The Quiet Fury of Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates 341
An anonymous reader writes "Activities, technologies, equipment, or other matters regarding the U.S. Department of Defense are a common topic on Slashdot, both as stories and in discussions. Despite that, we seldom see stories regarding the senior leadership of DoD as we do for technologists, the political branches, and lately the NSA. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who served under both Presidents Bush and Obama, has released a rather biting memoir of his tenure as the Secretary of Defense. The Wall Street Journal has an excerpt: '... 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. ... difficulties within the executive branch were nothing compared with the pain of dealing with Congress. ... 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.' — More at The Washington Post."
in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, he has a rather unique perspective, having been a senior member of both a Republican and a Democrat administration. I'm pretty keen to see his observations
Re:in other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, he has a rather unique perspective, having been a senior member of both a Republican and a Democrat administration. I'm pretty keen to see his observations
Pretty much what Colin Powell went through, though he internalized more of the stresses and didn't feel the need to dump on everyone. I don't disagree with Gates, I think a lot of these people (particularly Congress) need some dumping on. Congress members will feel affronted for a few days and then go back to being arseholes.
Re:in other words... (Score:4, Insightful)
One would hope that the point of Gates' recounting of his problems with two Administrations and Congress is to tell the electorate "You elect the President and Congress, and this is how annoying, counterproductive and pig headed all these people are."
Re: in other words... (Score:3)
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Members of Parliament are arseholes.
Congress members are assholes.
he's a Conservative Republican (Score:5, Insightful)
Gates is a conservative Republican.
I found his criticism to be mellodramatic and uneven.
One time Obama is a 'micromanager' and the next he's 'out of touch'
What galls me most is that he criticized the Obama admin. for questioning his generals hard and not accepting their pat answers. Like we're supposed to feel bad when a General in charge of a war gets his feelings hurt?
I *expect* strict oversight of the men making the direct decisions about wars, especially the double-boondoggles of Iraq and Afghanistan that Obama was given.
In the case of General Petraus, he damn well needed to be questioned, disrespectfully even, because of this whole mess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petraeus_scandal [wikipedia.org]
Where was Gates's keen eye there? Did he admit *any* actual mistakes?
Re:he's a Conservative Republican (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you implying that these qualities can't exist in the same person at the same time? Because I assure you, they can and often do. Heck, if anything being an idiot and wanting to control everything are the most stereotypical politician traits imaginable.
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The US government has never had the amount of technology, money, and laws to it's favor than any time before this, that is what is different.
"Governs least governs best" - it is time to shrink the Federal government and pull it's teeth by pulling the purse strings tight.
Re:in other words... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US government has never had the amount of technology, money, and laws to it's favor than any time before this, that is what is different.
"Governs least governs best" - it is time to shrink the Federal government and pull it's teeth by pulling the purse strings tight.
That's off-topic, though.
Basically, he's saying that the biggest detriment to his job was beauracracy and the antics of the Congress and the Administration.
I doubt it was any different 200 years ago.
Re:in other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
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I doubt it was any different 200 years ago.
I'd guess there was a big damn difference. Congress critters are now full time, well salaried positions. In 1813, they were not. In 1813 a congressman was paid $6 per day in session Or just under $90 inflation adjusted for today. Even if they were in session five days a week, 52 weeks per year, it works out to $1560 per year, which is just under $23K per year in today's dollars. Currently a new member of the house receives $174K per year as a base salary. Since they are elected every other year, they basica
Re:in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Blindly "tightening the purse strings" leads to those parts of government that are good and useful to be sacrificed first, while the partisan and corrupt parts better defend themselves and their budgets. So, instead of a progressive nation of healthy, happy, nutritionally fed, employed, well educated citizens in a nation focused on freedom, scientific and technological advancement, we have become the secretive spymasters and bullies of the world, looking for the next war to line the pockets of the oligarchs, while the bigoted, ignorant masses fight from paycheck to paycheck, if they can find a job, until they die from easily preventable disease, if they survive the worst infant mortality rate of any first world nation.
"Tighten the purse strings" has meant killing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, killing the National Institutes of Health, killing the Center For Disease Control, killing the Food & Drug Administration inspection program, etc. ad nauseam. Meanwhile the secret budgets, the crony protected waste, the bureaucracy, swells and continues unabated.
Instead of demanding that the money be taken away, we should be demanding that the places where the money is being mis-spent be stopped, or at the very least that the places that lead to a better society are better funded, in the hopes that doing so requires funds to be reallocated from those things which are wasteful. It has been a tremendous coup by the oligarchs to get people to focus on the dollars, not what value are they getting for the dollars. Government of a large advanced nation by its very nature will involve sums of money so large that the average person will be staggered to the point that most wont even comprehend just how big the amount is. This inevitably leads to the uninformed, most radical knee-jerking among the mob to scream at the size of the number, not at any analysis of how it should be spent.
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"Blindly "tightening the purse strings" leads to those parts of government that are good and useful to be sacrificed first, while the partisan and corrupt parts better defend themselves and their budgets. So, instead of a progressive nation of healthy, happy, nutritionally fed, employed, well educated citizens in a nation focused on freedom, scientific and technological advancement, we have become the secretive spymasters and bullies of the world, looking for the next war to line the pockets of the oligarch
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"Governs least governs best" - it is time to shrink the Federal government and pull it's teeth by pulling the purse strings tight.
Let's do it! You will need to form a new political party first, however, because neither R or D have any actual interest in doing that (regardless of what they might say).
Re:in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
and how is this different from every other time in this nation's history?
Technology has made it worse. There is a joke about the GAO doing a study of how the photocopier has affected government efficiency, and after careful analysis, determined that if the photocopier had been around in 1940, we would have lost WW2. Technology has an especially pernicious effect on military bureaucracy. Military officers are given annual "fitness reports" and most are rated as "outstanding" (the highest possible grade). A few "excellent" ratings, or a single "above average" can end an officer's career. This "zero defect" mentality leads to a fear of rocking the boat, or making any big changes, and it gets worse the further up the ranks you go. So the generals and admirals at the top, when confronted by a flood of data, are caught in an "analysis paralysis" and muddle through by defaulting to the easy decision of maintaining the status quo and blocking reform. Technology may improve the weapons, but it makes the bureaucracy worse.
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and how is this different from every other time in this nation's history?
Technology has made it worse. There is a joke about the GAO doing a study of how the photocopier has affected government efficiency, and after careful analysis, determined that if the photocopier had been around in 1940, we would have lost WW2. Technology has an especially pernicious effect on military bureaucracy.
So like we need to go back to say, 1600?
Re:in other words... (Score:4, Interesting)
A bit strong. I'd start by making it illegal to air condition any federal buildings in DC.
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That's a failing of the bureaucracy rather than of the technology. Part of the reason for the success during WWII was the willingness to abandon bureaucracy to be able to do what needed to be done. Without the immediate needs of a war to worry about the red-tape grows unchecked, so it reaches ridiculous proportions.
Also, if more than half of the officers are given grades of "above average" or better, then the rating scale is messed up, not whatever technology they used to implement it.
Re:in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't so much the rating scale that is broken but the ways in which it is used. They same basic system is used for all performance evaluations from the lowliest enlisted folk to the fattest officers. In all cases your performance rating contributes significantly to scores for promotion. What ends up happening is one asshole decides that all his troops, or even just a few are deserving of that top rating, which should represent like 1% or less of the force. Every other supervisor sees this happen exactly once unfairly and decides to give all of their troops top ratings whenever possible in order to not cripple their chances at promotion. Before you know it everyone gets "firewall 5's" as we called them. In fact if you tried to give a troop a rating that was less than 5 you would have to go talk to the commander and explain why you were willing to throw out that persons career. Getting a score lower than a 5 once would give you a handicap versus every other troop when testing for promotion for something like 3 or 4 years. For enlisted this sucks but unless you are close to high year tenure it's not critical. But for Officers once you reach certain thresholds if you miss promotion a few times your career is officially over.
The solution should be to simply go to a pass fail system. The current system is completely corrupted I've known guys that got rated lower because they "weren't involved enough in the community" while others skated by doing jack shit except licking the commanders asshole getting awards like crazy.
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I'm shocked - shocked! - that any politician would ever "put self (and re-election) before country".
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Yes! This guy's job is to overcome inertia and work through the bureaucracies at the top in order to get things done that need to be done - with paid administrative staff and budgets and great health care, transportation, etc. And he just whines about how much work there is to do and how hard it is. What a complete baby!
I have no sympathy for an elite bureaucrat who does nothing but complain about how much work his super-perked job actually is and how his superiors are incompetent (his job is to get thing
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the old "I'm right and everyone is wrong" view (Score:2)
the system is not perfect, but it would be a lot worse if we allowed one person to have to much power and make too many decisions without input from stakeholders
waah waah waah (Score:4, Insightful)
He knew what it was like long before he got that post. What was he expecting, a sudden influx of invisible pink unicorn poop?
Re:waah waah waah (Score:5, Insightful)
What was he expecting, a sudden influx of invisible pink unicorn poop?
Probably not, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a problem or that it's unreasonable of him to point it out.
This is a guy who managed to get himself appointed as director of the CIA a number of years back, so he's familiar with the culture of Washington and how the political game is played there. He served as the president of a major university (my alma mater, and while I was there, in fact, during which time he was VERY highly regarded by both the students and faculty...I've heard a number of firsthand accounts from other students who had personal interactions with him that were beyond the call of Gates' duty, and some of which would have put a significant drain on him and his time), which means dealing with legislators, boards of regents, and all sorts of other bureaucracy. This is also the guy who was asked to become the first Director of National Intelligence (a.k.a. Intelligence Czar) by Bush, but declined the offer for the position so that he could continue where he was (the position later went to John Negroponte).
More or less, he knows what politics look like and knows enough to survive them for several decades while still getting the stuff done that needs to be done, and yet, despite that, he thinks that the stuff he's seen in these last two administrations is dysfunctional enough that it's worth calling out specifically. Wouldn't you agree that that's a fair assessment of the current state of American politics? There's a reason that polls indicate over half of Americans are in favor of firing EVERYONE in Congress.
Kudos to him for calling them out. Shame on you for crapping all over someone who is publicly pointing out the sad state of affairs.
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Too bad those >50% don't actually bother to vote "EVERYONE" out of Congress.
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That's because, sadly, too many people fall for the "I might be bad, but that person's worse" fallacy. They think not voting for the major party that claims to best represent their views is essentially voting for the major party that doesn't claim to best represent their views. Since (once you buy into this fallacy) having "That Guy" in office seems so horrible, voting for "This Guy" is all but ensured. Add in campaigns geared to demonize "That Guy" and gerrymandering designed by the winning party design
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Not going to hear any disagreement from me. Really though, there's no way to do it without changing the laws, since it would require barring any incumbents from running again. Allowing them to run again and simply voting them all out (which would result in a shift in power to what used to be the minority party) is quite a bit different than barring them from running and having an election between two fresh candidates.
Re:waah waah waah (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm with ya, bro. Now that America has revert to a single political party - the Incumbents - I plan to vote against every member of that party in the next election, be they nominally Republicans, Democrats, or anything else. (That last part was just for completeness - more of theoretical possibility than anything. Luckily, Ralph Nader never joined the Incumbent Party.)
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I allowed half of my mod points to expire. I wish I still had a +1 insightful for your post.
Re:waah waah waah (Score:5, Interesting)
Not sure his message is going to get anywhere, seems to me that most voters know how bad politics in Washington are, they just think that THEIR incumbent who they voted for is one of the good guys.
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Should we explain the rest of the joke to you also?
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If it's invisible, how can you tell that it's pink?
It's only invisible when nobody's looking. Just like the Invisible Hand.
I really have a hard time (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a hard time taking what I've read of the criticism online already seriously. Is it really so damning the Obama didn't consider Afganistan "his war", and "wanted to get out"? Or be "skeptical" of the plans put in place by the military leadership?
I mean it sounds like what we heard in the 2000s from the bush administration where enough patriotism and "believing in the troops" was what it took to make a war work. Expecting that from the common person is annoying and immature, but expecting it from the president sounds extraordinarily naive.
Re:I really have a hard time (Score:4, Insightful)
>> Is it really so damning the Obama didn't consider Afganistan "his war"
I think it is, for a different reason. A lot of folks elected Obama to get us out our middle eastern wars as fast as possible. The fact that Obama's been dragging his feet on that front, even starting new wars (e.g., Libya), suggests (reaffirms?) that Obama has been a spineless president, bullied into more military action by his military advisers, Gates included.
Re: I really have a hard time (Score:2, Insightful)
People elected Obama to get us out of the wars, but it was clear from his campaign statements in 2007 that he would pull out from Iraq and escalate in Afghanistan. Remember at the time Afganiatan was still the "good" war that Nush had abandoned for his Iraq folly. I recall informing my Obama-voting friends of this at the time (with references) but they were too ecstatic about winning to let anything mess up the internal narrative.
Re: I really have a hard time (Score:5, Insightful)
I was an Obama voter who understood this. He was always a less-bad center-right choice. He also wasn't behind gay rights at the time, which was wrong.
Re: I really have a hard time (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not really. There isn't a viable left-wing party in the USA. The Democrats are moderately pro-business center-right and the Republicans are extremely anti-regulation, anti-tax, pro-business far right. There's more divergence on a few (mostly irrelevant) social issues, which is why people think there's a bigger difference than there really is.
Re: (Score:2)
*The question is what percent of any voters are informed.
Re:I really have a hard time (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I can't speak to what people perceived when they voted for Obama in 2008, but I at least recall the content of the McCain Obama debates well enough to remember his general military foreign policy positions at the time:
A. Increased use of targeted drone warfare(promise too well kept, good god)
B. Out of Iraq(yeah, sorta)
C. Refocus Afganistan to be about Al Qaeda(kinda bogus, because "focusing" wars is political BS)
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C. Refocus Afganistan to be about Al Qaeda(kinda bogus, because "focusing" wars is political BS)
Especially since it's been focused on the Taliban as far as I can tell, the whole time
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Is it really so damning the Obama didn't consider Afganistan "his war", and "wanted to get out"?
Yes yes its damning. Obama ran on getting us out of Iraq but he never really ran against the Afghanistan effort. If he really wanted out and though that continuing the war was a bad idea he should have had the courage to end it. He should have order the general to being an orderly retreat with the single objective of getting as many of ours home as quickly and safely as possible. No more traning native forces, no more pacifying Helmont (sp?) nothing.
I can't think of much worse in the way of moral deprav
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Seriously if he really felt that we he should have run on "if elected, I will withdraw our forces for Afghanistan" and let the people decide.
But he didn't, and at first left it to military leaders, who he came to doubt. That's exactly the narrative Gates provided here. He should have run on it in 2012, but didn't, because foreign policy apparently stops mattering the moment someone is concerned about the debt.
Re:I really have a hard time (Score:5, Informative)
Is it really so damning the Obama didn't consider Afganistan "his war", and "wanted to get out"?
His implication is that Obama should have either committed to winning the war, and won it; or given up directly and saved lives. Instead (according to Gates), he waged the war half-heartedly, which didn't resolve anything. Choose a course of action and do what it takes to accomplish it, that's what Gates feels Obama didn't do.
Or be "skeptical" of the plans put in place by the military leadership?
This is an attack on the competency of Obama, saying he didn't have the skills to assess the plans. It's one thing to be skeptical if you have a reason, it's another to be skeptical for no reason. A comparison here is being skeptical of evolution: it's generally a sign of ignorance, but an expert with knowledge might be skeptical of the idea that humans descended from reptiles, or other similar.
These are the interpretations of those statements from Gates; whether they are justified or not, I don't know.
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Which I guess is fine. It's just kind of obnoxious to put things down to 1 dimension like that. There were clearly unresolved core goals in Afghanistan when Obama entered office(like al qeada's leadership structure, which proved to be in Pakistan). Are there still now?
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There were clearly unresolved core goals in Afghanistan when Obama entered office(like al qeada's leadership structure, which proved to be in Pakistan). Are there still now?
Ultimately, the question is, what goal do we have in Afghanistan? Is our goal to make sure they have a (relatively) stable society when we leave? Is our goal to get out as quickly as possible? I'm not really sure the answer to this question, but it's kind of crucial to answer it. As commander in chief, it is probably Obama's job to answer it.
Finally..... (Score:2)
Welcome to life bro (Score:5, Interesting)
Frustrating... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's How It's Supposed to Work (Score:2)
SNAFU = " "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up".
Anyone who expects to gain pleasure or be appreciated for serving in our political system is making a big mistake.
Why is this a surprise? (Score:2)
This whining reminds me a bit of a civilian telecom contractor that went to Iraq to serve military needs, that complained that when some soldiers offered to give him some rudimentary weapons training on the range if he could get the ammo,
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Are you intentionally limiting this to politics for some reason? I wonder what Larry Ellison and Donald Trump have to pay their secretaries to put up with them. The fact that we have any separation of power at all between the economic, political, and religious realms is a relatively recent and welcome innovation IMHO. The natural state of humanity is a bunch of slaves under a hierarchy of m
Off Topic, Despite Prolegomena (Score:2)
Terms are too short (Score:2)
We ca
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Maybe slightly longer terms but limited to one. That's long been suggested for president.
Newcomers determined to fix things are better then old timers determined to protect their turf.
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You really need to look into the re-election rate of incumbents.
Yes, there is a trickle of new-comers... but the bulk of them remain unchanged year-to-year.
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You should have included the whole sentence you quoted, rather than just the part that reversed the meaning.
Here's the original sentence:
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And how many of those incumbents who come back year after year do so thanks to using gerrymandering to redraw district lines to eliminate any chance that they could lose an election?
No, there is no proficiency test (Score:2)
You solution would just result in unsuitable people being there longer. The real solution is to make their job much less important. To re-distribute those powers that congress has amassed and push them back out to the states. Let the states be responsible for their own roads and bridges. Let the states be responsible for their own housing and medical/health. They could do it better...if they were collecting the majority of the tax revenue instead of the Federal government.
The problem with congress
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Living in Alabama, I have to wonder if some states have the maturity to be responsible for their own governance... I'm convinced that the only reason we have Interstates is that the Feds paid for all of it. And I say that as a believer in States' Rights... I just don't know how to let states have completely free rein and still have a decently uniform standard of living across the nation. Heck, we don't even have a uniform standard of living now...
They could afford the talent with enough money (Score:2)
And anyone would look a little groggy and unsteady on their feet when they are being bled dry. There was a report I read recently that the Pentagon could not account for a trillion dollars missing. The system is upside down. The people with the most power should live locally and be elected locally. The way it stands, the people with the most power will never come up for election in your state.
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The system is upside down. The people with the most power should live locally and be elected locally.
Couldn't agree with you more on that one. One of the reasons I'm such a big fan of Distributism [wikipedia.org].
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The experience in California is that term limits don't work. What happens is the staff become more important, more powerful and more entrenched. And they aren't elected, even once.
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If the bus is going in the wrong direction, slash the tires and damn the consequences i say.
Can't we just burn the bus down? That way we can be sure the bus never goes that way again.
Good Stuff (Score:3)
There are a lot of ordinarly people out there who are not in the 'everyone' category and may now become aware of this.
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It's been spelled out for at least 10 years. My problem with Congress is how a lot of members are making decisions with bad information; not that a Congressman might be self-serving.
Why couldn't he say this 10 years ago? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
He never said any of this publicly while holding his position because he didn't want to lose his job. I feel that most politicians and cabinet appointees feel this way, but they always hold it all in until they leave office and are ready to author their "tell all" memoir. Maybe if someone actually spoke the truth while in office the problems plaguing our government would have a better chance of being addressed.
Of course since they are all "prone to put self (and re-election) before country" they would never dare to challenge the party line. Robert Gates included.
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Losing his job is one thing, losing what little cooperation he was getting is another thing entirely. Let's assume for the moment that the man isn't a psychopath (the only reason we have to assume otherwise is that he managed to reach the political position he did, which I don't think is enough to blindly warrant the assumption). The life and limb of the people under his command depend upon cooperation from the very people he would like to publicly name and shame. Regardless of how satisfying it might ha
Re:Why couldn't he say this 10 years ago? (Score:5, Interesting)
I feel the need to come to Mr. Gates' defense here. Let's put his situation in context: the Secretary of Defense is directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of human lives. Gates' predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, had fucked up so egregiously that the United States was on the verge of losing the war in Iraq, and had already wasted thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian lives through his arrogant blundering.
Somebody had to clean up that mess and make the best of the situation. Gates was the one President Bush picked. If you were in that situation, with hundreds of thousands of lives hanging in the balance and no option that could create peace quickly or with certainty, the future of two countries at stake, wouldn't the responsibility of your position weigh just a teensy bit more heavily on you than where your next paycheck was coming from?
I am not sure I would have the balls to take that job, even if I were competent to do it. Staying on as president of Texas A&M sounds like a much easier career option.
I submit to you that Gates may have wanted to keep his job, not out of pure self-interest, but because he had accepted the duty and felt obligated to see it through.
it's just the usual nature of the beast (Score:2)
I did not just have to wage war in Afghanistan and Iraq and against al Qaeda; I also had to battle the bureaucratic
An article about commanders fighting each other about plans and egos, it mentioned during WWII Gen. Marshall arrives at his office early in morning. During the day he has to fight the British, fight the Soviets, fight the French, fight the Belguims, fight the Dutch, fight the Aussies, fight the Canadians,. Then late at night when Marshall returns home, his wife reminds him that he needs to fight the Germans.
Really? (Score:3)
Its news that human beings are self interested, ignorant, and vain? How did this ingenue become secretary of defense?
Here's a news flash for Bob Gates: People in Washington, running the gov. are no better/worse than the general populace. People don't suddenly become 'better' because they get elected to office, or go work for a congressman, or the white house. When you take the job of Secretary of Defense, you get paid for three things:
1. Up holding your duty to the constitution
2. Setting an example for your subordinates
3. Navigating the politics of government
If you don't want to compromise yourself, these things are all thankless arduous tasks. They wear you out. It goes with the territory. Cry me a river Bob Gates.
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Here's a news flash for Bob Gates: People in Washington, running the gov. are no better/worse than the general populace.
They are worse for two reasons. First, because the type of power hungry person who wants elected office is worse than someone content to mind his own business. And second, because the actual process of becoming elected selects for those who have no principles.
No NDA here (Score:2)
I don't work for the DoD (Score:2)
This is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is why... (Score:5, Informative)
Gates used to be the President of Texas A&M University. I was a student when he took up the position, and I was still one when he resigned his position to become the Secretary of Defense (after having previously turned down the then-new position of Director of National Intelligence, a.k.a. Intelligence Czar).
I had a couple of friends who had personal interactions with him. For instance, Gates was, at one time, the director of the CIA, and I had a friend who was interested in working in intelligence. Gates actually set aside time to mentor my friend one-on-one on several occasions, even though my friend was just a random student out of the 45,000 or so that were there at the time. Another example of the sort of guy he is: A&M has a tradition that involves students gathering at midnight on the night before any football game. Gates never missed a single one of those in his entire time there, even though he was under no obligation to attend any of them (the President that followed him certainly didn't attend them on a regular basis). I even recall seeing him at one after he had injured his leg (broken it? can't recall). He hobbled out to the stadium on crutches at midnight and climbed into the stands with the rest of us. He sent out regular e-mails to the student body that you could tell he hadn't simply put his signature on, and he addressed campus problems that came up head on, rather than tiptoeing around them and promising to "look into them" or "form a committee".
The faculty loved him too. Many of them had had the opportunity to talk to him directly, and when he said he'd get something done for them, he meant it. He instilled a strong sense of vision in the university, encouraging them to think way bigger than they had been thinking, while at the same time streamlining things and encouraging them to be frugal. All of this in 4 years.
In short, I consider him to be one of the "good guys" that we always lament about not being able to get into politics. I wish there were more people like him in politics, since we need more people there who detest the state of things.
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He didn't fail. He took a dive. It wasn't the Republicans who forced him to pack the Treasury department with Goldman Sacks alums or trade the Public Option away to the for-profit hospital lobby. Obama did that all on his own.
Guy sounds like a whiner (Score:3)
"Resist the magnetic pull exercised by the White House"? Uh...idiot your job is to enforce the President's policies! If you find that your disagreements are that broad, you resign. You make your case, defend it as well as you can, and if the boss says "F it, I want to do it this way," you accept that as the way leadership works. The concerns of a President are larger than that of any Secretary. The top guy is the one ultimately responsible for outcomes so it's always easier for the junior officers to come up with daring, risky plans.
Crying about the self-interests of Congressmen? Uh...that's what Congress is!
While I agree with his complaints about how our government is functioning, he's not the one bearing the brunt of partisan warfare.
Re:Guy sounds like a whiner (Score:5, Insightful)
your job is to enforce the President's policies
How the policy is carried out is not the same as ensuring it's carried out.
If Obama had said "Withdraw from Iraq/Afghanistan now" Gates would have done that or resigned. But being told to fight the war, then being second guessed on how to fight the war was the problem.
Re: (Score:2)
First of all, his oath of office (from Wikipedia)
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. [So help me God.
Nothing there about the President, though he does serve
Pedestrian. Surprise Me. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Duty" offers the familiar criticism of Congress and its culture, describing it as "truly ugly." Gates's cold feelings toward the legislative branch stand in stark contrast to his warmth for the military. He repeatedly describes his affection for the troops, especially those in combat.
Gee, he hates the career politicians who constrain his freedom to act, and loves the people in his chain of command? I'm stunned. Really. You could knock me over with a sledgehammer.
Gates's severe criticism is even more surprising -- some might say contradictory -- because toward the end of "Duty," he says of Obama's chief Afghanistan policies, "I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions." ... The sometimes bitter tone ... contrasts sharply with the even-tempered image that he cultivated during his many years of government service ... In "Duty," Gates describes his outwardly calm demeanor as a facade. Underneath, he writes, he was frequently "seething" and "running out of patience on multiple fronts."
So he's saying highly placed officials are under a lot of pressure, try to do what they believe is right, are often in highly contentious situations, have to suppress their emotional reactions, and on sober reflection ultimately support each other? My goodness, these exciting revelations have me so wound up I may go over to the couch and have a little snooze.
Pop media trying to turn pedestrian normality into sizzling drama. Yawn.
You want to do something interesting, Gates? Surprise me. Tell me about your fight against the F-35. Tell me about how hard you fought, the times you really put yourself on the line, to get that boondoggle cut. Oh, you didn't? That's why we're still paying for that stupid porkbarrel piece of shit that you opposed? So you're saying you talk the talk, but didn't walk the walk. You want to get me excited about your dedication to America, show me you took a risk for what you believed in when doing so had no upside for you. Don't just whine about how hard it was because everyone else were jerks; I can get that story from every single person on the planet.
OMG -- this can only mean... (Score:2)
Congress really DOES represent the people!
were nothing compared with the pain of dealing with Congress. ... 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.
Has Gates considered blogger moderation and karma whoring to mitigate the dysfunction? I'm sure Ralph Reed might do something for extending unemployment benefits if we gave him a cookie.
Synopsis (Score:2)
The military perspective is myopic by nature (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
My name is Anonymous Coward and I have non-specific cynicism to contribute to the discussion! Look at how helpful I'm being!
Re:how is this news? (Score:4, Funny)
The news is that he was recently interviewed in WaPo on this subject.
but yes i think members of congress should be limited to 3 terms 2 in office and 1 in prison
i also think that if a member of congress gets money from an industry group then they should be BANNED from working in that industry for 15 years (not counting any prison term).
Re: (Score:2)
EXCELLENT!!
I got to "3 terms" and I start thinking "what a dumbass". "2 in office and 1 in prison" makes my day though!
Re:how is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if we shouldn't go the other way. Term limits have long been discussed, and have asymptotically-approaching-zero chance of passage since those who benefit from the system as-is would have to give up something. How about making Congress a LIFETIME elected position? At least then the non-stop campaigning and pandering would have no reason to continue. As it is, with re-election rates as they are (somewhere well north of 90% I believe), this wouldn't even represent much change in the institution.
Maybe then people would also pay closer attention to whom they are voting in. Okay, sorry, don't know what I was thinking there.
Re:Cranky for a military takeover, are we? (Score:4, Informative)
We actually did reduce military funding. Twice even. It's not completely politically untenable like taxes that target the plutocratic class as much as the working and middle classes.
Re: (Score:3)
That's upper middle class high "income" earners, who pay out the ass. Plutocrats pay less than you, since their new money for the year is (almost)entirely capital gains.
Re: (Score:2)
When they actually pay that rate without using dodges and loopholes... Let's be honest here. The middle class doesn't have the same access to accountants and lawyers, so appealing to the rate is meaningless if you're trying to argue that the plutocrats are paying just as much as the average worker.
Re:Cranky for a military takeover, are we? (Score:5, Insightful)
By "most Americans", I take it you refer to the dirt poor, who have nothing to pay, and to the filthy rich, who simply do not pay.
Working stiffs pay 25 to 33%. Note the word "working". People who WANT TO WORK, but can't find anything better than a minimum wage job only pay 15% - like Romney. People who fall into the 35% bracket are no longer "working".
http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/tax-brackets.aspx [bankrate.com]
Please don't sing Romney's praises to me, for paying 15% taxes. I pay considerably more than that. Worse, like any other politician, he makes his money at our expense, THEN cheats on those taxes!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for the compliment, asshole.
And, what are the statutory rates on the dividends and such which people like Romney pay taxes on, again? Oh yeah, 15% - the second LOWEST tax rate on the chart. That is the statutory rate, as you point out - not the effective rates paid after the rich bastids take advantage of the loopholes and tax shelters. The only people paying lower percentages are those people who have nothing. Look at that 10% tax bracket again - an individual paying 10% can't afford to pay for
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My the universe bless you with a micromanaging supervisory chain with matrix organization thinking.
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I have a Son who's a Marine and the stuff he tells me about training cancellations and guys becoming retired early from service has me worried. You can't replace the experience of senior leadership with new recruits and the incessant bullshit from congress and micro-managing the military budgets via the sequester isn't a way to protect the nation. The sequester came about as everybody will recall because both parties couldn't agree on how to reign in spending even though you had a bi-partisan effort in th
Re:War, what is it good for? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Nixon was not impeached. He quit before that inevitably would have happened. Back in those days Republicans were against Nixon because party loyalty didn't blind them so easily as it does today.
2) Nixon did many criminal things, only a few of which were being looked into at that time and some never were investigated like they should have been. Impeachment wasn't about the war.
3) The knowledge Nixon was a TRAITOR by conspiring with North Vietnam to prolong the war for his own personal gain was known BEFORE he was elected but Johnson was too much of a political coward to prosecute a presidential candidate fore treason (plus it would then be used as justification in the future as a political tactic by the unscrupulous.) This information wasn't known until the declassification of the Johnson tapes a few years ago... very few people knew about it. Yes, Johnson started that tape recording tradition which died with Nixon. Providing battle plans is treason, providing political plans and altering plans to aid the enemy is far far worse than say, telling them how to make a nuke.