Understanding Gates (James Mann in WaPo)

[laststeamtrain]

Understanding Gates
It's Not as Simple as Father's Team vs. Son's

By James Mann
Friday, November 10, 2006; A31

In the early months of 1989, the overriding foreign policy issue for the new George H.W. Bush administration was how to deal with Mikhail Gorbachev. Did the Soviet leader represent fundamental change, or was he merely a new face for the same old policies?

The administration was divided. James Baker, the secretary of state, wanted to test out Gorbachev. The anti-Gorbachev hawks were led by Robert M. Gates, the deputy national security adviser. Gates's principal ally was then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.

Baker vs. Gates/Cheney: That alignment should serve as a warning to those who view Wednesday's appointment of Robert M. Gates to replace Donald Rumsfeld as representing the triumph of Bush the Father's administration over Bush the Son's. Any such analysis is far too simplistic. Gates's nomination unquestionably stands for one proposition: a long-awaited recognition that the administration's war in Iraq has been a disaster. But the broader interpretation of the appointment as representing a victory of Bush 41 over Bush 43 -- or of one school of thought over another -- breaks down when you look at Gates's background and the history of the 1980s and early '90s.

For one thing, that analysis depends on a selective view of the Bush 41 administration. Yes, it included Gates; then-national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, a determined opponent of the current Iraq war; and Baker, who is now head of a bipartisan group searching for a new Iraq policy. But Vice President Cheney was a charter member of the Bush 41 administration. So were Cheney's former aide Stephen Hadley, the current national security adviser, and Condoleezza Rice -- who have been among the principal architects of the war in Iraq.

Moreover, as that 1989 debate over Gorbachev illustrates, the Bush 41 foreign policy team was hardly united. Its members bickered about the Soviet Union, about China, about the Middle East. One of the few things it was in complete harmony on was the belief that American troops shouldn't go on to Baghdad at the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991. At the time, everyone thought that would be a bad idea, including Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, then undersecretary of defense.

Well, then, does Wednesday's appointment of Gates represent a change of philosophy, the triumph of realism over neoconservatism? That doesn't quite work, either. Rumsfeld was never a neoconservative; he was an obstreperous contrarian, committed not to putting forward any particular philosophy but to aggressively challenging whatever ideas his bureaucratic opponents and critics put forward.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/09/AR2006110901774_pf.html

James Mann wrote RISE OF THE VULCANS- a good, informative book on GWB's foriegn policy team

[Boo Boo]

1. He's wrong on one point:

Cheney and Wolfowitz did not think that going on to Baghdad was a bad idea. This is a misrepresentation of what actually happened. There was a faction in the admin that wanted to go on, and there were those (like Scowcroft and Powell) that argued against it. Care to guess which side Cheney was on? Go on, take a wild-ass guess.

Fortunately, Bush 41 ultimately put his deepest trust in Scowcroft, and he made the decision to stop the war within the parameters that had been originally agreed to by the members of the coalition. After losing that argument, Cheney simply got in line with the decision. When he would explain the decision on T.V., or whatever, he was simply stating the admin's position, as would obviously be expected of the SecDef. The decision had been made.

Immediately after the war, Cheney presented a paper to the President, that had been authored by Wolfowitz, which was the first iteration of what has come to be known as the Bush Doctrine. It was written in 1991, and formed the basis for the PNAC's "New American Century" document. If you want to understand Cheney's world view, that's the place to start. It basically proposes that the U.S. now had nearly total freedom of action, and could use military force to remake the Middle East without reaction from the Soviets.

I think that's a pretty important point. As soon as guys like Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, et al thought that they could attack nations without Soviet retaliation, that's exactly what they proposed to do. They had no compunctions at all about International Law, Aggressive War, etc. They clearly do not support those concepts. The proposal was quickly quashed by Bush 41 who basically told Cheney he didn't want to hear anything more about it again.

Anyway, Cheney wanted to go on to Baghdad, and he eventually got what he wanted. Let's hope that Gates is not also something that Cheney wants. The major reason I would support Gates' confirmation is the idea that Cheney was losing his collaborators at the Pentagon.