Bob Gates Discusses the Need for Presidential Conviction to Support Troops in Time of War

We didn't have to wait long to get former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' first comments on his new book. Gates said on CBS News Sunday that he doesn't regret anything he wrote in his controversial book and calls the memoir "an honest account." In the Sunday interview, he offered a new and harsher criticism of President Obama's wartime leadership, saying that Obama didn't reach out to American troops and make them believe he supported their sacrifice. When asked by CBS presenter Rita Braver about his statement that President Obama never really had a passion for pursuing the war in Afghanistan, Gates answered : "It's one thing to tell the troops that you support them. It's another to work at making them believe that you believe as president that their sacrifice is worth it, that the cause is just, that what they are doing was important for the country, and that they must succeed,....President (George W.) Bush did that with the troops when I was Secretary. I did not see President Obama do that. As I write in the book, it was this absence of passion, this absence of a conviction of the importance of success that disturbed me." In "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War," the former Defense Secretary not only raises questions about Obama's war leadership, he also harshly criticizes Vice President Joe Biden. Gates told CBS that people credited him with being blunt and candid while he was in the Cabinet and that "I could hardly be any less in writing a book." Gates said that the different ways people look at the book reflects the country's polarized political process. He says he didn't think that waiting until after the next presidential election to discuss important issues "made any sense." Gates remains very critical of the President, saying Obama was at skeptical of his own strategy in Afghanistan. Gates' disagreements with Vice President Joe Biden were deep, but he said, "Actually I think I am in some areas complimentary of him,..but where I had a particular problem with the vice president was in his encouragement of suspicion of the military and the senior military with the president: 'You can't trust these guys. They're gonna try and jam you. They're gonna try and box you in,' and so on. And that did disturb me a lot." But Gates said he did occasionally agree with Biden. "One time when I agreed with him on something -- often Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and I would ride back to the Pentagon together from the White House -- and Mullen turned to me at one point [and] said, 'You know that you agreed with the vice president this morning.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's why I'm rethinking my position.'" ~~~~~ Dear readers, I watched a report on CNN today that brought home to me what Robert Gates is saying about a President needing to make his troops believe that their sacrifice is worthwhile. US veterans of the 2004 Fallujah battle talked about the hand-to-hand street-to-street nature of the battle to drive out the anti-government insurgents. They also remembered the people of Fallujah, some who had become friends, and said they wished them well in their current battle against terrorists. The veterans talked about their feelings concerning what's happening now in Iraq. They said that they had left the country with the capability to create its own future but that what is happening now seemed inevitable when the US troops left Iraq. The veterans were sombre when they recounted the friends dead and disabled in the battle for Fallujah, saying, however, that it was for the "cause of self-determination and that's always a worthy fight." They finally said that they were sure in 2004 that they were fighting and sacrificing themselves in a good cause - but now they aren't sure many still believe that. There was no mention of the pullout or of President Obama's hasty retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, but his presence hung over the veterans' conversation and memories of battle and evaluation of sacrifice. Soldiers never make policy. They seldom create a winning atmosphere except in their local units. But, every young person sent to fight in any army anywhere in the world needs to know he is needed and that his sacrifice is valuable. It is the very least that political leaders - commanders in chief - must offer to the young men and women whom they put in harm's way. Without a profound conviction in the value and necessity of sacrifice in their souls, wartime political leaders become simple killing machines.