. The Government had to pass an amendment to the Constitution to get White women the vote. Then the Government had to pass an “Equal Rights” amendment to get equal protection under the law for women. The Government still thinks a woman has no rights over her own body, and between Uncle Clarence ”“ who sexually harassed Anita Hill ”“ and the closeted clam court that is a throwback to the 19th century, hand-picked by Daddy Bush, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, hung between Clarence and that stacked court they’re about to undo Roe v. Wade, just like they’re about to undo affirmative action. The Government lied in its founding documents and the Government is still lying today. Governments lie. Turn to your neighbour and say “Governments lie”. The Government lied about Pearl Harbour. They knew the Japanese were going to attack. Governments lie! The Government lied about the Gulf of Tonkin ”“ they wanted that resolution to get us into the Vietnam War. Governments lie!…

Governments fail…The British government used to rule from east to west. The British government had a Union Jack. She colonised Kenya, Guana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Hong Kong. Her navies ruled the seven seas all the way down to the tip of Argentina in the Falklands, but the British failed. The Russian government failed. The Japanese government failed. The German government failed. And the United States of America government, when it came to treating her citizens of Indian decent fairly, she failed. She put them on reservations. When it came to treating her citizens of Japanese decent fairly, she failed. She put them in internment prison camps. When it came to treating her citizens of African decent fairly, America failed. She put them in chains. The government put them in slave quarters, put them on auction blocks, put them in cotton fields, put them in inferior schools, put them in substandard housing, put them in scientific experiments, put them in the lowest paying jobs, put them outside the equal protection of the law, kept them out of their racist bastions of higher education and locked them into position of hopelessness and helplessness. The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no. Not “God Bless America”; God Damn America! That’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people. God Damn America for treating her citizen as less than human. God Damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!

The United States government has failed the vast majority of her citizens of African decent. Think about this, think about this.

Good thing Obama wasn’t there, isn’t it?