Man! Dude! Session #256

(D)ude: Man! Robert M. Gates tries ridiculously hard to come across as a levelheaded intellectual, but his own words betray his waning intellect. The further you read into his memoirs, the more you realize how engulfed with inferiority he is and I think George W. Bush really made Robert M. Gates lose his sensibility and compromise his sense of duty to country and the ground operations of the United States Military abroad. Listen,

Page 35: We had simply had no idea how broken Iraq was before the war—economically, socially, culturally, politically, in its infrastructure, the education system, you name it. Decades of rule by Saddam, who didn’t give a damn about the Iraqi people; the eight-year-long war with Iran; the destruction we wreaked during the Gulf War; twelve years of harsh sanctions—all these meant we had virtually no foundation to build upon in trying to restart the economy, much less create a democratic Iraqi government responsive to the needs of its people. We were going to insist that our partner, the first democratically elected government in Iraq’s four-thousand-year history, resolve in a year or so the enormous and fundamental political problems facing the country? That was a fantasy.

(M)an: Dude! Robert M. Gates tries really hard to make President George W. Bush come across as a heroic Commander In Chief. However, his attempts to cover up the criminal disregard of Bush #43 are unsuccessful. Look here,

Page 39: Bush raised the idea of more troops going to Iraq. All of the chiefs unloaded on him, not only questioning the value of the additional forces but expressing concern about the impact on the military if asked to send thousands more troops. They worried about “breaking the force” through repeated deployments and about the impact on military families. They indicated that tour lengths in Iraq would need to be lengthened to sustain a larger force.

I was struck in the meeting by the service chiefs’ seeming detachment from the wars we were in and their focus on future contingencies and stress on the force.

Page 40: Bush heard them out respectfully but at the end simply said, “The surest way to break the force is to lose in Iraq.” I would have to deal with all the legitimate issues of the chiefs raised that day, but I agreed totally with the president.

On December 19, [2006], the day after I was sworn in, I talked with David Petraeus. I wanted to pick the brain of the Army’s most senior expert on counterinsurgency. I asked him what I should look for in Iraq, what questions I should ask. Fundamentally, he said, the question was whether our priority was security for the Iraqi people or transition to Iraqi security forces. We probably couldn’t do the latter until we had improved the former.

Page 44: The president clearly was headed toward a significant increase in U.S. troops. I knew for sure that whatever people had thought about the decision to got to war in Iraq, at this point we could not fail.

Page 47: I also reported to the president that I was working on a proposal to increase the size of the Marine Corps by 27,000 for a total of 202,000, and the Army by 65,000 for a total of 547,000. The increase would be spread over several years, with a first-year cost of $17 to $20 billion and a five-year cost of $90 to $100 billion. I also reported that I was looking at our policies with regard to mobilization of the National Guard and Reserves, particularly to ensure that their deployments were limited in duration—probably to a year—and to make sure they had the promised time at home between deployments. He immediately told me to proceed.   

D: Man! Robert M. Gates really does think he is laying the foundation for a rewrite of both Bush #41 and Bush #43’s presidencies as having merited a place in the upper echelon of presidential greats. Likewise, Former First Lady Barbara Bush also has gone on the record a second time promoting her son Jeb Bush as the best candidate for the presidency while paralleling the Bushes with the Kennedys and Clintons. That’s a lofty claim to be making, isn’t it? I think Barbara Bush really does believe herself to be a matriarch of the same caliber as the Kennedy women. And it’s becoming more apparent with time that President Clinton aligned his stars with that of the Bushes, perpetually 

placing the United States under terrorist threat. Listen to Gates,

Page 48: In the span of forty-five years, serving eight presidents, I can recall only three instances in which, in my opinion, a president risked reputation, public esteem, credibility, political ruin, and the judgment of history on a single decision he believed was the right thing for our country: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, George H. W. Bush’s assent to the 1992 budget deal, and George W. Bush’s decision to surge in Iraq. In the first two cases, I think one can credibly suggest the decisions were good for the country but cost those two presidents reelection; in the latter case, the decision averted a potentially disastrous military defeat for the United States.

In making the decision to surge, Bush listened closely to his military commander in the field, his boss at Command Central, and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. Then  he rejected their advice.

Page 49: I am in no position to judge whether not acting earlier was influenced by the forthcoming midterm elections. But I do know that once Bush made his decision, I never saw him look back or have second thoughts.

My role was to figure out how to buy time, how to slow down the Washington clock, and how to speed up the Baghdad clock.

Page 51: I changed my modus operandi, making the subject of the debate the pace of troop withdrawals so as to extend the surge as long as possible but also try to defuse the Iraq debate as a major issue in the presidential election.

We began to see signs that the surge was working as early as July.

Page 53: Remember, they [the Iraqis] had no experience with compromise in thousands of years of history. Indeed, the politics in Iraq from time immemorial had been a kill-or-be-killed activity. I would listen with growing outrage as hypocritical and obtuse American senators made all these demands of Iraqi legislators and yet themselves could not even pass budgets or appropriations bills, not to mention deal with tough challenges like the budget deficit, Social Security, and entitlement reform.

M: Dude! Robert M. Gates is, I think, giving the current Congressional Republicans under Speaker John Boehner a pep talk of sorts. The book release was so conveniently timed with the Republican Party trying hard to place sanctions on Iran without even considering that the President of the United States and Secretary of State John Kerry are working through a nuclear deal with Iran while the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has successfully dismantled production facilities in Syria and is in the process of transporting the chemical weapons it found alongside precursor chemicals to a designated site from where the United States will provide the cargo ship and go about destroying the material in international waters.  

D: Man! Did you know Robert M. Gates withdrew his name for director of central intelligence in early 1987 amid the Iran-Contra scandal? It is briefly mentioned on page 15 and caught my attention. There is absolutely nothing divulged there except that the Senate at the time would not confirm Gates because of the overwhelming amount of unanswered questions about his role in the affair.

M: Dude! The Republican Party’s very hedonistic right now because they think they have figured out the recipe for power by purchasing the Supreme Court circa Citizens United, redistricting congressional districts to their political advantage, and voting restrictions that they have in place across the United States, circa Shelby County.

D: Man! Why did you have to use that word? Hedonistic sounds like the Republican Party leaders prefer lounge chaise chairs with staff-installed aquariums in their offices and elaborate atriums with water fountains featuring enormous sculptures in Sheldon Adelson’s homes.