The Case Against Robert Gates
The current secretary of defense has a somewhat sordid history, so why is Obama asking him to stay on?By Dylan Matthews
December 15, 2008
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in Manama, Bahrain. (AP Photo/Scott Olson/POOL)Perhaps one of Bush’s biggest legacies in Iraq, aside from starting the war itself, is that he prescribed the “surge,” deploying more troops, when many liberal foreign policy experts were calling for withdrawal or redeployment. Now, the man responsible for implementing the plan known as the “surge” will be left in charge of the Department of Defense in the new administration. The media coverage of Barack Obama’s foreign policy team has largely focused on his appointment of Sen. Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but his decision to retain Robert Gates as defense secretary is decidedly more worrisome. While as a whole certainly better than the rest of the Bush administration’s foreign policy team, Gates is still a conservative at heart, and his appointment raises questions about the progressiveness of Obama’s foreign policy to come and the meaning of his presidency for liberal foreign policy voices.
A career CIA official, Gates first rose to national prominence as deputy CIA director under the Reagan administration and deputy director of central intelligence under George H.W. Bush. It was in these roles that he was involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, in which the administration illegally sold arms to Iran to fund right-wing guerillas in Nicaragua. While ultimately not indicted, Gates was rigorously investigated by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh at the time, and it appears he misinformed Walsh about when he became aware of the plot. After an administration characterized by disregard for the rule of law, appointing someone connected to the tawdry Iran-contra affair hardly signals real change.
Gates as also staked out a consistently hawkish posture prior to his most recent appointment as defense secretary. In 1984, he called for air raids on Nicaragua to punish the leftist Sandinista government and aid the Contra rebels, a position to the right even of the Iran-Contra conspirators. In 1994, he proposed bombing North Korea to destroy its nuclear facilities. Most saliently, in 2003 he argued in a speech to the Houston Forum for an invasion of Iraq. Especially given Obama’s stated commitment to opening negotiations with hostile regimes, appointing someone so favorably disposed to using force in such circumstances is a curious choice.
Certainly many of Gates’ policy positions are more sensible than those of the rest of the Bush administration. Take his support for “selective engagement” with Iran, or his support for shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But as defense secretary he has still implemented and backed policies antithetical to Obama’s declared agenda. Earlier this year, he ordered a halt to troop withdrawals from Iraq, a decision attacked at the time by, among others, incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In 2007, when Congress was considering resolutions opposing the Bush administration’s “surge” plan, Gates denounced such proposals, saying any resolution opposing the surge “certainly emboldens the enemy.”
Many might be tempted to brush statements and actions like these aside, to say that Gates was only reflecting Bush administration policy and does not actually believe his own rhetoric on Iraq. While this might indeed be the case, with Gates willing to work in an Obama administration in which withdrawal from Iraq is a key goal, Gates now has a long public record of opposition to withdrawal under the Bush administration that can be used by opponents both domestic and international to undermine his efforts to execute a withdrawal. It will be hard for Gates to garner support for his withdrawal efforts under an Obama administration when barely year-old quotes from him blasting such policies are readily available.
Beyond the substantive problems with Gates as secretary, picking a longtime conservative policymaker to head the department of defense reinforces the notion that national security is a task best handled by conservatives. After the failures of conservative foreign policy over the past eight years, Obama had an opportunity to reverse the decades-old perceived conservative advantage on foreign policy. There is a large community of progressive defense policymakers in exile, composed of experts like Richard Danzig, Michèle Flournoy and the Center for American Progress’ own Larry Korb, any of whom would have been an excellent selection for defense secretary. By appointing a team of liberals and governing successfully with that group, he would have sent a strong message not only that liberals serious about national security, they do a better job of it than conservatives.
Instead Obama went with Gates, and he suggests not only that conservatives are competent foreign policymakers, but also that they are sufficiently better at that task than liberals. The implication is that not a single liberal would be a better choice for the Pentagon than Gates. This is a dramatic reaffirmation of the conservative advantage on security issues, one that could harm progressive efforts to reclaim the issue well into the future.
The real tragedy of the Gates pick is not the flaws of the choice itself—though they are many—but the lost opportunity it represents. The liberals in exile people have been patiently waiting through the Bush administration for an opportunity to serve. Instead, they are being passed over, relegated to lower-level positions at the department of defense or even left outside of government. The progressive foreign policy movement deserved better than to be told it is less qualified to lead than the man who implemented the surge.
Dylan Matthews is a first-year student at Harvard. He is a blogger at Pushback and the blog formerly known as Minipundit.
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