Senator Chuck Hagel, America’s defense secretary, was today chosen as President Obama’s sacrificial human Thanksgiving turkey.

As we disseminate that shock decision, it’s important to remember the kind of man Senator Hagel is and what qualified him for the job.

Hagel served on the ground in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia throughout 1968, the worst year of the war in which nearly 17,000 Americans died.

On March 28, 1968, Hagel and his brother Tom were crossing a stream when a mine exploded. It killed a number of men.

Tom Hagel looked back and saw Chuck lying on the ground, blood pumping from his chest. ‘Every heartbeat it would squirt out,’ he recently recalled in an interview with Politico.

On Monday President Obama clapped for and praised Chuck Hagel after forcing him out

Chuck Hagel, right, in 1968 circa, perched on top of a M113 armored personnel carrier, while serving in the Vietnam War. During the worst year of the war, Hagel served side-by-side with his younger brother Tom, left, as infantry squad leaders with the U.S. Army's 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong River Delta

Tom patched his brother up, saving his life, and after medical treatment, they stayed in the war.

A month later, they were both wounded by another mine, in a deliberate ambush.

Chuck was badly burned on his face, arms, left side. Tom was knocked unconscious. Chuck got him up, and lay on top of him as they fought their way out through heavy gunfire. Returning the favor, he now saved Tom’s life.

Chuck stated in his own biography: ‘I remember thinking to myself, if I ever get out of this I am going to do everything I can to assure that war is the last resort that we, as a nation, a people, calls upon to settle a dispute. The horror, the pain, the suffering of it. People don’t understand it unless they’ve been through it. I’m no pacifist, but I’m a realist. There’s no glory, only suffering in war.’

Chuck Hagel won two Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross and the Army Commendation Medal for his outstanding courage and valor while serving his country. Shrapnel still shows up in his chest X-rays.

Hagel, seen here in 1968 as well, won two Purple Hearts, the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross and the Army Commendation Medal. Shrapnel still shows up in his chest X-rays after his brother patched him up following a mine explosion

Hagel was the first combat vet to be the U.S. defense chief.

And perhaps that’s why he found it so hard to stomach what his friends describe as relentless, nit-picking, control-freak interference by the White House in Pentagon affairs.

And what he perceived to be the administration’s constant dithering inaction in dealing with vital issues like the Syria conflict and the danger of ISIS.

The latter is being seen as the catalyst for Hagel’s demise.

In August, he correctly said ISIS was an ‘imminent threat to every interest we have.’

The White House promptly, and very publicly, walked back his remark, furious that he’d drifted off message from their own ridiculous position that ISIS is a minor ragbag irrelevance on the global stage.

Or, as Obama himself put it in a statement of extraordinary crassness, never mind woeful inaccuracy, the terror equivalent of a junior Varsity basketball team.

Hagel is, by all accounts a man of conscience and integrity who usually waited for the Oval Office to clear before telling his boss, in private to avoid leaks, where he thought he was going wrong

Pentagon sources say Hagel recently determined that only American boots on the ground can now properly stem the surging spread of ISIS through the Middle East.

He came to this conclusion knowing exactly what those boots on the ground would go through.

The White House, led by a guy who’s never been near a front line combat zone and who thinks ‘leading from behind’ is a smart strategy for the world’s No1 superpower, disagreed.

I know whose opinion I trust more, and it’s not the West Wing suits.

The war with ISIS, and it is a war, will never be won with airpower alone, as any general will tell you.

Chuck Hagel may not have been the best defense secretary in history.

But by all accounts he is a man of conscience and integrity who usually waited for the Oval Office to clear before telling his boss, in private to avoid leaks, where he thought he was going wrong.

Obama reacted to these home truths by firing him.

‘Chuck, you’ve always given it to me straight,’ Obama said in his obsequiously disingenuous statement alongside his latest victim today.

Obama reacted to Hagel's straight talking truths by firing him. ‘Chuck, you’ve always given it to me straight,’ Obama said in his obsequiously disingenuous statement alongside his latest victim

There was no hiding the emotion in Hagel's face as the President announced his departure

Yes, Mr President, he did - and you gave it back, with a large sword, straight between his shoulder-blades.

(By the way, is there anything more cringe-making than Washington tradition’s insistence on executed cabinet ministers having to stand by their executioner like this, as both pretend nobody got executed?)

Obama may think he’s bought himself more time by chucking Hagel on the Thanksgiving barbecue.

But all he’s really done is remind us once again that he himself is hopelessly weak on foreign policy, and utterly ruthless when it comes to blaming someone else for his own faults.

This time, he’s sacrificed a great war hero for correctly identifying the most dangerous threat to American defense, and understanding how it has to be dealt with.

Chuck Hagel was usually a point man during his Vietnam combat, looking for booby traps like grenades hanging from trees.

‘You know what happens to a lot of point men, he said, ‘but I always felt a little better if I was up front than somebody else.’

He followed the same philosophy at the Pentagon, and got politically blown up for it.

President Obama, the man who pressed the detonator, has pardoned himself.