Like Gates, Clifford replaced a Defense Secretary (Robert
McNamara) who was tied to an increasingly unpopular war. McNamara was
considered as much an architect of the Vietnam War as Gates’
predecessor (Donald Rumsfeld) was of the Iraq War.
In another
parallel, it was learned later that McNamara harbored grave doubts
about the prospects for victory in Vietnam and that Rumsfeld privately
urged Bush to consider a de-escalation in Iraq before stepping down
last November.
But a key difference in the cases of Clifford and
Gates is that Clifford initiated the excruciating process of
withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam, while Gates so far has simply
overseen an escalation of U.S. troops into Iraq, the “surge.” Instead
of convincing Bush to look for a route out of Iraq, Gates helped send
more troops in.
The question now confronting Gates is whether he
will continue to be Bush’s loyal front man on the war or chart a course
closer to the views of the Pentagon’s top brass who favor a sharp
reduction in U.S. troop levels in Iraq next year.
On Aug. 24,
the Los Angeles Times reported that Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was expected to advise Bush to cut U.S.
forces in Iraq by almost half in 2008, reflecting concerns that
continued high troop levels in Iraq would damage American readiness
elsewhere.
The Times wrote that the Joint Chiefs favored
reducing U.S. force levels in Iraq to below 100,000 soldiers, down from
the current 162,000. White House officials and Bush’s hand-picked
commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, favor maintaining higher
numbers, about 134,000 troops through 2008.
Pace’s position – favoring nearly halving the Iraq troop levels – is privately shared by Gates, the Times reported.
“According
to administration and military officials, the Joint Chiefs believe it
is of crucial strategic importance to reduce the size of the U.S. force
in Iraq in order to bolster the military's ability to respond to other
threats, a view that is shared by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates,”
the Times wrote.
Pentagon Shakeup
Knowing Pace’s
skepticism about the surge, Bush refused to appoint Pace to a second
term as JCS chairman. Instead, Bush tapped Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen
to succeed Pace, although Mullen is said to share Pace’s concerns about
the stress that the Iraq War is putting on the U.S. force structure.
The
case for an Iraq War drawdown also got a boost on Aug. 23 when Sen.
John Warner of Virginia, ranking Republican on the Senate Armed
Services Committee, urged Bush to start bringing at least some U.S.
troops – possibly 5,000 – home by Christmas.
“We simply cannot
as a nation stand and continue to put our troops at continuous risk of
loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action,''
Warner said after returning from an inspection tour of Iraq.
But
one of Bush’s new Iraq field commander, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch,
promptly slapped down Warner’s idea. In a video news conference on Aug.
24, Lynch vowed to keep U.S. troops at high levels until the Iraqi army
is ready to do the job.
“Only when the Iraqi security forces
come forward and say ‘OK, here I am, I’m trained and equipped, I’m
ready, I’m the Iraqi Army or I’m the Iraqi police,’ can I turn those
sanctuaries over, and that’s not going to happen between now and
Christmas,” said Lynch, who oversees areas south and east of Baghdad.
The
looming confrontation between the Joint Chiefs and congressional war
critics on one side and the White House and Bush’s new field generals
on the other could test Gates’s famed skills for political maneuvering.
In
his meteoric rise at the CIA in the early 1980s, Gates tied his
fortunes to the star of Ronald Reagan’s hard-line CIA Director William
Casey. That worked well for Gates who was named chief of the CIA’s
analytical division and then CIA deputy director.
However,
Gates’s career path took a detour when the Iran-Contra scandal broke
and congressional Democrats suspected that Gates had misled them. Those
doubts wrecked Gates’s plan to succeed Casey, who died in May 1987.
Gates’s
career was salvaged by George H.W. Bush when he became President in
1989 and named Gates to be a deputy national security adviser. When the
Iran-Contra scandal quieted down in 1991, Bush elevated Gates to CIA
director.
After Bush’s 1992 defeat, Gates was forced out of
government and ended up as president of Texas A&M. He was lured
back to the power circles of Washington when President George W. Bush
named him to the bipartisan Iraq Study Group in 2006 and then sought
him out to replace Rumsfeld.
Rumsfeld’s Doubts
It now
appears Rumsfeld fell out of Bush’s favor in fall 2006 because he began
pushing the agenda of the Pentagon’s top brass who favored
de-escalating the Iraq War. Bush was still looking for ways to achieve
victory.
In a secret memo sent to Bush on Nov. 6, Rumsfeld
called for a “major adjustment” in Iraq War policy. “Clearly what U.S.
forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast
enough,” Rumsfeld wrote, seeking consideration of “an accelerated
drawdown of U.S. bases” from 55 to 10 to 15 by April 2007 and to five
by July 2007.
Rumsfeld also suggested that U.S. generals
“withdraw U.S. forces from vulnerable positions – cities, patrolling,
etc. – and move U.S. forces to a Quick Reaction Force status, operating
from within Iraq and Kuwait, to be available when Iraqi security forces
need assistance.”
And in an implicit criticism of Bush’s lofty
rhetoric about transforming Iraq and the Middle East, Rumsfeld said the
administration should “recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S.
goals (how we talk about them) – go minimalist.” [
NYT, Dec. 3, 2006]
Rumsfeld
submitted his resignation letter the same day as his memo, though both
documents were kept hidden until later leaked to the news media. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “
Rumsfeld’s Mysterious Resignation.”]
When
Rumsfeld’s departure and Gates’s appointment were announced on Nov. 8 –
the day after the Democratic congressional election victory – the moves
were interpretted as a signal that Bush was ready to start compromising
with the new Democratic majority and winding down the Iraq War.
That
conventional wisdom turned out to be dead wrong. In reality, the
abrasive Rumsfeld had embraced a troop reduction and the mild-mannered
Gates had stepped in as the pleasant front man for Bush’s escalation in
defiance of the Democrats, the Pentagon brass and Iraq's field
commanders, Generals John Abizaid and George Casey.
Bush soon
replaced Abizaid and Casey with Petraeus and other field generals who
were on board for the surge; the Joint Chiefs grudgingly fell into
line; and Gates offered a less-confrontational style in selling Bush’s
new strategy.
As the months wore on, Gates continued to draw
favorable reactions from both the Democrats and the Washington press
corps. He was portrayed as a sensitive man who was troubled by the
burdens of war and who choked up when talking about dead soldiers.
But
now Gates finds himself on the hot seat. He must decide whether he will
stay with President Bush, Gen. Petraeus and other “continue-the-surge”
advocates – or side with the Joint Chiefs, congressional war critics
and the broader American public in demanding that the troops start to
come home.
The Defense Secretary’s decision could have a major
impact on the course of the war and go a long way to determining how
history will judge Robert Gates. [For more on Gates’s record, see
Consortiumnews.com’s “
Why Trust Robert Gates on Iraq?”]
Writings 
Defense Secretary Robert Gates may be confronting the career decision of a lifetime: Should the former CIA director lash himself to the mast with George W. Bush and risk going down with the foundering Iraq War ship or should he look to a post-Bush period and position himself as a Washington wise man?
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