The President's Deck Chair Shuffle

Leaders: The possibility of a shake-up of the White House national security team, including our Afghan commander, suggests an incoherent foreign policy bordering on incompetence — with our Libyan fiasco the latest example.

The forces of Moammar Gadhafi, the despot who President Obama said must go, continued to shell Misrata, the only major city in the western half of Libya that remained under partial rebel control Tuesday as a delegation from the African Union tried to negotiate a cease-fire that would let the dictator stay in power.

It was Misrata that was cited by name by President Obama in a speech given some 10 days after we started a war to stop Gadhafi's "military campaign against the Libyan people." Gadhafi is still there, and the killing of those we swore to protect is still going on.

You start a war to win it, not wash your hands of it on your way to South America while you turn it over to a NATO version of "F Troop."

Against the backdrop of this latest example of a lack of presidential leadership and commitment, word comes of an imminent rearranging of the national security deck chairs with the probable departure of Defense Secretary Robert Gates before the end of the year, perhaps as soon as July when the president's pledged first withdrawals from Afghanistan are scheduled to begin.

Gates said last week that his trip to visit troops in Iraq would probably be his last. He leaves behind a dangerously downsized military, abandoning major new weapons such as the fifth-generation stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor; a shrinking Navy retooled to chase pirates; and an abandonment of missile defense in a flawed New START Treaty with Russia, among other things.

Slated to replace Gates is Leon Panetta, the current head of the CIA who has served as the head of the Office of Management and Budget and as a White House chief of staff to President Clinton, and this is where it gets really interesting.

Adm. Mike Mullen's term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ends Oct. 31, and the administration has made no secret of the fact that it will not ask him to stay on. A logical replacement would be our current Afghan commander, Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the surge that brought us victory in Iraq and the man that candidate Obama vehemently opposed.

It is said that Mullen will be replaced by Gen. James Cartwright, described as the administration's "most favored general" in Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars," largely because he was not enthusiastic about repeating the successful Iraq surge in Afghanistan. Instead, he endorsed Vice President Joe Biden's military expertise in advocating a less-robust "counterterrorism" strategy.

Petraeus, however, is rumored to be Panetta's replacement at CIA; an odd choice, it would seem, but unnamed senior administration officials have been saying it's because he has been an intelligence consumer for a long time and would know what is needed at the agency. We suspect other motives.

Petraeus is also arguably our best general, one who knows how to win. He's also "Bush's general," who was probably picked as Gen. Stanley McChrystal's replacement only because he was a credible CYA choice, not because Obama respected his military judgment or record.

As Joint Chiefs head, Petraeus, who has been mentioned in a presidential-contender context by some, would be in a position to criticize and oppose administration defense plans that amount to little more than unilateral disarmament. At CIA, he could be hidden. Lincoln kept changing generals until he found a Grant. What is President Obama looking for? Does he even know?

It is said that personnel is policy, but it's hard to determine what the administration's national security policy is or will be, other than trying to find a substitute for victory.