Skip to main content

Call to Duty

By


If nothing else, you have to give credit to Robert Gates’ sense of commitment, but I would think even he had to doubt the operations in Afghanistan, especially with NATO involved and competing national interests.  He appears to have been a “true believer” in this mission, giving it his full attention, every waking and it seems even every sleeping moment.

Gates has been making the rounds promoting his new book, Duty, and judging from the excerpts, it is hard to gauge his responses.  According to him, he had a pretty good “poker face,” so it is anyone’s guess what’s going on in his mind as he both defends and criticizes the Obama White House.  He saves his harshest judgment for Joe Biden, who he said has been wrong on every foreign policy decision over the last 40 years.

It seems Gates didn’t like the way Joe and others in the White House administration could bend Barry’s ear.  Gates apparently wanted Obama’s undivided attention, and felt that all this second guessing and hand wringing weakened Obama’s resolve.  Bush may have made some poor decisions, in Gates’ mind, but he never wavered in his commitment, which Gates seems to feel it was all about.


Gates comes across as a resolute military commander, demanding firm discipline and unwavering commitment to a goal.  His famous “surges” were all about getting the upper hand in Iraq and Afghanistan after wavering commanders had allowed both missions to have almost completely been undone.  He is scornful of a vacillating Congress undermining efforts and eroding confidence in the missions, and of course didn’t think too much of the press either.  He let’s others question the missions, notably Joe Biden, while he sticks resolutely to the matter at hand.

He praises Obama for making unpopular decisions in Afghanistan that went against the Democratic establishment and the press, but Gates ultimately feels that all the President wanted to do was get out of there.  Barry had enough of the whole thing, and in 2011 was pressing for an earlier withdrawal timetable.  For Gates it was important to keep to the timetable.   Never let your guard down, and certainly don’t let the enemy think it forced you to retreat from previously stated positions.

Of course, there is a lot of truth in this.  Any sign of retreat would have been seen as victory by al Qaeda and the Afghan resistance ostensibly led by One-Eyed Omar, the former Taliban leader of Afghanistan.  You have to maintain signs of strength and unity even if your resolve has weakened. 

This is where Gates shined.  Unlike Rumsfeld and other predecessors, Gates wasn’t about false bravado, but rather exuded a quiet confidence that often silenced critics and earned Obama’s and  Bush’s utmost respect.  Both Presidents hailed him as a great Secretary of Defense, and Gates will probably be remembered as the best war secretary in living memory, having presided over two carefully staged withdrawals without any sense of defeat.  That is a tall order!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Searchers

By
You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...
123 comments
Read more