Can Gates Turn It Around?

Robert Gates's title is secretary of defense, but he sees his job as secretary of war. That's the key to understanding why Gates has summarily axed Gen. David McKiernan as U.S. commander in Afghanistan. It also explains why Gates has chosen a Black Ops wiz, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to replace him.

Gates came into the Pentagon to win a war. President Bush had been persuaded—largely by his national security adviser, Stephen Hadley—that the U.S. was losing the struggle in Iraq: wholesale change at the Pentagon was needed to turn things around. In short order, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; the commander of Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid; and the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, were removed. Gates, summoned to the Pentagon in the last days of 2006, completed the sweep by retiring the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Peter Pace. (Bush has never gotten due credit for the sheer nerve of this unprecedented purge.)

Gates's first and all-consuming task was to salvage the mess in Iraq. The "surge" of U.S. troops followed, and a new population-friendly strategy devised by Gen. David Petraeus (handpicked by Gates to oversee Iraq operations) laid down a blueprint. Gen. Ray Odierno, as U.S. commander on the ground, brilliantly translated that into day-to-day operations. Together, they turned the tide. Whether Iraq will yet turn out well remains unclear. But that rescue operation was seminal to Gates's view of his task. To win wars, he had to be ruthless in choosing the best military leaders he could find; figure out with them a plan; then give them running-room to execute it. Which meant that, above all, Gates had to have confidence in them.

War is hell—not least in its testing of the officer corps. The great George Marshall, as Army chief of staff, fired 20 of its 27 division commanders in 1942, the first year of America's involvement in World War II. In all, he purged 31 of the Army's top 42 commanders. Similar ruthlessness prevailed throughout the war: seven of 34 corps commanders were relieved.

Now Gates confronts a new mess in Afghanistan. After eight years of U.S. occupation, Afghanistan is going down the tubes. As in Iraq, sweeping change is needed. More troops are being sent; 20,000-plus is the plan. Petraeus, elevated in the wake of his success in Iraq to run Central Command, has cobbled together a strategy that may, at best, stem the Taliban tide for a few months while the systemic failures of Afghan governance and reconstruction are tackled. A new American ambassador has been sent to Kabul—not by coincidence, a former U.S. military commander there. But the United States is engaged in Afghanistan with a motley crew of 41 allies, mostly European; the new plan requires more help from them. Because the senior U.S. military commander in Europe has had scratchy relations with top Europeans, he is quietly retiring a couple of months early. In his place the U.S. is sending Adm. James Stavridis, who has won rave reviews for canny diplomacy as commander of U.S. Southern Command covering Latin and South America. A new U.S. ambassador to NATO—again, not by coincidence, a Dutchman by birth whose mother, as a child, escaped the Holocaust by weeks—arrives in Brussels this coming weekend.

The stage is set for a massive effort to turn Afghanistan around. There remained only the question of the commander of American and NATO forces there: General McKiernan. Gates decided that "fresh thinking, fresh eyes on the problem" were needed. Nothing personal, but McKiernan had to go.

McKiernan, as his many admirers in the military point out, can be seen as a victim of his own success. It was McKiernan who last year sounded the alarm about Afghanistan. To the edge of insubordination, he had the guts to argue publicly and repeatedly the need for massive troop reinforcements. That was not a message popular in a Pentagon stretched thin by Iraq—or to the outgoing Bush or incoming Obama administrations. But McKiernan won his argument. He also managed to straighten out the tangled chain of military command that has hamstrung coalition efforts in Afghanistan—a heroic effort only veterans of military politics can truly appreciate.