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A Way Out: Gates, left, with South Korea's defense minister at the Pentagon on Oct. 17
Q&A

‘That Was Amateur Night’

Robert Gates dueled with the Soviets, but even he's daunted by today's challenges.

 

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Some of Barack Obama's advisers have talked publicly of keeping on Robert Gates as secretary of defense in a Democratic administration. Gates, who has been widely praised for his pragmatic stewardship of the Pentagon, says firmly he wants to go home to Washington state. But he agreed to talk to NEWSWEEK's John Barry about the national-security challenges he sees ahead. Excerpts:

Barry: So, what awaits the next president?
Gates: I entered the CIA 42 years ago, and I think that the world is as complex and in a real way more dangerous than at any time since then.

More dangerous than the cold war?
In the cold war, you had the cosmic risk of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. But the truth is that, other than the Cuban missile crisis and maybe one or two other occasions, that threat was really theoretical. The missiles were real, but both powers had learned to deal with each other. We had rules of the road even between the KGB and CIA. And so there was a fair amount of predictability; we kind of observed red lines.

And now there are no red lines?
Look around. Iran. North Korea. A Russia that people have a hard time figuring out what to make of. The Chinese are not so much a security challenge, but they clearly have some very significant military modernization programs underway that are worrisome. North Korea: what's going to happen now? The entirety of Central Asia, where you have pressures on them from Russia to toe the line, and their wanting to maintain some sense of independence—but how much? Again, nobody knows where that line is … The problems that Pakistan faces. So you've got all of these. You've got the whole Israeli-Palestinian-Syrian challenge. In our own hemisphere, Venezuela. And then, of course, there is Al Qaeda and a variety of violent extremists that are still very much out there. That's a pretty long list of challenges that the new guys need to be prepared to deal with from day one.

But a more dangerous world?
The reason I said it was a more dangerous world ... is that the consequences of conflict, or an attack, are not nearly as cataclysmic as had there been a conflict with the Soviet Union. But the risks of one are far greater.

And, of course, the next president will inherit two wars
We are engaged in two very difficult wars. One of them, [Iraq], seems on the way toward a positive outcome—particularly given where we were. But the other is going to be a slog, and it's more complicated because we have many more nations involved—not just on the military side, on the civilian side, too. So … managing that is much more difficult in Afghanistan.

You took over from Donald Rumsfeld
One of the things that annoys me is that everyone is always trying to contrast everything I do with everything Secretary Rumsfeld did. But the transformation that he started has totally changed the American military, and, I believe, for the better.

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: Krohn @ 11/02/2008 11:10:39 PM

    The Wall Street crisis was planned the night of Obama's meeting at Bill Ayres home to put Obama in The White House. Together they put a beautiful plan into place.

    This Strategy was first elucidated in the 1966 issue of 'The Nation' Magazine by a pair of radical Socialist Columbia University professors, Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.

    David Horowitz summarizes it as:

    "The strategy of forcing political change through an orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of Capitalism by overloading the Government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
    unquote

    Obama begin with ACORN by funneling millions into their organization. He then trained ACORN to stage protests in banks to force them to issue risky loans or they would be threatened to face racial charges. ACORN was trained to intimidate financial institutions into giving ???Ninja??? loans to people with NO assets, NO job and NO income, who couldn???t afford these loans.

    That caused the housing bubble two years ago it was by ACORN's actions they were able to destroy our credit system.

    As this played out, D-Barney Frank and D-Chris Dodd were able to cover up the millions of improvident loans to these bad risky house buyers. And Barney Frank and his chums successfully were able to block all of President Bush's attempts to put a rein on this problem.

    So Fannie & Freddie was forced to purchase all these failed subprime mortgages.

    Then both Frank and Dodd denied that there were any problems, and refused the Bush Admin. requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting sub-prime mortgage loans almost up to the 'minute they failed'.

    Democrats then blamed Bush saying it happened on his watch knowing it would hurt the Republican Party in the election setting it up that Barack Obama could use this to his advantage.

    Karl Marx once compared a Revolutionary struggle with the work of the mole, who sometimes burrows so far beneath the ground that he leaves no trace of his movement on the surface.

    Barack Obama is that Marxist mole !

  • Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/01/2008 5:18:46 PM

    WELL SAID BILL COSBY !!

    'They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English.
    I can't even talk the way these people talk:
    Why you ain't,
    Where you is,
    What he drive,
    Where he stay,
    Where he work,
    Who you be...

    And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk.

    And then I heard the father talk.

    Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads.
    You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth.

    In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living.

    People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an Education, and now
    We've got these knuckleheads walking around.

    The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal.

    These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids.

    $500 sneakers for what?

    And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics.

    I am talking about these people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange suit.

    Where were you when he was 2?

    Where were you when he was 12?

    Where were you when he was 18 and how come you didn't know that he had a pistol?

    And where is the father? Or who is his father?

    People putting their clothes on backward:
    Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong?

    People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something?

    Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles [piercing] going through her body?

    What part of Africa did this come from??

    We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa ...

    I say this all of the time. It would be like white people saying they are European-American. That is totally stupid.

    I was born here, and so were my parents and grand parents and, very likely my great grandparents. I don't have any connection to Africa, no more than white Americans have to Germany , Scotland , England , Ireland , or the Netherlands . The same applies to 99 percent of all the black Americans as regards to Africa . So stop, already! ! !

    With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap .....And all of them are in jail.

    Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem.

    We have got to take the neighborhood back.

    People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now.

    We have millionaire football players who cannot read.

    We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We, as black folks have to do a better job.

    Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids, you are hurting us.

    We have to start holding each other to a higher standard.

    " We cannot blame the white people any longer."
    Dr. William Henry 'Bill' Cosby, Jr., Ed.D.

  • Posted By: Concerned Canadian @ 11/01/2008 2:00:24 PM

    Two central issues in the election Barack Obama is wrong and misleading:

    1) No tax increases to those earning $250,000 or less promised by Obama, then he
    lowered this figure to $200,000, then the "Gift that keeps on Giving" Joe Biden says
    the number is $150,000 and just yesterday Gov. Bill Richardson says the figure is
    $120,000 ...and now a videotape is disclosed where it shows Obama recently stated
    that in the interest of fairness with taxes is around $80,000.00!!
    Sounds like good old fashion Democratic ???reverse auction ???tax policy they implement
    after they break their campaign promise to the American people.

    2) On national security ...Obama???s own VP running mate Joe Biden ... ???mark my words,
    this guy Obama is going to be tested by a generated international crisis within 6
    months of his Presidency..I guarantee it??? Obama will meet with USA's enemies with
    no pre-conditions!
    John McCain???s surge strategy in Iraq is working and its saving the lives of young
    American men and women in uniform serving there...Obama won't admit to this day
    the surge is working and he voted to cut funding for these military forces !!

    John McCain is Commander-In-Chief material ....Obama is just a cardboard "cut-out"
    candidate of the DNC.

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