December 7, 2008 at 09:48:45

Bush Holdover Robert Gates: A Kinder, Gentler Shock and Awe

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By Ron Fullwood (about the author) Page 1 of 2 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Ron Fullwood - Writer

BARACK Obama's holdover defense chief, Robert Gates, will win some deserved praise for his clear repudiation of the strategy and tactics his present boss employed in invading and occupying Iraq.

Rejecting the smash-and-grab approach to the exercise of our military defenses, Gates, nonetheless, outlined his own vision of warfare in the future which wasn't as much of a departure from Bush Doctrine as it was a tactical shift reflecting realities of diminishing resources and the counterproductive effects of collateral impacts of the broad use of force evident in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The next issue of Foreign Affairs is reported to feature an article by Gates in which he offers up criticisms of policy clearly within scope his own tenure at the Pentagon under Bush and suggestions for a kinder, gentler imperialism for the next phase in his 'war on terror.'

“The Taliban were dispatched within three months; Saddam’s regime was toppled in three weeks,” Mr Gates wrote. “But no one should ever neglect the psychological, cultural, political and human dimensions of warfare… We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist or ethnocentric notions of future conflict… that imagine it is possible to cow, shock or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block.”

“The United States is unlikely to repeat another Iraq or Afghanistan – that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire – anytime soon,” Mr Gates wrote.

Gates opportunistically signed on to Bush's political stall for time to pass the Iraq debacle to the next administration without exiting and admitting the obvious failure. Gates eagerly supported and oversaw the 'surge' of force into Iraq to provide 'time' and 'room' for the Iraq regime to effect a 'political' reconciliation with their opposition.

And, Gates would later drag his feet on the drawdown of those forces, even after it became clear that the deaths of 600 to 800 U.S. soldiers during that period hadn't produced anything resembling even the political progress they had sold as the ultimate goal of the escalation.

Yet, in his upcoming article, Gates is still fixated on the notion that there's something left to win in Iraq and something left to salvage in the nation-building our military has been practicing in Afghanistan.

"To fail -- or to be seen to fail -- in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to U.S. credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries," Gates writes.

And, he hints at an unending role for troops in Iraq in pursuit of 'victory' in his ideological terror war.

"In Iraq, the number of U.S. combat units there will decline over time -- as it was going to do no matter who was elected president in November," he writes. "Still, there will continue to be some kind of a U.S. advisory and counterterrorism effort in Iraq for years to come."

Gates is still committed to pursuing his ideological crusade behind the sacrifices of our nation's defenders. Gates, in May of this year cast the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan as the same kind of 'ideological' battle that Bush has promoted in defense of his unbridled military aggression across sovereign borders: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=49962

"Afghanistan and Iraq are the most important battlefields in the fight today, Gates said, and his priority has been “getting us to a point where our strategic objectives are within reach in those two countries . . . America’s best opportunity to discredit and deflate the extremist ideology is in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gates said.

“Just as the hollowness of communism was laid bare by the collapse of the Soviet Union, so too would success in those countries strike a decisive blow against the ideological underpinnings of extremist movements,” Gates argued.

Obama spoke out against ideology-driven rationales for the exercise of our military forces in March in a policy speech entitled, 'The World Beyond Iraq' : http://thepage.time.com/full-text-of-obamas-iraq-speech /

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Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price

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