{"id":3055,"date":"2014-01-27T21:45:33","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T19:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/?p=3055"},"modified":"2018-02-08T18:44:09","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T16:44:09","slug":"bob-gates-duty-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/bob-gates-duty-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Gates\u2019 DUTY"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"Last week\u2019s release of Bob Gates\u2019 Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War<\/span> was preceded by his publisher\u2019s brilliant public relations campaign hyping the book with tantalizingly provocative excerpts.\u00a0 The brouhaha over the propriety of the timing of the book\u2019s release while Gates\u2019 boss, President Barack Obama, was still in office and the dramatic excerpts especially the criticism of Vice President Joe Biden filled the talk shows.\u00a0 And, now, all that has sunk without trace.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
A few reactions are in order before getting into the most telling and largely unmentioned aspects of Gates\u2019 blockbuster—but a blockbuster for other reasons.\u00a0 First, too many of the pundits pontificated without reading the book, responding only to excerpts.\u00a0 It should be (if not a constitutional amendment) a moral imperative that, as all members of Congress should read in entirety legislation on which they vote, pundits must read books on which they are bloviating.\u00a0 Second, if the book is read carefully, those excerpts are far from explosive.\u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Gates may write that Joe Biden has been wrong on virtually all foreign policy issues.\u00a0 But a sentence or two down from that accusation, Gates is self-critical quoting Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs after a meeting with the Vice President.\u00a0 Mullen says to Gates with faux surprise that you were in agreement with the VP. \u00a0And probably not the only time!<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Gates writes about four wars he waged.\u00a0 The first war was fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.\u00a0 The second was against the White House staff.\u00a0 The third was against the Pentagon.\u00a0 And the fourth and most cynical was against a Congress that Gates could not describe in more pejorative terms.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The most stunning revelation in the book in my view was the absence of urgency and complacency inside the Pentagon towards the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and in adapting to new conditions.\u00a0 Gates acidly argues that the Pentagon knows how to plan for war but not how to fight one. He is almost obsessed with the bureaucratic rigidity of the Pentagon in allowing parochial needs to obscure supporting the troops.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Of many references, two are salutary: mine protected armored vehicles (MRAP\u2019s) and medical evacuation times.\u00a0 Gates maintained that the services were reluctant to buy MRAP\u2019s for troop protection because that meant less money for longer-term programs.\u00a0 Only through his forceful engagement were thousands of MRAP\u2019s procured and as he writes, lives and limbs saved.\u00a0 What Gates does not mention is that more suitable vehicles existed but were not considered.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Regarding medical evacuation times, in Iraq an hour was the required norm for getting wounded troops to field hospitals.\u00a0 In Afghanistan it was two hours.\u00a0 Despite the opposition of the senior military, Gates insisted and succeeded in imposing the one-hour standard in Afghanistan.\u00a0 His argument was irrefutable.\u00a0 To a wounded soldier or marine, two hours were unacceptable.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
The second unreported blockbuster in the book was how Gates brilliantly employed strategy in ensuring the successful execution of policy.\u00a0 Whether in shielding politically divisive decisions such as the surges in Iraq and then Afghanistan from opposing forces that could have defeated both or in skillfully advancing senior military officers to higher ranks, Gates\u2019 book is a primer for using strategy and in the nicest sense plotting—unsurprising given Gates\u2019 long CIA service culminating as director.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Last is Gates\u2019 damnation of Congress.\u00a0 While Biden may have caught the headlines, Gates had kind things to say about the vice president.\u00a0 He has nothing kind to say about Congress. And his harshest criticism falls on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for placing partisanship and the pettiest of politics above country.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
For those seeking government service, this is a must read book.\u00a0 It attempts to be and largely is as objective and analytical as is humanly possible.\u00a0 But there is a flaw.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Gates goes on too much about the trauma and personal tragedy of sending men and women to war in which some are killed and others horribly wounded. To his immense credit, he wonders if this preoccupation with the safety of the troops he orders into battle clouded his judgment.\u00a0 However, no commander worth his or her salt feels much differently. They just are not as vocal.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Gates was Secretary of Defense.\u00a0 But it is the Commander-in-Chief who orders Americans into combat.\u00a0 Lyndon Johnson became so obsessed with Vietnam he refused to run for a second term.\u00a0 In this case, and the major critique of the book is that Gates may protesteth too much.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
War said Clausewitz is a clash of wills.\u00a0 Gates demonstrates that nobly. Unfortunately, too much energy is spent on the clash of wills in Washington and not enough on winning the wars at hand.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week\u2019s release of Bob Gates\u2019 Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War was preceded by his publisher\u2019s brilliant public relations campaign hyping the book with tantalizingly provocative excerpts.\u00a0 The brouhaha over the propriety of the timing of the book\u2019s release while Gates\u2019 boss, President Barack Obama, was still in office and the dramatic excerpts especially the criticism of Vice President Joe Biden filled the talk shows.\u00a0 And, now, all that has sunk without trace. \u00a0 A few reactions are in order before getting into the most telling and largely unmentioned aspects of Gates\u2019 blockbuster—but a blockbuster for other reasons.\u00a0 First, too many of the pundits pontificated without reading the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,65,99,76,63,62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americas","category-blog-en","category-books","category-harlan-ullman-en","category-publications","category-regions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4816,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions\/4816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}