An Old Soldier Fades Away

As defence secretary, Robert Gates was respected by left and right alike.

As Robert Gates hands off the reins at the Pentagon to Leon Panetta, the American people and their allies in Canada, Europe, and Asia should take comfort in knowing that the first and last line of the West’s defence has been – and remains – in steady hands.

A little history is in order. It pays to recall that as a candidate and in the early months of his presidency, U.S. President Barack Obama largely rejected the Bush administration’s characterization of the United States as being a nation at war. The Obama administration made a concerted effort to expunge the “war on terrorism” phraseology from official pronouncements, using “overseas contingency operations” instead.

In quick succession, Obama ordered the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, put a time limit on the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and made entreaties to the strongmen who run Iran. In the midst of this 180-degree turn, Obama’s secretary of homeland security even went so far as to use the Orwellian phrase “man-caused disasters,” rather than call terrorism by its name.

But Leon Panetta, Obama’s CIA director before taking over from Gates at the Pentagon on July 1, refused to engage in the rhetorical and political games over word choice. “There’s no question this is a war,” he bluntly said of the struggle against jihadist terrorism. (Tellingly, in his address announcing the strike on Osama bin Laden’s compound in May, the president used the word “war” eight times.)

While others talked about talking to Iran, Panetta told it like it was, reporting that Iran has “enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons.” And he was an early and vocal advocate of the so-called drone war in Pakistan, calling it “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaeda leadership.”

The man replacing Panetta at the Central Intelligence Agency is Gen. David Petraeus, who has fought al-Qaeda on two fronts. Petraeus came into the public’s field of vision at a time when nothing was going right in Iraq – and virtually no one thought the Iraq project could be salvaged. But that’s exactly what Petraeus did. After rewriting the U.S. military’s counter-insurgency manual, he put it to the test in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Ramadi – altering the course of the war, saving Iraq from itself, and rescuing America from defeat.

Obama then asked Petraeus to make lightning strike twice by repeating in Afghanistan what he accomplished in Iraq. And now the president has tapped Petraeus to work his counter-insurgency and counter-terror magic at the CIA.

In short, Panetta and Petraeus are solid picks. Not only do they have proven track records, but the president’s choice of these two men underscores that despite all the rhetoric, he continues to fill key security and defence posts with people who understand the country is at war with a tenacious and determined enemy.

That brings us back to Gates. Recall that before he served in the Obama administration, Gates was former president George W. Bush’s defence secretary, which means he carried out the surge strategy in Iraq and helped plan the revised mission for Afghanistan that the Obama administration largely implemented.

Indeed, any recap of Gates’ tenure has to begin and end with his sense of duty. It pays to recall that he took over at the Pentagon in the midst of a war that was spiralling out of control, against the howling headwinds unleashed by his predecessor’s controversial style and consequential decisions. And then, when a new commander-in-chief with a new direction asked, Gates stayed on.