Robert Gates, Robert Gates, Baker Man…
December 6th, 2006…fix up Iraq as fast as you can!
Baker’s Commission on Iraq released its report today and called for a withdrawal of troops from combat capacity in 2008, the training of Iraqi soldiers and diplomatic overtures to the Iranians and Syria. If there’s anything we can do in Iraq, in my opinion, that is it: train soldiers in Iraq, prepare to redeploy in 2008 but for a select capacity, and leave the rest up to the Iraqis and the region. Will that happen? Perhaps. We’ll have to wait and see, but let me just say now that my idea for Iraq is similar to the soon-to-be-Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He wants us to send up to thirty thousand more troops to Iraq; I do as well. I wish for more soldiers because then we can speed up the training process and improve security, and that would be ideal, in my opinion.
There are very few men with the insight of Fred Kaplan. His latest article about Robert Gates’ confirmation hearings is an excellent read with a unique view of Robert Gates. Kaplan believes Gates’ honesty and independence to be remarkable, and I must say that I concur.
An intriguing sign of his autonomy appeared at the start of the hearing, when he said that his wife couldn’t be with him today because she was escorting the women’s basketball team of Texas A&M University—where Gates has happily been president the last four years—to an out-of-town game. The loyal wife with the adoring gaze is a traditional staple at confirmation hearings. Her absence—and, still more, the blatantly casual reason for her absence—drove home the point that Gates has no need for this job, no stake in the town, and no interests in its arbitrary rituals.
Gates is no Mr. Smith. He was an insider, by all accounts a ferocious bureaucratic infighter, for 26 years, many of them inside the Central Intelligence Agency, some of those as Director Bill Casey’s deputy, hardly a post for keeping one’s hands clean. Many of his answers at today’s hearing had a distinctly calculated quality. Even so, Bush’s other top aides have never paid so much as lip service to such sentiments.
At one point during the questioning, Gates noted that 2,889 Americans had died in Iraq “as of yesterday morning”—a sharp contrast (and, no doubt, an intentional one) to the time when then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz appeared before the Senate Committee on Armed Services and did not know how many of his fellow citizens had been killed in the war that he helped put in motion. When Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., threw Gates a soft pitch—asking what he’d learned from his vast experience in Washington—he not only hit it out of the park but carefully tagged all the bases and shook hands with all the basemen as he trotted around the diamond.
Among the lessons he recited: All agencies have to work together to get anything done; consulting with Congress is really important; so is treating people’s views with respect; and respecting the professionals—for instance, listening to military commanders when you’re planning a war—is really, really important, because “if you don’t make them a part of the solution, they will become a part of the problem.” In other words, he was telling the panel: “Anoint me, for I am the anti-Rumsfeld.”
After this excerpted portion of the piece, Reed wonders if Gates is for real and then makes a point that I’ve been making for a long time: ultimately, it’s Bush that matters. Rumsfeld is gone, he points out, and Cheney is isolated. Bush has always been The Decider, and while Gates is a fine man who I believe could be a great Defense Secretary, what matters most is if Bush really wants to change. If he does, it’ll get done; if not, then Robert Gates will be the town’s new Paul O’Neill. A good thing to be, if you believe in heroes. A bad thing if you wish for a President that doesn’t ostracize his advisors and who knows what’s right for the world at-large.