November 9, 2006
Who is Bob Gates?
Before I get onto the important stuff about Rummie, Gates etc, I would like to say how gratifying I found it that President Bush chose to use part of his press conference yesterday to confirm my story about his reading contest with Karl Rove. Bush said that, on account of the elections, he had now fallen behind Rove in their contest to see who could read more books this year. Was this a subtle response to my accusation that, by reading too much, he is slacking on the job? I like to think so. I’m sure Bush has worried about little else over the last couple of days.
Actually, I thought Bush was in surprisingly good form, given the “thumping” (his word) that the Republicans had just been given. The humour and resilience that he displayed reminded me why - way back when - so many people found him an attractive candidate.
The appointment of Bob Gates as defence secretary is further evidence of the comeback of the old Republican establishment who served Bush One. Gates was director of the CIA in the early 1990s. What with Jim Baker (George Bush I’s secretary of state) heading the Iraq Study Group, it is clear that the veterans and the “realists” are back in fashion. As well as being a member of Baker’s Iraq group, Gates is on record as being in favour of opening unconditional talks with Iran.
And – since I am in self-referential mode this New York morning – I think the Gates appointment is further evidence of the Vietnam parallel that I wrote about in my column for the FT this week (subscription required). At a similar stage during Vietnam, LBJ moved Robert McNamara on from the Pentagon, and replaced him with a grizzled establishment figure, Clark Clifford.
Gates is what the British call a “safe pair of hands” – the kind of man you turn to in times of trouble. He has played this role before. He was appointed to the National Security Council and then to the CIA, in part to clear up the mess left behind by the Iran-Contra scandal in the second Reagan era. (Gates’s own role in this was controversial, but he was never implicated as a major player.)
I remember seeing him give a talk on the uses of intelligence in foreign policy at Princeton University in the late 1980s. Given what had happened during Iran-Contra, everyone was intrigued to hear what this Washington insider had to say. Bob Woodward had just published a book full of revelations about Iran-Contra (plus ça change!). This could have been awkward for Gates but he turned it to his advantage by saying bluntly: “I’m not going to take any questions about anything Bob Woodward has written”, effectively shutting down the discussion of anything too controversial. Perhaps he should adopt this tactic in his Senate confirmation hearings, given that much of the dirt on the Bush administration and Iraq has just been aired in Woodward’s latest tome, State of Denial.
After finding myself in conflict with one French colleague at the Colleage de France Striekback article, Global Echo and the UK boy band McFly McFly article, Global Echo there is still the need for truth.
Posted by: Rhoderick Gates | November 9th, 2006 at 5:10 pm | Report this commentBob Gates(no relation to my knowledge) is hardly a nominee that will bring ‘new thinking’ to the occupation of Iraq. Moving troops here and there inside Iraq is not ‘new’, unilateral and full withdrawl(including US companies) from Iraq is. But that’s not ‘on the table’ for Bob, nor for the rest of the members of the Iraq Inquiry Group that he’s in.
Mr. Rachman, your references to the Vietnam war are wholly flawed to the core of untruth. South Vietnam has never had the world’s second biggest oil source. Nor is the US Establishment turning away from the occupation.
We know ‘freedom’ wasn’t being ‘defended’ in South Vietnam, it was a brutal military tyranny once the French were driven out (they were driven out by force by the native inhabitants because the French wouldn’t leave willingly). Nor was the country being ‘defended’.
It was being attacked by the world’s biggest military superpower: the United States of America. With a puppet regime based on political and economic repression losing grip and ‘development’ ideas espoused by active South Vietnamese the American Establishment knew they had to act to stop Vietnam democratising one iota and becoming a model that might embolden others to develop their resources for domestic needs.
In internal records this is denounced as “economic nationalism” and “radical nationalism”. A “virus that might infect others”. The internal record reveals President Kennedy ordered covert sabotage of Chinese industry to stop China being a model other East-Asian countries might emulate too.
In 2002 The US and a ‘coalition’ invaded Afghanistan in another war of aggression. There was an article in the New York Times, I believe by Thomas Freedman where he denounced what he called ‘critics of the war’. What’s he talking about?
What he defines as ‘critics’ are those he asserts were wrong to say that “air bombing wouldn’t work” and that a “ground invasion would be necessary”. For some reason he identifies this argument with the anti-war movement, actually he’s describing the Right wing! But of course his purpose is to discredit the anti-war movement. Notice the ‘criticism’. It’s purely tactical.
It’s about what tactics should be used to win the war. And this self-styled ‘intellectual’ calls that ‘criticism. We didn’t say that about the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, or take the Russian invasion of Czeckolakia in 1968.
Their tactics worked fine, it was a swift and successful invasion. They didn’t kill many people, so what was wrong with it? We ALL KNOW what was wrong with it. It didn’t matter if their tactics ‘worked’, it’s irrelevant. It didn’t matter if they didn’t kill many Czechs, that’s not justification of the invasion.
What matters was their purpose and acts. A war of aggression to impose a repressive political regime, that’s what mattered. But that’s not something that can be voiced in the Western intellectual community. It’s unspeakable! We’re expected to keep our mouths shut about ourselves but wail about official enemies.
I note your lack of hisorical accuracy and present-day confusion(to say the least) with the latest events in Washington.
Mr Rachman, I would like to congratulate you on a discussion forum which has attracted some well-argued and sometimes extraordinary comments.
Posted by: Jonathan L, London | November 10th, 2006 at 7:23 am | Report this commentLet’s hope Bob Gates is not merely a safe pair of hands. I worry less about his willingness to engage in open debate, especially when the Princeton incident was connected with the sensitive matter of intelligence, and more whether he, or anyone else in his shoes, could be tough enough to carry forward any kind of plan of action, and quickly enough to salvage the situation, where there are no soft options. I wish him luck.
As for the neo-cons, the best they should now be hoping for is to save face as best they can between now and the nominations for the next elections. The stuffing has been knocked well and truly out of their mandate, and their foreign policy is plainly irrepairably holed below the waterline, and is rapidly sinking into the Arabian Gulf. Americans should guard against brazen hypocracy from those genuine neo-cons who dare to deny ownership of the current mess.
As for Mr Bush Jr, perhaps we will now discover to what extent he was ever really an author of his Iraq policy. Since the election results, he seems surprisingly open to change, for someone who had apparently been so wedded to an ideological crusade. Maybe he was not one of the ones really behind any of it, but had just fallen into company with a dangeous crowd, namely the neo-cons? Perhaps, to draw an outrageously provocative comparison, rather like Emperor Hirohito was supposed to have done before and during World War Two?