Miss ya, Rummy.
Posted on 01/25/2007 7:43:28 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
Mr. Gates, it turns out, is a hawk.
In just the last two weeks, he has supported deepening the American military commitment in Iraq, spoken approvingly of sending more troops to Afghanistan and, after dispatching a second American aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, declared that negotiations with Iran right now would be futile.
But a hawk may not be all he is. His favorite quotation from history, he told reporters traveling with him this week for meetings with allies and commanders in Europe and the Middle East, is from Frederick the Great, the 18th century Prussian monarch and gifted musician: “Negotiations without arms are like music books without instruments.”
Or, put another way, it takes military power to create the leverage necessary to make negotiations fruitful.
Mr. Gates seems to be hoping that a short-term application of military might can shift the balance of power in the region sufficiently to make eventual political settlements — between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, with Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and even with the ayatollahs in Iran — more plausible for the United States than they appear right now.
It is too early to say whether this new approach will work, or even whether Mr. Gates’s views will ultimately drive decisions in an administration where President Bush himself has rarely shown interest in that sort of strategic thinking.
But there is no mistaking the course change at the Pentagon.
Already there are signs, some large and some small, that Mr. Gates would like to discard assumptions that have dictated how the Bush administration has fought in Iraq.
The most far-reaching of those has been the idea, promoted by his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, that the American military should be deployed with the fewest number of forces necessary to do the job.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
One way to take that quote is that once you memorize the music, you no longer need the music books-- you just needs the instruments.
I think the verses of diplomacy are getting pretty repetitive. I dont think we need the music books anymore-- were familiar with what the Iranians will say. Let's watch em dance now.
If Gates knows his Frederick the Great (more than a single quotation) he was a good pick. Let's also hope he knows his Clausewitz, Sun Tzu and Machiavelli.
Actually I take that back, they don't believe that less force gives us leverage. They simply don't want us to have leverage.
Notice the negative tone used by the author regarding the surpising "hawkishness" of Gates....and yet, the author STILL has to imply that GATES is the one with plans that Pres. Bush would NEVER have thought of....LOL
Starts out as a hit piece on Gates' hawkish bent...and still has to dig at Bush..
PING
Leverage is evil. Weakness is strength.
We had posters here who said that Gates wasn't up to the job.
bump -- always the dig at POTUS.
Miss ya, Rummy.
What, you mean that announcing that the military option is off the table before negotiations is NOT the way to gain strategic advantage? Herr Schroeder and Monsieur Chirac are wrong? How can this be?
I know...I don't discount anything Rummy did....but we know that the NYTimes isn't going to say anything nice about him.
If he still has an office at DOD and has security clearance..we may never know what he is still doing.
So what? The NYTimes is on record as being for cut-n-run.
I think I remember just after his leaving was announced that W was going to continue to have him as consultant. And, I really can't imagine that they wouldn't be in regular communication after all they know and have been through together.
Negotiations - arms
Carrot - stick
Names may change but the reality stays the same.
One imagines the flamboyant fellows at the NYT assuming postures of histronic dismay at this obvious truism.
Gates is a hawk?? Only when viewed by the parakeets and parrots at the NY Times.... (no offense meant to lovers of those birds).
Why does this photo make me think of the typical NY Times editor? All red and yellow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Parrot.red.macaw.1.arp.750pix.jpg
I remember the day I realized the new SecDef wasn't the weak James Baker - type person that he was billed as. It was such a relief.
Melvin A. Goodman, a former Soviet analyst for the agency Now with VIPS and the Center for International Policy, directed by Dana Priest's husband William Goodfellow.
Goodfellow’s Bedfellows: Who’s in Bed with the Washington PostPosted by Fedora to Tailgunner JoeThe CIP has also involved itself in the Iraq antiwar movement. Two of CIP’s most vocal participants in this area have been Jim Mullins, a former Vietnam antiwar activist, and Melvin Goodman, a former CIA Soviet analyst who resigned in 1990 over the anti-Communist stance of William Casey and Robert Gates.
Goodman’s circle of associations is particularly relevant to the nexus between CIP’s antiwar network and the media.
In 2003 Goodman joined former CDP member David MacMichael at VIPS. In October 2003 Goodman appeared with Joseph Wilson, Christopher Dodd, Robert White, and Dana Priest at CIP’s Cowboy Diplomacy conference. CIP’s report on the conference touted Goodman’s book Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the Nation at Risk and his appearance in the film Uncovered: The War on Iraq, which also featured Wilson, several members of VIPS, and Scott Ritter, whose propaganda efforts had recently been financed with Oil-for-Food vouchers by Saddam Hussein’s agent Shakir Al-Khafaji.
During the 2004 campaign Goodman became a policy advisor of the Secure America Project of the Fourth Freedom Forum, presided over by former CDP member and current Win Without War associate David Cortright. Secure America’s board of advisers included Goodman, Robert McNamara, Anthony Lake, Morton Halperin, Win Without War’s Tom Andrews, and Joseph Wilson.
In July 2005 Goodman spoke as a panelist at the so-called Congressional Briefing on 9/11 cohosted by Cythina McKinney. There he endorsed McKinney’s conspiracy theories blaming the US for 9/11 by saying, “I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.”
Goodman’s media contacts have ranged from underground extremist outlets to more mainstream left-leaning media. Goodman has been featured regularly on Pacifica Radio, historically associated with far-left activity in the San Francisco area. In July 2003 one of Goodman’s articles was featured at the anti-Zionist website CounterPunch, which initially hosted VIPS email address and articles. Meanwhile Goodman was hosted by the website of the Washington Post, taking opportunities to plug his book while fielding questions for online visitors during the early phases of the Iraq War and the Plame leak investigation.
On FR thread "Gates Hearing in Senate May Have Echoes of 1991," News/Activism 11/10/2006 12:18:38 PM PST · 15 of 28
Harold P. Ford, a retired C.I.A. veteran who took many by surprise in 1991 by testifying against Mr. Gates, took a different view. “It was tough for me because he’d been my boss and our personal relations were fine,” Mr. Ford said Thursday. “But the problem was the skewing of intelligence by him to suit what the consumer wanted to hear. I think there was no question about it.”Mr. Ford, 85, who worked at the agency from 1950 until the early 1990s, said he remembered Mr. Gates exaggerating Soviet misdeeds around the world. “He painted a dire picture of increased Russian pressure on Iran when the people who followed that issue were telling me the exact opposite,”...
Melvin A. Goodman, a former Soviet analyst for the agency, said on Thursday that during the 1980s, Mr. Gates acted as a “filter” for intelligence, trimming findings on the Soviet threat to match the hard-line ideological expectations of his boss, William J. Casey, then the director of central intelligence. “If the secretary of defense allows himself to become the same kind of filter for intelligence on Iraq, that would be very dangerous,”... (Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, the bad guys and gals have been afraid of this guy for quite a while. Hillary even stole his FBI file.
And this author is suprised Gates is a hawk? As if Bush would hire a dove.
Since Gates likes to quote Friederich der Grosse, I will quote Clausewitz and Bismarck....
"Warfare is an extension of diplomacy."
"Diplomacy is warfare concealed."
JUNE 26, 1996 : (FILEGATE : WHITE HOUSE ILLEGALLY OBTAINS FBI FILES ON POLITICAL OPPONENTS & COMPETITORS - INCLUDING THE FILE ON FORMER CIA DIRECTOR ROBERT GATES, WHO WOULD LATER BE NOMINATED IN 2006 BY PRESIDENT W BUSH TO REPLACE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE DONALD RUMSFELD) In documents it was discovered that an additional 300 FBI files were obtained by the White House, among them files on former National Security advisor Brent Scowcroft and former CIA Director Robert Gates.
It was revealed that federal prosecutors wanted to indict former White House travel director Billy Dale before the 1994 mid-term elections.The charge emerged from FBI e-mail messages. The messages, obtained by congressional Republicans, date from fall 1994, when Dale was indicted.
One reads: "I contacted Jane who advised that she was advised by (FBI special agent) Pam Bombardi, that (Department of Justice) trial attorney Stuart Goldberg had stated that she was to 'do the indictment before the elections, probably on Oct. 4, 1994," FBI employee Gregory Meacham wrote to a colleague by e-mail. "Since when do indictments hinge on election dates?" House Government Reform and Oversight Committee chairman William Clinger (R-Penn.) asked.
Also, an FBI agent interviewed by Senate Republicans said he was pressured by top Clinton aides for confidential information on Dale. White House personnel security head Craig Livingstoneresigned, and former White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum apologized that the White House improperly collected some 700 FBI reports....
ny times ... at the top of their game, eh?
The slimes continues to sink lower with each assinine column...
Good re-post .. thanks.
Interesting--didn't know he was a Filegate target.
There were a lot of them. Wonder where they are?
BTW, a frontpage article in the Houston Chronicle reports that Gates's former affiliation, Texas A&M University, is 2nd only to the U.S. Military Academy in the number of alumni lost while serving the nation in Iraq. [The pilot of the Apache that went down last week with 12 aboard was an Aggie.] Gig 'em! And God bless them all.
How could this writer possibly know how much interest President Bush has shown in this kind of strategic thinking? The writer, the confused Mr. Cloud, does not attend the high level strategy meetings where the President discusses these strategic topics, so this writer's statements on this subject appear to be pure assumption based on political bias.
I look forward to the rapidly approaching day when the dismal New York Times goes out of print and becomes just another pathetic left-wing website.
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