Lessons for the next war

[unhappycamper]

Lessons for the next war
October 4, 2008

THE NEXT PRESIDENT will inherit a daunting set of national security problems. Captivated at the start by an illusory belief that the United States could, and should, impose its will on the world's bad actors by shock and awe, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld drove the world's sole surviving superpower into a diplomatic, strategic, and fiscal ditch.

On the last lap of the Bush administration, there has been one tonic voice of reason, which the next administration would do well to heed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a former CIA director and president of Texas A&M, has labored to undo the damage done by his predecessor.

Gates has been realistic about what military force can and cannot achieve. He has astonished jaded observers of bureacratic turf battles by calling for increased funding for the State Department, traditionally the funding rival of Defense. He did so because he grasps the interrelatedness of diplomacy and force.

He has called for regional cooperation to foster reconciliation and stability in Iraq. And he has argued in public, as in private, for diplomatic means of dissuading Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Above all, Gates has used his authority as defense secretary to change course at the Pentagon: to prepare for the missions the uniformed military is likely to confront in the future, rather than the conventional state-against-state conflicts that have for too long shaped the Pentagon's procurement policies. This remedial aim was at the core of a sage and pointed speech he delivered Monday to military officers at the National Defense University in Washington.


Rest of article at: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/10/04/lessons_for_the_next_war/

[ixion]

1. this is all just so much reflex action... we're in shape neither to dictate nor police

the world, albeit like a wounded rodent, we're still dangerous.

All this talk about our role in the world still operates under the basic assumptions that a) we're solvent; and b) the rest of the world gives a damn what we want/think.

That's all pretty much over now. In case anyone missed it, we became a third-world country yesterday.

[UK populist]

2. If I were you I wouldn't give too much credit to Gates

He was and still is one of the early Neo-cons. Just because he realizes the limitations of the US forces at the moment. Don't think for one minute that he wouldn't choose to bomb Iran or try to strangle Russia in to submission if he felt he had the capability to do it. He would not have been picked if he was not implicitly trusted by the likes of Cheney or Bush.