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The Quiet Fury of Robert Gates
Wall Street Journal ^ | January 7, 2013 | Robert M. Gates

Posted on 01/08/2014 4:56:22 AM PST by Timber Rattler

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To: Sequoyah101
Good Post, sadly.


41 posted on 01/08/2014 7:07:24 AM PST by nathanbedford ("Attack, repeat, attack!" Bull Halsey)
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To: Mr Rogers

Who can you name that wasn’t? And if he was, was overruled by a lying pos sec of state?


42 posted on 01/08/2014 7:13:24 AM PST by MestaMachine (My caps work. You gotta earn them.)
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To: Timber Rattler

In the article he bashes Bush, Obama, Rats and Repubs about the same. He seems to have gone out of his way NOT to give a political advantage to anyone.


43 posted on 01/08/2014 7:15:07 AM PST by Brooklyn Attitude (Things are only going to get worse.)
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To: nathanbedford

Super analysis! I couldn’t agree with you more. Thanks for taking the time.


44 posted on 01/08/2014 7:16:00 AM PST by MNGal
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To: nathanbedford

Well stated.


45 posted on 01/08/2014 7:19:18 AM PST by X-spurt (CRUZ missile - armed and ready.)
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To: Mr Rogers

I am speaking specifically about colin powell who was running his OWN foreign policy parallel to bush...and nothing was ever done about it.


46 posted on 01/08/2014 7:19:25 AM PST by MestaMachine (My caps work. You gotta earn them.)
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To: fatnotlazy

Gates stayed on, in fact I think that Bush, Cheney and other GOP leaders encouraged him to stay on, out of the fear that AQ would exploit the transition between the two Administrations to launch a major attack or a series of major attacks.

Go back to late 2008 and early 2009 and read the articles on the transition, indicating that it was the most well planned and thorough ever conducted. Gates staying on was part of that ... no one wanted a neophyte Administration confronted with a major terrorist event. Remember that Bush had the expertise of both Cheney and Rumsfeld to draw on following 9-11. Gates was supposed to provide that to Obama.

It can certainly be argued that Gates hung around too long, probably should have left after the 2010 midterms. I wouldn’t be surprised at all that he stayed beyond that in the anticipation that with Republicans running the House of Reps things would change for the better ...


47 posted on 01/08/2014 7:27:30 AM PST by tanknetter
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To: PowderMonkey
You bring up an excellent point. I think Gates is a self serving ass but power is addictive. It is not just the big things but the little things also. People holding the door open, best seats at restaurants etc. It all adds up.
Small story. My wife and I want to a conference in Nashville. Whole thing on expense account. We stayed at the best hotel, valet parking, fine rental etc. You very quickly get used to people sucking up to you and it is tough to not get used to it or start to really like the attention.
It is easy to criticize unless you have been there.
48 posted on 01/08/2014 7:59:44 AM PST by prof.h.mandingo (Buck v. Bell (1927) An idea whose time has come (for extreme liberalism))
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To: nathanbedford
Great post. We cannot “turn the other cheek” to evil.
Christians always forget Jesus in the temple. Not much cheek turning there. In the last decade I have noticed how little that story is talked about. In the old days of the Chruch they liked to trot out that one. It was more if you don't behave God will kick your butt. Of course nuns will do that to you.
49 posted on 01/08/2014 8:13:07 AM PST by prof.h.mandingo (Buck v. Bell (1927) An idea whose time has come (for extreme liberalism))
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To: nathanbedford

I agree with you on Bush...I think it was his very decency, or at any rate, his idea of how a decent man should act, that did him in.

One of the problems with having a weak or self-effacing leader is that the people who look to him for leadership are left in the lurch and unprotected. The GOP, with its huge RINO contingent (and Bush really wasn’t a RINO, despite some of his policies particularly later on as he tried to win favor from the left), was busy trying to prove to the world during the campaign that they were as much Bush-haters as everybody else, because the media had done such a fantastic job at demonizing the inoffensive Bush precisely because they knew that he was a little more conservative. I think this extended to the GOP candidates as well; they were running against Bush, and also seem to accept Obama as a foregone conclusion to such an extent that they didn’t even oppose him and spent most of their time shooting at each other.

If there had been a genuine Republican party, as you say, with genuine positions independent of Bush’s success or not in carrying them out, the weaker members might have had a rallying point and some ideological identity and way of fighting back. But the GOP didn’t offer this.

So when the left came up with a candidate who was, most importantly of all, black, and second most important, a complete unknown with an obscure past and a chameleon-like personality to whom anything could be attributed, the GOP and all its weak-sister members (such as Gates) really didn’t know what to do.

I see Gates as going to work day after day wondering if this was all a nightmare and he’d wake up if he stuck it out long enough. But instead Obama’s viciousness just unleashed even more viciousness from everybody to his empowered apparatchiks in the WH to the Dem members of Congress who held these “hearings” which were mainly meant to indict Bush for his performance, even though he was no longer in office.

I absolutely agree that Gates should have quit earlier and he should have come clean earlier, but I think he was probably somewhat afraid and, as you point out, completely unsupported by others in the party. I hope his book is only the first of many tell-alls by people who have survived their encounter with the Obama government.


50 posted on 01/08/2014 8:17:12 AM PST by livius
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To: ThePatriotsFlag

Oh, I knew it too, right off the bat, as did most posters here on FR. But my point was that people like Gates, who have been used to going along to get along all of their political and work lives, and have actually developed the reasonable expectation based on experience of being able to deal with somebody in the WH who wasn’t crazy, probably found it much more difficult to accept the reality of what was happening.

Bloggers, people here, and a few columnists called attention to this, but you have to remember that the mainstream media and even a lot of relatively sane and more or less conservative commentators absolutely gushed over Obama, ignored all the glaring signs of his instability and complete unfitness for the office of President of the US, and covered up anything negative that emerged about him. So Gates would obviously have had to be either a very assured individual with full confidence in his own standards, or somebody who had a lot of institutional support (from his party). He was neither and, frankly, I’m a little surprised that he has actually gotten up the nerve to come forward at this point, late though it be.


51 posted on 01/08/2014 8:24:18 AM PST by livius
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To: SecondAmendment

Don’t you remember how the press and the media nearly fainted when Obama emerged from behind those columns and how all the black people, young white slackers and women present burst into tears? We thought it was nuts and that it showed only that he himself was nuts, but most of the country seems to have loved it.


52 posted on 01/08/2014 8:26:37 AM PST by livius
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To: livius

I’d like to agree with you on this, but Reagan was decent, self-effacing, gracious, and yet confident about the moral, economic, and scientific foundations beneath his decisions.

In fact, the only places where he had regrets about his presidency were areas where he betrayed what he knew for what he ‘felt’ - raising taxes and immigration ‘reform’.

Bush, with the benefit of Reagan’s mistakes felt obligated to repeat them anyway.

That’s why history, as a field of study, has fallen out of favor.

At the end, leaders fit into three categories - those that learn from reading about the mistakes of others, those that need to watch others make mistakes and learn from them, and those that believe that ‘this time its different’.

In comparing Bush, Clinton, and Obama, only Clinton was willing to tailor his ideology with what he saw going on outside the window. This isn’t to say that Clinton was a moral leader, a good leader, or had the country on the right track either.

As an example, he passed welfare reform because he knew it wasn’t actually helping the people it was intended to help, and he refused to lie to blue collar workers about his ability to do anything about low skill labor jobs moving overseas. This stopped at the water’s edge however, with his ‘ignore militant Islamism and it will go away’ foreign policy.

Reagan, however, was amazing, in that he inherited 30 years of ‘Cold War Without End’ orthodoxy and said, “No, my view on this is ‘We Win.’”

Thatcher, however, was the second gift from God that Britain had had in the 20th century. She was, hands down, the best leader of the late 20th century.


53 posted on 01/08/2014 8:36:47 AM PST by RinaseaofDs
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To: Gaffer

Rush Limbaugh is on the air right now echoing exactly what I have said!


54 posted on 01/08/2014 9:11:14 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: prof.h.mandingo
It's the little things, and the "Jazz". The adrenaline rush of excitement at being at the epicenter of events, witnessing and making history, and exerting influence and power. Those things are not easily surrendered, and remain the principal reasons many stay on from one administration to the other, and into post retirement. Some far too long. During my career, I personally witnessed several men locked out, or forcibly removed from their offices, because they simply could not accept mandatory retirement, or resignation at administration's end. One was literally carried out by security personnel, while he remained seated in his office chair, frantically clutching at the door frames on the way out.
55 posted on 01/08/2014 9:41:44 AM PST by PowderMonkey (WILL WORK FOR AMMO)
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To: PowderMonkey

Thank you for your perspective. It explains a lot, and makes the rare standout such as Ted Cruz even more admirable, as he has vigorously resisted the DC status quo.


56 posted on 01/08/2014 10:39:18 AM PST by whinecountry (Semper Ubi Sub Ubi)
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To: RinaseaofDs

I agree that Reagan and Thatcher were great, but the problem is that Gates didn’t work for them.

He worked for Bush and then for Obama. Bush was ethical, whether you agreed with him or not, but Obama is a raving nutcase and I think it was hard for Gates to adapt to this.


57 posted on 01/08/2014 3:53:38 PM PST by livius
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To: nathanbedford

I hate that it is accurate Sir.

There are young men being ordered into harms way but vermin not fit to lick their boots.


58 posted on 01/08/2014 7:49:42 PM PST by Sequoyah101
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