Gates: A “Done Deal”

I know he’s well regarded, but this really doesn’t thrill me.

Though I should disclose that his former job as president of Texas A&M might be prejudicing me.

KT here–

Fourlegs: I knew that. Did you hear the one about the…?

I only tolerate KT since she moved out of Texas

Surge II! Let’s do this!

I’m kidding; I like Gates, blah blah blah no drama blah. How about one token Drama appointment: Triumph the Insult Comic Dog as White House Barksperson. Throw me a bone here; I asked for Cabinet members with frickin’ lasers on their heads.

Is Obama going to have at least one token liberal in his government or are liberals no longer welcome now that they helped put him in power? Given that Nader destroyed the centrist cult’s chances a few years back, one would think that they wouldn’t want to drive all the liberals out of the party. However, I imagine they will be back again when they need money and votes in a few years.

pourme: how about… hillary at state?

Fourlegs: I knew that. Did you hear the one about the…?
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Ha. Aggies, DOAN WANT!!
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Hey, did you hear about the pre-election activities on the A&M campus? the aggie republican club set up a huge sign with Obama’s face and invited their fellow students to throw eggs at it. Not making this up – a friend of mine (a fellow Crockett-eer) who is a grad student there witnesses it.

I only tolerate KT since she moved out of Texas

Hey now!
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Texas has produced not only KT, but also Molly Ivins and four legs good. Show a little respect.

Yay. This makes me so happy. Gates has been a great, great SecDef. Glad he’s staying.
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On the whole guest-blogger suggestion thing mentioned a few posts back, I’d like to see a post on torture=ineffective.
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Andrew Sullivanhad a nice post up about conversations between an actor and the producer of “24″. And I also wrote something about it today.
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To reference jayackroyd, if this comment’s html code comes out like a bunch of cheese in a sewer, blame the lack of preview.

On the whole guest-blogger suggestion thing mentioned a few posts back, I’d like to see a post on torture=ineffective.

Billmon had a brilliant series of posts up about this very subject back during Abu Ghraib. Not sure if anyone can get to the archives.

On the whole guest-blogger suggestion thing mentioned a few posts back, I’d like to see a post on torture=ineffective.

Billmon had a brilliant series of posts up about this very subject back during Abu Ghraib. Not sure if anyone can get to the archives. It flat out doesn’t work and the army and the CIA has known this for a generation.

Well it’s not a tabloid story anymore.
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Bush off the wagon. Via Matt Browner-Hamlin’s tweet.
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http://www.andina.com.pe/Ingles/Noticia.aspx?Id=dgLcZ6OY0yg=

Sean,
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What I like about this is 1) continuity 2) Gates not an ideologue 3) reassures the service chiefs 4) Obama made it clear when talking to Petraeus that Obama is going to give orders.
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What I hate about this that it reinforces the idea that being bellicose is being strong. And that only republicans can be strong.
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If it’s for a year or so, on balance, net good. I still would have preferred Clinton in this slot to SecState.

Re Torture = ineffective. This is an older article, but very compelling: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding-is-torture-perio/

wow, that is some awesome commentor responsiveness. good articles, thanks.
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jay, I don’t really associate Gates with bellicosity. Rumsfeld and Cheney, yes. Gates, no. Also, Hillary as SecDef would have been a disaster. The military might, and I stress the might, hate her more than Rumsfeld. The Clintons destroyed and demoralized the military in the ’90s. People remember.
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Not to say that Bush didn’t do worse, but he did it in a very different way.

Jayack – your off the wagon comment intrigues me. The citation does say “apparently” was drinking. I expect that eight years into the Presidency Bush’s advance people know enough to instruct their hosts that Bush wants to drink something nonalcoholic that looks just like the alcoholic drinks. Your average hostess at your average party knows enough to do this.
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I’m willing to be persuaded though.

Am pleased that Gates is staying on for a year or so, and I hope he then gets replaced with somebody. Keeping him on pretty much takes care of Obama’s promise to have a Republican in a significant job.
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Derek – how touching that you’re concerned about whether there will be liberals in the cabinet, etc. Obama didn’t run as a “liberal” in the sense you probably mean. And getting us out of Iraq, stopping torture, restoring our standing in the world, rescinding the ban on federal funding for most stem cell research, tackling global warming in a serious way – all seem like good starts to me for a liberal/progressive agenda. We’re the reality-based good-government party.

I wonder if we like Gates because he was such a relief after Rumsfeld. Perhaps if he had followed someone sane, his rep would not be as good.

teresa,
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and that’s exactly the reason clinton looks so much better now than he did eight years ago.
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Gates would be slightly above average if he hadn’t followed Rumsfeld imho, but I could be wrong about that. And most SecDef’s couldn’t have been as successful as fast following Rumsfeld’s disaster.

This is someone else’s idea (a smart someone) but it bears repeating: Part of the rationale of having Gates on, beyond valuing competence over ideology, is having a Republican and Dem hawk (Hillary) go fix what they broke. They got us into this mess, and now they are in charge of getting us out. It also gives some cover to Obama to have a Repub on board in the exit strategy. Gives the impression of consensus.

Gates seems a clear-headed sensible man among the insanity. Me likey.

Sean — Good point.

I just got a Spam email from Newt Gingrich. Apparently secular radicals are trying to take God out of Thanksgiving. Here is a selected passage.
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Others seem intent on denying or whitewashing the central role that religious faith has played in American history, such as the attempt to whitewash God out of the Capitol Visitor’s Center (view the video and petition my wife, Callista, and I have created to ask Congress to ensure the Capitol Visitor’s Center is historically accurate about America’s Godly heritage.)
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My question is if this is what Newt was talking to her about when she was giving him hummers on his desk while he was still married to wife #2 and trying to get Clinton impeached. Just wondering.

“We’re the reality-based good-government party.”
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I’m sure you know what that means.

Newt is so cute when he blusters.

“We’re the reality-based good-government party.”
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It means we’re not the fantasy-based bad-government party. Grow up.

“It means we’re not the fantasy-based bad-government party. Grow up.”
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Thanks for clearing that up.

Derek, you earned that for the “token liberal” remark.

Excuse me for wanting a liberal to be part of the new Democratic administration. I’m really out of line thinking a liberal might be qualified when there are so many retreads, and Republicans around.

Newsflash. Melody Barnes is a progressive.

jay, I don’t really associate Gates with bellicosity. Rumsfeld and Cheney, yes. Gates, no.
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No I don’t either, and regret the apparent implication.
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Also, Hillary as SecDef would have been a disaster. The military might, and I stress the might, hate her more than Rumsfeld. The Clintons destroyed and demoralized the military in the ’90s. People remember
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One of the things that Hillary Clinton has to overcome is an association with her husband. I do not believe that her work in the Senate has been demoralizing for the military.
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I would welcome a conversation discussing how to move the US off a war footing, in the absence of any plausible enemy that will not be demoralizing for the people who work for the military.

“The Clintons destroyed and demoralized the military in the ’90s”
Destroyed? And yet they performed pretty well starting in October 2001.

what kathy said:
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Obama didn’t run as a “liberal” in the sense you probably mean. And getting us out of Iraq, stopping torture, restoring our standing in the world, rescinding the ban on federal funding for most stem cell research, tackling global warming in a serious way – all seem like good starts to me for a liberal/progressive agenda. We’re the reality-based good-government party.

PNNTO,
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Clinton really didn’t understand the military at all. The policy he enacted for the cutbacks of the military from it’s cold war size were done in pretty much the worst way possible. The “zero-defect” policy for promotions filled the senior officer and NCO corps with bureaucratic sucks ups who were awesome at fixing the paperwork to avoid responsibility.
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If the senior military hadn’t been so stacked with yes men as a side effect of this bias, Rumsfeld would have had actual pushback from the military. You wouldn’t have been able to cow a bunch of warriors by firing Shinseki. Tools like Pace would have been the exception instead of the rule. Talk to anyone from the first few years in Iraq and Afghanistan. Incompetent senior personnel were everywhere. EVERYWHERE. The number of missions done to fill out some deuchebag’s promotion sheet is truly criminal. The army lost its fighters and kept its pencil pushers, and when an actual war hit, the pencil pushers proved even worse than expected. That is Clinton’s fault.
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Don’t even get me started on the complete lack of leadership from the White House on curbing big budget defense programs that were aimed squarely at the Soviets during Clinton’s years in office. When Rumsfeld took over the Pentagon one of the first things he did was cut several of these – like the Comanche and Crusader. Yeah, the ones Clinton left alone were so bad even Rumsfeld knew they had to die.
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Jayack,
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Why should we separate Hillary from her husband? She largely ran on her experience as First Lady. That pretty much ties her to Bill’s administration.
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Before the U.S. can move off a war footing, we need to completely destroy the Pentagon’s budgeting system. I mean blow it up 100%. It’s too far gone to save in anything resembling its current form. Until that happens you’re just sticking fingers in a dike.

Why should we separate Hillary from her husband? She largely ran on her experience as First Lady. That pretty much ties her to Bill’s administration.
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I think she should be linked to the Clinton Administration as much as any senior advisor. In this case, a senior advisor who went on to build a record of experience in military affairs after leaving the WH. (I was just speaking with someone recently who said that her knowledge of the military is superior to her husband’s.) And I believe HRC has already built some very good relations with elements of the military, and having someone in that job who is focused on peoples’ welfare would be excellent. She would get personnel issues, and I imagine that would quickly enhance her popularity. She might also have been able to finally start addressing the problem of sexual violence.
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I understand that popularity and internal politics are important, but isn’t ruling out HRC because of her last name kind of like what you’re criticizing her husband for doing, when he promoted yes men? Maybe appointing on the basis of merit would be the best approach. If she were a great Secretary of Defense, she would eventually become popular. And even the most popular person will quickly become hated if they’re incompetent.

Sean Decoursey, I’m quite surprised at your pathological hatred of the Clintons, which is fine, but you don’t have your facts right. It was actually Dick Cheney as HW Bush’s SecDefense who enacted all those cuts to the military that you rail against.
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Preparedness: How Many Wars Can the U.S. Fight? – TIME

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Preparedness: How Many Wars Can the U.S. Fight?
Monday, Mar. 04, 1991
By JESSE BIRNBAUM Time Magazine
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In testimony before two congressional committees last week, Pentagon bosses Dick Cheney and Colin Powell defended their new multiyear budget, proposed earlier this month, which calls for a 25% cut in military personnel by 1995, a 4% reduction in spending and even the elimination of many of the weapons that have proved to be so dramatically effective in the gulf.
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Cheney and Powell make three arguments in favor of the cutbacks: 1) the runaway federal deficit dictates smaller defense budgets, 2) the Soviet threat has declined, and 3) quality can replace quantity.
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The key to the Pentagon’s new approach will be a sharply reduced American “forward deployment” in Europe and the Pacific, backed by a strong, mobile capability stationed in the U.S. The Army would be reduced from 28 divisions to 20, supported by increased, speedier airlift and sea-lift capacity, and including a quick-reaction Contingency Force consisting of the XVIII Airborne Corps reinforced with two armored divisions. The Pentagon would also proceed with its plans to close 225 military bases around the world and to tighten its procurement policies. All told, the current force of 2.1 million active-duty personnel would be reduced about one-fourth, roughly equal to the number of troops engaged in the gulf war.
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Oddly, Cheney also wants to phase out some of the battle equipment that the public has only begun to recognize. The M1A1 tank as well as the Bradley fighting vehicle, both hardy workhorses in the gulf, will no longer be produced. Assembly lines for the AH-64 Apache and AH-1S Cobra helicopters, so efficient in the fighting, will close; the Army wants a new heavy battle tank and a high-tech helicopter instead. The Navy will eliminate or scale back some weapons designed for battling the Soviets, including its Trident SLBM submarine program and its hunter-killer Seawolf submarine procurement, and reduce its overall carrier group strength from 13 to 12. Increased costs will almost certainly force the Air Force to cut its proposed purchase of 120 C-17 transport planes.
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also
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Our Overstuffed Armed Forces: Reasons to Cut More
Lawrence J. Korb
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 1995:
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Despite their differences, President Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress have agreed on two things. The first is that the federal deficit should be eliminated by slashing federal spending rather than increasing taxes; indeed, both sides want to cut taxes. They have also agreed that projected levels of defense spending will not be part of any deficit reduction package. In fact, both the administration and Congress have called for increases for defense for the rest of the decade. In 1996 and 1997 alone Congress wants to add $20 billion to what the Pentagon requested, and it has established firewalls between defense and nondefense areas of the budget so that funds cannot be shifted to cushion cuts in social programs. Under the terms of the joint budget resolution Congress adopted in June, between 1995 and 2002 domestic discretionary funding will fall from $248 billion to $218 billion while military expenditures will rise from $262 billion to $281 billion.<
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Foreign Affairs – Our Overstuffed Armed Forces: Reasons to Cut More – Lawrence J. Korb
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You know, if you are going to rail against someone, at least have your facts right.

Also, here’s more:

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Cheney Cut Thousands of Active-Duty, Reserve, and Civilian Forces. In January 1990, Cheney banned the hiring of any new civilian personnel in the Defense Department through the end of September, which left more than 65,000 jobs vacant. Under the budget proposed in 1990, the Pentagon would have reduced active military personnel by 38,000; selected reserves would have fallen by 3,000. The budget called for the deactivation of two Army divisions. Long range, the Pentagon planned to reduce its work force by 300,000, including about 200,000 military personnel and 100,000 civilians. In 1991, he called for reduction of 200,000 active and reserve military personnel over two years. In 1992, Cheney called for cutting 500,000 active-duty people, 200,000 reservists, and 200,000 civilians over five years. [Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 2/2/92; Chicago Tribune, 2/20/91; 1990 CQ Almanac, p. 672; Washington Post, 1/13/90; Boston Globe, 1/30/90]
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Also
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APACHE HELICOPTER: THE CHENEY RECORD: Terminate The Apache; According to the RNC, AH-64 Apache Helicopters Were Crucial to Operation Iraqi Freedom.In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, Cheney said, “This is just a list of some of the programs that I’ve recommended termination: the V-22 Osprey, the F-14D, the Army Helicopter Improvement Program, Phoenix missile, F-15E, the Apache helicopter, the M1 tank, et cetera.” In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward, AH-64…I forced the Army to make choices…So I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out.” [Cheney testimony, Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, 6/12/90; Cheney Testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 7/13/89; Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It,” 7/18/03]
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Also
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AEGIS SHIPS: THE CHENEY RECORD: Cheney Cut Program, Costing Jobs. Cheney plan cut 9 of original 25 ships planned, putting shipyard in jeopardy [States News Service, 8/14/90; Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/24/90]

BRADLEY FIGHTING VEHICLES: THE CHENEY RECORD: Bush-Cheney Budget Terminated The Bradley. “Major weapons killed include the Army’s M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Navy’s Trident submarine and F-14 aircraft, and the Air Force’s F-16 airplane. Cheney decided the military already has enough of these weapons.” [Boston Globe, 2/5/91]

BLACKHAWK HELICPTERS: THE CHENEY RECORD: Terminate The Black Hawk. The Pentagon’s internal budget deliberations recommended termination of the Black Hawk program under Secretary Cheney.” [Aerospace Daily, 5/15/90]
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Also
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Active-Duty and Reserve Forces Endured Huge Reductions Under Cheney. The LA Times reported in November 1991 that the number of active-duty military personnel had decreased by over 106,000, or 5 percent of the total forces. The National Guard and Reserves had been cut by nearly 38,000, instead of the 105,000 the Bush Administration sought. [LA Times, 11/2/91]
REPUBLICANS EMPTY SCARE TACTIC – CLAIMING ONLY DEMOCRATS CUT DEFENSE | ItsYourTimes.com

More:
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The 1991 Budget: Armed Forces;
CHENEY WOULD CUT DIVISIONS IN ARMY BUT MAINTAIN B-2

By MICHAEL R. GORDON, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: January 30, 1990

LEAD: Defense Secretary Dick Cheney outlined his long-term plans for reshaping the military today, proposing the elimination of five of the Army’s 28 active-duty and reserve divisions and making new investments in costly long-range nuclear programs through the mid-1990′s.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney outlined his long-term plans for reshaping the military today, proposing the elimination of five of the Army’s 28 active-duty and reserve divisions and making new investments in costly long-range nuclear programs through the mid-1990′s.

As a first step, Mr. Cheney said the Pentagon would cut two of the Army’s 18 active divisions in the 1991 fiscal year while holding the Navy roughly constant and continuing spending on the B-2 bomber.

The Secretary said major long-term changes in the military would depend on completion of agreements with the Soviet Union to cut conventional forces in Europe and to make deep reductions in long-range nuclear forces.
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The 1991 Budget: Armed Forces; CHENEY WOULD CUT DIVISIONS IN ARMY BUT MAINTAIN B-2 – New York Times

More:
Cheney Backs His Budget and His Cuts – New York Times
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The hearing today reflected a predicament facing Congress and the Bush Administration as they try to come up with ways to make deep military cuts: Congress’s natural inclination to protect military contracts and bases.

”The story of my life, since I became Secretary, is not that Congress is trying to cut programs out from under me, but rather that I have difficulty persuading Congress to allow me to cut anything,” Mr. Cheney told the panel.

Furor Over Base Closings

In January, for example, Mr. Cheney touched off a furor in Congress when he announced that he was considering closing 35 of the nation’s largest military installations to save money. The proposed changes came on top of 86 military bases that are being closed under orders from Congress.

The Pentagon proposed last year that several expensive weapon programs be dropped, including the Osprey and new production of the Navy’s F-14 fighter plane, but intensive lobbying in Congress restored financing for the programs.

The Administration has proposed a $307 billion military budget for the fiscal year that will begin Oct. 1, next year, and is seeking ways to accommodate its goal to reduce Pentagon spending by 2 percent a year through 1997. Various House and Senate versions of next year’s budget range from $289 billion to $283 billion.
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There’s a lot more where that came from, but I’ll wait for Decoursey’s rebuttal before I continue to debunk his unfounded assertions.

James, LA:
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I’m actually going to take up Decoursey’s argument here, because I think there’s been a bit of a mis-fire here. (Sean, feel free to correct if I misinterpreted.)
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Decoursey’s point was not that Clinton *cut* lots of military acquisition programs, but that he didn’t cut *enough*. I would propose that SECDEF Cheney cut too many programs–in fact, he cut programs that would be useful in the 2000s, like the Aegis–but that Clinton’s inability to cut programs like the Comanche or the Crusader was a detriment to the military. (Comanche, Crusader). These platforms were deemed unnecessary, impractical, and/or underperforming for the environment they were supposed to inhabit, and were cut by Rumsfeld, one of the only things I think I agreed with him on in his entire tenure.
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Decoursey’s first point was regarding the “zero defects” policy instituted by President Clinton. This policy changed promotion boards from performance-based assessments of the entire officer (where any possible mistakes could be mitigated by further exemplary service) to a summation system, where only officers with no marks on their records could be promoted (leading to possibly promoting the less-capable officers in preference to the more-capable ones because they were willing to risk less in their careers).
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In a 1996 report by the American Forces Press Service, Army Gen. J. H. Binford Peay III, commander in chief, U.S. Central Command
said, “Expecting zero defects leads to failure. While the American people have every right to demand competence, character and leadership from our military commanders, they should not expect zero defects.”
Link).
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There are other, less glowing reviews of the “zero-defect” policy out there, but this one was the least partisan I could find.
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In summary, there’s a lot of ill-will from a large percentage of the military towards the Clinton years, for what they see as a discrimination policy that weeded out the most competent out-of-the-box thinkers among them, which is exactly who is really needed in command.

Oh, and can I say how excited I am that my links came out, even without preview?

usesherbrain,
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thanks for your intelligent and well-put-together argument. You make some excellent points. I really have no opinion on whether Clinton cut or didn’t cut “enough” and whether he was solely responsible or if it was a combination of a radical, extremist Republican Congress, a Republican SecDef and his lack of understanding of the military that the exact program cuts weren’t to Decoursey’s liking. Clinton didn’t cut platforms that were deemed unnecessary, impractical, and underperforming? OMG! Welcome to the entire history of military procurement!!!! Yes, let us all blame Clinton and Clinton only and Clinton personally for keeping unnecessary and impractical military programs going! Because that has never, ever happened before in US history!

When I worked for the military (as a civilian) it was TQM – Total Quality Management — which was a Reagan-era formula for failure. The difference there is that even though it was a totally, laughably ineffective approach to improving the military infrastructure, I nor anyone else was given to ranting and railing about it and blaming Reagan himself for its failure to impact the bureaucracy. It would be pathological of me to blame Ronald Reagan himself, personally, for the failure of TQM to improve the Department of Defense, don’t you think?
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That’s what Decoursey is doing. I suggest that he has been conditioned to blame Clinton personally for every single piece of minutuae related to what he didn’t like about the military. He has internalized all the rightwing propaganda that and displays a pathological hatred that renders him unable to acknowledge that other factors besides Bill Clinton’s personal failures might have made his time in the military unsatisfactory.
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James, LA
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What usesherbrain said. My problem with Clinton was that he didn’t cut enough stupid big budget programs. Cheney was right to kill the stuff he did, I wish he’d gotten rid of more of it.
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The V-22 Osprey comes to mind. It’s killed over 40 marines in testing, is unarmed, and takes six seconds to stop and land VTOL or to take off the same way. It also can’t auto-rotate so a crash is pretty much 100% fatal. The thing is a retardedly expensive flying coffin that’s pretty much worse than existing helicopters in every conceivable fashion.
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and yeah, my biggest problem with Clinton was and is zero-defects. It screwed the military up so, so badly. We’re only now starting to recover because of all the years at war.
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I also hate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. He should have just pulled a Truman and signed an executive order. The military would have dealt with it. Instead he enshrined a very screwed up partisan calculated solely for political effect and not for the betterment of the force policy. Clinton really just had no clue about the military, the people in it, or how it worked. That he never developed any feel or understanding for it at all while in office is a failure of both him and his military advisors.
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Brain,
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congrats on the links.

Decoursey,
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I have no opinion on the specific programs cut or not cut, as I say. Nor on “zero defects.” I had an opinion on TQM, when SecDef Cheney was the boss and Reagan the president, but it never occurred to me to hold them personally responsible or harbor an intense hatred against them over the failure of TQM. Jes saying.
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I guess you have nothing good to say about the substantial raises in pay or health benefits or veteran’s health care that Clinton pushed through. Because you never acknowledge the balance of the Clinton Administration’s military policies, it appears to me that you have internalized the rightwing propaganda that has been fed you over the course of your military career.
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Note that I’m not a great fan of Clinton: a lot of stuff he did during his presidency disappointed me. I view myself as a rightwing propaganda-debunker. And, you’ve got it bad, buddy. Think about it.