l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 The Quiet Fury of Robert Gates
Bush and Obama's secretary of defense had to wage war in Iraq, Afghanistan—
and today's Washington
All too often during my 4½ years as secretary of defense, when I found
myself sitting yet again at that witness table at yet another congressional
hearing, I was tempted to stand up, slam the briefing book shut and quit on
the spot. The exit lines were on the tip of my tongue: I may be the
secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen, and there is no son
of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit. Find somebody
else. It was, I am confident, a fantasy widely shared throughout the
executive branch.
Much of my frustration came from the exceptional offense I took at the
consistently adversarial, even inquisition-like treatment of executive-
branch officials by too many members of Congress across the political
spectrum—creating a kangaroo-court environment in hearings, especially when
television cameras were present. But my frustration also came from the
excruciating difficulty of serving as a wartime defense secretary in today's
Washington. Throughout my tenure at the Pentagon, under both President
George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, I was, in personal terms, treated
better by the White House, Congress and the press for longer than almost
anyone I could remember in a senior U.S. government job. So why did I feel I
was constantly at war with everybody? Why was I so often so angry? Why did
I so dislike being back in government and in Washington?
It was because, despite everyone being "nice" to me, getting anything
consequential done was so damnably difficult—even in the midst of two wars.
I did not just have to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq and against al
Qaeda; I also had to battle the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon,
surmount internal conflicts within both administrations, avoid the partisan
abyss in Congress, evade the single-minded parochial self-interest of so
many members of Congress and resist the magnetic pull exercised by the White
House, especially in the Obama administration, to bring everything under
its control and micromanagement. Over time, the broad dysfunction of today's
Washington wore me down, especially as I tried to maintain a public posture
of nonpartisan calm, reason and conciliation.
I was brought in to help salvage the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—both
going badly when I replaced Donald Rumsfeld in December 2006. When I was
sworn in, my goals for both wars were relatively modest, but they seemed
nearly unattainable. In Iraq, I hoped we could stabilize the country so that
when U.S. forces departed, the war wouldn't be viewed as a strategic defeat
for the U.S. or a failure with global consequences; in Afghanistan, I
sought an Afghan government and army strong enough to prevent the Taliban
from returning to power and al Qaeda from returning to use the country again
as a launch pad for terror. Fortunately, I believe my minimalist goals were
achieved in Iraq and remain within reach in Afghanistan.
President Bush always detested the notion, but our later challenges in
Afghanistan—especially the return of the Taliban in force by the time I
reported for duty—were, I believe, significantly compounded by the invasion
of Iraq. Resources and senior-level attention were diverted from
Afghanistan. U.S. goals in Afghanistan—a properly sized, competent Afghan
national army and police, a working democracy with at least a minimally
effective and less corrupt central government—were embarrassingly ambitious
and historically naive compared with the meager human and financial
resources committed to the task, at least before 2009.
For his part, President Obama simply wanted to end the "bad" war in Iraq and
limit the U.S. role in the "good" war in Afghanistan. His fundamental
problem in Afghanistan was that his political and philosophical preferences
for winding down the U.S. role conflicted with his own pro-war public
rhetoric (especially during the 2008 campaign), the nearly unanimous
recommendations of his senior civilian and military advisers at the
Departments of State and Defense, and the realities on the ground.
The continuing fight over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration
led to a helpful, steady narrowing of our objectives and ambitions. Still, I
witnessed a good deal of wishful thinking in the Obama administration about
how much improvement we might see with enough dialogue with Pakistan and
enough civilian assistance to the Afghan government and people. When real
improvements in those areas failed to materialize, too many people—
especially in the White House—concluded that the president's entire
strategy, including the military component, was a failure and became eager
to reverse course.
But if I had learned one useful lesson from Iraq, it was that progress
depended on security for much of the population. This was why I could not
sign onto Vice President Biden's preferred strategy of reducing our presence
in Afghanistan to rely on counterterrorist strikes from afar: "Whac-A-Mole"
hits on Taliban leaders weren't a long-term strategy. That is why I
continue to believe that the troop increase that Obama boldly approved in
late 2009 was the right decision—providing sufficient forces to break the
stalemate on the ground, rooting the Taliban out of their strongholds while
training a much larger and more capable Afghan army.
It is difficult to imagine two more different men than George W. Bush and
Barack Obama. Clearly, I had fewer issues with Bush. Partly that is because
I worked for him in the last two years of his presidency, when, with the
exception of the Iraq surge, nearly all the big national security decisions
had been made. He had made his historical bed and would have to lie in it. I
don't recall Bush ever discussing domestic politics—apart from
congressional opposition—as a consideration in decisions he made during my
time with him (although, in fairness, his sharp-elbowed political gurus were
nearly all gone by the time I arrived). By early 2007, Vice President Dick
Cheney was the hawkish outlier on the team, with Bush, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and me in broad
agreement.
Enlarge Image
U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates speaks at his final press conference
at the Pentagon on June 16, 2011. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
With Obama, however, I joined a new, inexperienced president determined to
change course—and equally determined from day one to win re-election.
Domestic political considerations would therefore be a factor, though I
believe never a decisive one, in virtually every major national security
problem we tackled. The White House staff—including Chiefs of Staff Rahm
Emanuel and then Bill Daley as well as such core political advisers as
Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs —would have a role in
national security decision making that I had not previously experienced (but
which, I'm sure, had precedents).
I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others) saw as his
determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national
security policy and even operations. His White House was by far the most
centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since
Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost.
I had no problem with the White House driving policy; the bureaucracies at
the State and Defense Departments rarely come up with big new ideas, so
almost any meaningful change must be driven by the president and his
National Security Staff (NSS), led during my tenure under Obama by Gen.
James Jones, Thomas Donilon and Denis McDonough. But I believe the major
reason the protracted, frustrating Afghanistan policy review held in the
fall of 2009 created so much ill will was due to the fact it was forced on
an otherwise controlling White House by the theater commander's unexpected
request for a large escalation of American involvement. Gen. Stanley
McChrystal's request surprised the White House (and me) and provoked a
debate that the White House didn't want, especially when it became public. I
think Obama and his advisers were incensed that the Department of Defense—
specifically the uniformed military—had taken control of the policy process
from them and threatened to run away with it.
Most of my conflicts with the Obama administration during the first two
years weren't over policy initiatives from the White House but rather the
NSS's micromanagement and operational meddling, which I routinely resisted.
For an NSS staff member to call a four-star combatant commander or field
commander would have been unthinkable when I worked at the White House—and
probably cause for dismissal. It became routine under Obama. I directed
commanders to refer such calls to my office. The controlling nature of the
Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing
that happened while giving none to the career folks in the trenches who had
actually done the work, offended Secretary Clinton as much as it did me.
Stylistically, Bush and Obama had much more in common than I expected. Both
were most comfortable around a coterie of close aides and friends (like most
presidents) and largely shunned the Washington social scene. Both, I
believe, detested Congress and resented having to deal with it, including
members of their own party. They both had the worst of both worlds on the
Hill: They were neither particularly liked nor feared. Nor did either work
much at establishing close personal relationships with other world leaders.
Both presidents, in short, seemed aloof from two constituencies important to
their success.
The relationship between senior military leaders and their civilian
commander in chief is often tense, and that was certainly my experience
under both Bush and Obama. Bush was willing to disagree with his senior
military advisers, but he never (to my knowledge) questioned their motives
or mistrusted them personally. Obama was respectful of senior officers and
always heard them out, but he often disagreed with them and was deeply
suspicious of their actions and recommendations. Bush seemed to enjoy the
company of the senior military; I think Obama considered time spent with
generals and admirals an obligation.
Such difficulties within the executive branch were nothing compared with the
pain of dealing with Congress. Congress is best viewed from a distance—the
farther the better—because up close, it is truly ugly. I saw most of
Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional
responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial
, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-
election) before country.
I was more or less continuously outraged by the parochial self-interest of
all but a very few members of Congress. Any defense facility or contract in
their district or state, no matter how superfluous or wasteful, was
sacrosanct. I was constantly amazed and infuriated at the hypocrisy of those
who most stridently attacked the Defense Department as inefficient and
wasteful but fought tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense
activities in their home state or district.
I also bristled at what's become of congressional hearings, where rude,
insulting, belittling, bullying and all too often highly personal attacks on
witnesses by members of Congress violated nearly every norm of civil
behavior. Members postured and acted as judge, jury and executioner. It was
as though most members were in a permanent state of outrage or suffered from
some sort of mental duress that warranted confinement or at least treatment
for anger management.
I continue to worry about the incessant scorched-earth battling between
Congress and the president (which I saw under both Bush and Obama) but even
more about the weakening of the moderate center in Congress. Today,
moderation is equated with lacking principles and compromise with "selling
out." Our political system has rarely been so polarized and unable to
execute even the basic functions of government.
I found all of this dysfunction particularly troubling because of the
enormity of the duties I shouldered. Until becoming secretary of defense, my
exposure to war and those who fought it had come from antiseptic offices at
the White House and CIA. Serving as secretary of defense made the abstract
real, the antiseptic bloody and horrible. I saw up close the cost in lives
ruined and lives lost.
Wars are a lot easier to get into than out of. Those who ask about exit
strategies or question what will happen if assumptions prove wrong are
rarely welcome at the conference table when the fire-breathers are demanding
that we strike—as they did when advocating invading Iraq, intervening in
Libya and Syria, or bombing Iran's nuclear sites. But in recent decades,
presidents confronted with tough problems abroad have too often been too
quick to reach for a gun. Our foreign and national security policy has
become too militarized, the use of force too easy for presidents.
Today, too many ideologues call for U.S. force as the first option rather
than a last resort. On the left, we hear about the "responsibility to
protect" civilians to justify military intervention in Libya, Syria, Sudan
and elsewhere. On the right, the failure to strike Syria or Iran is deemed
an abdication of U.S. leadership. And so the rest of the world sees the U.S.
as a militaristic country quick to launch planes, cruise missiles and
drones deep into sovereign countries or ungoverned spaces. There are limits
to what even the strongest and greatest nation on Earth can do—and not
every outrage, act of aggression, oppression or crisis should elicit a U.S.
military response.
This is particularly worth remembering as technology changes the face of war
. A button is pushed in Nevada, and seconds later a pickup truck explodes in
Mosul. A bomb destroys the targeted house on the right and leaves the one
on the left intact. For too many people—including defense "experts,"
members of Congress, executive branch officials and ordinary citizens—war
has become a kind of videogame or action movie: bloodless, painless and
odorless. But my years at the Pentagon left me even more skeptical of
systems analysis, computer models, game theories or doctrines that suggest
that war is anything other than tragic, inefficient and uncertain.
The people who understand this best are our men and women in uniform. I will
always have a special place in my heart for all who served on the front
lines in Iraq and Afghanistan—most in their 20s, some in their teens. While
I was sitting in a hotel restaurant before my confirmation hearings, the
mother of two soldiers then in Iraq came up to me and, weeping, said, "For
God's sake, bring them back alive." I never forgot that—not for one moment.
On each visit to the war zones, as I would go to joint security stations in
Baghdad or forward operating bases and combat outposts in Afghanistan, I
knew I wasn't being exposed to the true grim reality of our troops' lives.
And I could only contrast their selfless service and sacrifice with so many
self-serving elected and nonelected officials back home.
I came to believe that no one who had actually been in combat could walk
away without scars, without some measure of post-traumatic stress. And while
those I visited in the hospitals put on a brave front, in my mind's eye, I
could see them lying awake, alone, in the hours before dawn, confronting
their pain, broken dreams and shattered lives. I would wake in the night,
think back to a wounded soldier or Marine I had seen at Landstuhl, Bethesda
or Walter Reed, and in my imagination, I would put myself in his hospital
room, and I would hold him to my chest to comfort him. At home, in the night
, I silently wept for him. So when a young soldier in Afghanistan asked me
once what kept me awake at night, I answered honestly: He did.
—Dr. Gates was the 22nd secretary of defense. This essay is adapted from
his latest book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," to be published next
Tuesday by Knopf. | l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 2 In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh
judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the
Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president
“doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be
his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Bob Woodward
======================
说过疤蟆这个沙比就会cut and run | l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 3 Gates writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007]
surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa
primary. .?.?. The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq
surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions,
and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”
Democrats are disgusting. | l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 4 At a March 3, 2011, National Security Council meeting, Gates writes, the
president opened with a “blast.” Obama criticized the military for “
popping off in the press” and said he would push back hard against any
delay in beginning the withdrawal.
According to Gates, Obama concluded, “?‘If I believe I am being gamed . .
.’ and left the sentence hanging there with the clear implication the
consequences would be dire.”
Gates continues: “I was pretty upset myself. I thought implicitly accusing
” Petraeus, and perhaps Mullen and Gates himself, “of gaming him in front
of thirty people in the Situation Room was inappropriate, not to mention
highly disrespectful of Petraeus. As I sat there, I thought: the president
doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand [Afghanistan President Hamid]
Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war
to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.” | l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 5 RICHARD COLLINS Wrote:
.
Particularly struck by 3 of his observations:
1. His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in
national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger
ruled the roost. (end copy). The IRS and other abuses of the Obama
administration previously reminded me of some of the things that transpired
under the Nixon administration.
2. White House gave no credit to career folks in the trenches. Consistent
with observations about the frequency with which Mr. Obama uses "I" and
characterizations of the Obama administration being narcissistic. Also
recall his White House talk after Ambassador Stevens was killed -- no
emotion, not even any fluctuation in his speech. (contrast with Mr. Reagan
after the shuttle blew up or the plane crash that killed a large number of
troops).
3. Mr. Obama was deeply suspicious of uniformed military's actions and
recommendations. Little wonder he is so at odds with the Republicans -- if
he has suspicions about apolitical career officers, what are his views of
those who disagree with his politics? |
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