(Caroline Glick via JPost) — Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is worried about the shape of things to come in US foreign policy. In an interview with Newsweek over the weekend, Gates sounded the warning bells.
In Gates’ words, “I’ve spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. It didn’t have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.
“To tell you the truth, that’s one of the many reasons it’s time for me to retire, because frankly I can’t imagine being part of a nation, part of a government . . . that’s being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world.”
What Gates is effectively saying is not that economic forecasts are gloomy. US defense spending comprises less than five percent of the federal budget. If US President Barack Obama wanted to maintain that level of spending, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably pass his defense budget. What Gates is saying is that he doesn’t trust his commander in chief to allocate the resources to preserve America’s superpower status. He is saying that he believes that Obama is willing to surrender the US’s status as a superpower.
THIS WOULD be a stunning statement for any defense secretary to make about the policies of a US President. It is especially stunning coming from Gates. Gates began his tenure at the Pentagon under Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush immediately after the Republican defeat in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections.
Many conservatives hailed Obama’s decision to retain Gates as defense secretary as a belated admission that Bush’s aggressive counter-terror policies were correct. These claims ignored the fact that in his last two years in office, with the exception of the surge of troops in Iraq, under the guidance of Gates and then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s foreign policies veered very far to the Left.
Click on the title for more at Weasel Zippers.
1 comment:
If someone like Gates, who defended the monor Asst Sec England's firing of Coughlin (remember that?), and who is of the 'Baker' school of realism in public affairs wants out for this reason, every worst thought we have had about Obama is short of the mark.
Gates IMHO is a careerist bureaucrat who impresses himself as some kind of patriot. THE ONLY reason he MIGHT be a good sec is if he made the strategic decision that unmanned armed forces are worth the BIG GAMBLE (i.e. Reapers and X-47's are better than F-22's, F-35's and A-10's) But he has never intimated such.
I think he is sick and tired of Washington, and was more comfortable with Bush term 2 than 1, BY FAR, and is thinking about golf.
Meanwhile...the only solution is 2012.
Post a Comment