Posted on 06/19/2011 3:28:26 PM PDT by kristinn
Aboard the Pentagon jet on his last foreign trip as secretary of defense, Robert Gates takes a moment to peer across the American horizon—and the view is dire: the U.S. is in danger of losing its supremacy on the global stage, he says.
“I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position,” he tells NEWSWEEK, seated in a windowless conference room aboard the Boeing E-4B. “It didn’t have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.”
A pause.
“To tell you the truth, that’s one of the many reasons it’s time for me to retire, because frankly I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government … that’s being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.”
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
I’ll take Newsweek with a grain of salt.
Gates’ best speech was the one he gave NATO last week, essentially calling them opn the carpet for not doing enough, leaving the US to shoulder all of the military burden. I almsot stood up and applauded. I am going to miss him, one of the few adults in the room with the man-child adminstration. I wish him well in retirement, Lord knows he has earned it.
No where did I say back away from the world. Nothing was said about leadership. Nothing was said about hollowing out the military.
I am a nationalist not an Internationalist. A nation leads from a position of strength and only when we recover that can we make our contribution.
And the military... That is where the "Left" always talks about cutting. We have the most powerful military in the world, were it not, we would already be subjects to the vermin who seek to destroy us.
That was worth posting twice.
Yes he does. The forces of Darkness.
Behind? You can only lead from a position of strength. That must be regained. Not just financial or military strength, but moral strength.
Secetary Gates is a holdover from President Bush’s cabinet. He’s been saying for a very long time that he was going to resign as SECDEF prior to the end of President Obama’s term, and that he’d announce his resignation before the 2012 presidential campaign makes it impossible to get a new SECDEF nominated and confirmed without getting entangled in a political uproar.
In other words, his resignation at this time is no surprise.
I have no reason to believe that Gates resigned because of disagreement with President Obama’s policies; I think his resignation was planned long ago, but I also think he **DOES** disagree and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him saying a lot more in the next year or so. Remember that the president of the Association of the United States Army has spoken a lot about how he was unhappy with the Clinton drawdown of the military while he was serving as a four-star general, but of course, he had to do what he was told by Clinton as the commander-in-chief.
People who want to attack the SECDEF for going along with President Obama’s policies need to remember that in the military chain of command, if you’ve got a major problem with the direction of the military, you resign your commission and then speak out when you’re not part of the military. The SECDEF may wear a suit and tie rather than stars, but the same rules apply to him as any other senior leader in the Department of Defense.
I don’t like President Obama any more than 99.9 percent of other Freepers, but I hope we can all agree that those in the chain of command need to follow the chain of command. To deny that principle is to go down a road that leads to military coups and banana republics. Elections have consequences, and the way to fix the problems Obama is causing is to vote him out of office. As long as he’s there, those in the chain of command need to do as they’re told or resign their commissions — and I might get really happy right now if a senior leader got mad enough to resign his/her commission in protest and join the presidential race on a platform of keeping our president from hollowing out our military.
(Yeah, I know ... shoot me for saying his/her. I know female colonels who are really mad at President Obama’s policies, so maybe there are some really mad female generals or admirals out there, too. If so, they’re saying quiet, and that’s what they should be doing since politics is not their job.)
Unfortunately, much of the world rejects civilization.
He was on a Fox interview (Think it was with Chris Wallace) and said he thought O was handling the Libya situation legally. Gates is saying ‘all the right things’ before he leaves office in approx a week. I was hoping he’d say something to indicate that congressional approval was needed, but he didn’t. Surprised me, but he is being loyal to his boss.
Granted, most Americans don't even know what “CSM” means and it would take time to explain the role of the highest-ranking senior enlisted personnel as “enlisted equivalents to a general who don't need to ‘play nice.’” It might be refreshing to see somebody run for office from the senior enlisted ranks, at least at the Congressional level. Let's just say that “go along to get along” would most emphatically not be the motto of any retired CSM serving in Congress.
I read it as saying he’s resigning because the economy is grossly mismanaged. A poorly run economy will greatly impact military funding and mission posture and he wants no part in that.
Yeah, and then, maybe then the military could buy beds for soldiers at mobilization stations so they didn't have to sleep on mattresses that have springs sticking out of them. Our military men and women who do the actual fighting and grunt work get treated like garbage by their higher ups. It's as though they don't care because they aren't impacted directly by it.
Dear misguided neocons:
George Washington warned of avoiding foreign entanglements that our not in our interest.
The United States wasn’t founded to be the world’s supercop or superpower or to try and nation-build bankrupt cultures.
The US was established to safeguard the life, liberty and the propserity of its citizens.
Our “engagement” with the rest of the world should be based on that and that alone. Anything that doesn’t promote the interests of Americans shouldn’t be done.
The purpose of our military is not to subsidize the defense of foreign countries who apparently care less about their own defense than we do.
We’ve squandered too much of our precious blood and capital for little or nothing in return. Even worse is the extent to which getting involved in anything and everything abroad has contributed to the life- and economy-sapping growth of Big, Fat Government at home.
Dear misguided neocons:
George Washington warned of avoiding foreign entanglements that are not in our interest.
The United States wasn’t founded to be the world’s supercop or superpower or to try and nation-build bankrupt cultures.
The US was established to safeguard the life, liberty and the propserity of its citizens.
Our “engagement” with the rest of the world should be based on that and that alone. Anything that doesn’t promote the interests of Americans shouldn’t be done and should not be funded by American taxpayers.
The purpose of our military is not to subsidize the defense of foreign countries who apparently care less about their own defense than we do.
We’ve squandered too much of our precious blood and capital for little or nothing in return. Even worse is the extent to which getting involved in anything and everything abroad has contributed to the life- and economy-sapping growth of Big, Fat Government here at home.
Enough.
Good Lord! I knew General William Westmoreland was old, but not THAT old.
“I read it as saying he’s resigning because the economy is grossly mismanaged.”
I didn’t see where he came close to saying that-—only that there was much disagreement between the defense hawks and budget hawks, particularly citing this division among the Repubs.
After reading the article again, it looks to me like the battle just drained the fight out of him, or as likely, he was asked to resign to make room for Leon Panetta.
In my humble opinion, Gates is one of the true patriots. He deserves credit for trying to do the right thing and limit the damage the Bamster intends for our defense posture. That said, there is a limit to what one man can do. It is no shame to refuse to ride the ship down when your boss has pulled the plug on you.
I find his assessment of the situation extremely sobering.
It is the fault of the American electorate for electing Bam. The media are craven for not being honest on who he is, but elections have consequences. You and I didn’t vote for him, but we are going to suffer the consequences.
It always makes me think of the famous scene from “Gone With The Wind” when the Confederate men are standing around at Tara before the war, bragging about how the Yankees will flee in battle with soiled pants, when someone asks Rhett Butler what he thinks. He makes a rational observation about the disparity in manufacturing base, how the North has ships, men, factories, materials railroads and such, and how he thinks it is going to be difficult for the Confederacy.
Talk about the proverbial turd in the punchbowl. In their eyes, he was a traitor and they wanted to kill him. But he was right.
There is no money.
And we are playing war when we should be fighting.
Well said! That very well illustrates our situation.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 3:58:28 PM · 86 of 105 mikhailovich to milagro
I have a bad feeling Gates will step down within months, if not sooner.
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I was right
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