Robert Gates

By Ron Beasley

"Anti-war" groups are concerned about talk that Obama might consider keeping Robert Gates on as Defense Secretary.  Gates has appeared to be an island of sanity in a sea of the criminally insane.  Spencer Ackerman makes an excellent case for keeping Gates on for a year but gates has a lot of skeletons in his closet going back to the Iran-Iraq war and Iran-Contra.  Digby asks:....

Seriously. There's nobody out there who hasn't been a lying Reagan Bush whore who is competent to run the defense department?

.... and refers us to this by Robert Parry

In 1991, despite doubts about Gates’s honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates’s sweeping denials.

For instance, the Russian government sent an intelligence report to a House investigative task force in early 1993 stating that Gates participated in secret contacts with Iranian officials in 1980 to delay release of 52 U.S. hostages then held in Iran, a move to benefit the presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

“R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter, and former CIA Director George Bush also took part” in a meeting in Paris in October 1980, according to the Russian report, which meshed with information from witnesses who have alleged Gates’s involvement in the Iranian gambit.

Once in office, the Reagan administration did permit weapons to flow to Iran via Israel. One of the planes carrying an arms shipment was shot down over the Soviet Union on July 18, 1981, after straying off course, but the incident drew little attention at the time.

The arms flow continued, on and off, until 1986 when the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal broke. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege. For text of the Russian report, click here. To view the actual U.S. embassy cable that includes the Russian report, click here.]

Parry has a lot more.  If only part of it is true it should be more than enough to disqualify Gates.  I'm not looking for a pacifist to run the Defense Department but I am looking for someone who is sane and I'm not convinced that's Gates.  If the Obama administration wants a Republican how about Chuck Hagel? 

Comments

[anderson]

That fact is that there are very few people, if any, in the US foreign policy establishment who haven't got some connection to dirt from the past. Colin Powell? Nope. He's got Iran-Contra film on him too.

This reality -- no one the Washington consensus could approve as "qualified" -- is without a sheen of filth, secrets and lies. That is the way foreign policy is run. I see no break from that ugly past happening under Obama.

[Mark]

One thing about Gates - according to Harry Reid, the guy is not actually a Republican, registered or otherwise. The other thing - whatever you may think of the Iran-Contra affair, these allegations are from nearly 30 years ago, and to the extent they are relevant, were primarily relevant when Gates was getting confirmed. At this point, the issue is - or at least ought to be - whether it is wise to retain him for a year or so, mostly to oversee the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq.

I'm not sure where I come down on that, to be honest - as a voter who is passionately unaffiliated with either party but who despises our current defense and foreign policies, I would like to see the Dems finally find one of their own for SecDef, which would at least send a message that Dems will no longer concede Defense policy to Republicans. On the other hand, given the situation in Iraq, given that we are going to have to significantly withdraw our forces in Iraq over the next 12-18 months, and given that Gates' competence is beyond dispute, there is a lot to be said for continuity at this moment.
For that reason, it may be best to allow Gates to stay on - but only for as long as necessary to substantially move the withdrawal forward. Obama should then nominate a Dem (not a Blue Dog, though, please!) to replace him. In fact, maybe the best thing to do would be to install Gates' eventual replacement early on as something of a Number 2 in the Pentagon, to ensure maximum continuity in ongoing actions.

[anderson]

Certainly, compared to Rumsfeld, Gates has been a beacon of rationality in the Pentagon, such as that limited praise can be a measure of success. But Washington, and to a larger degree, public sentiment as driven by the corporate media, see competence in such matters within an extremely narrow frame; there is no questioning the increasing militarization of foreign policy, a blunder that will continue to morph into ever more immense proportions.

"whatever you may think of the Iran-Contra affair, these allegations are from nearly 30 years ago,..."

Actually, this is exactly the problem. Too many of these retreads are Cold Warriors, fighting imagined threats in the same old way and looking to drum up enemies that can be portrayed as "existential threats." This is exactly why Russia has been turned into the latest bad guy -- same as the old Soviet one. Stateless, rhizomatic enemies were just not concrete enough to justify massive, decades-long military budgets, but a new Russia fits that bill nicely.

Nothing has changed for the Washington FP consensus. Russia has always equated with the Soviet Union, and a resurgent Russia is the long lost hegemonic power upon which Washington can project its secret desire for constant conflict. It matters not that GM is opening automobile plants in St. Petersburg or that Europe is intimately connected by energy demands.

If we really ever wish to see a break from that thinking, a new administration will just have to boot the buggers out or we will have to waiting until they die off. I see no boot on the horizon.