Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
By Robert
Gates
A
Review for Amazon
“This is a book about my more than
four and a half years at war. It is, of course , principally about the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, where initial victories in both countries were squandered
by mistakes, shortsightedness , and conflict in the field as well as in
Washington, leading to long, brutal campaigns to avert strategic defeat.” So begins Robert Gates description of his four
years as Secretary of Defense. While our
troops were fighting, dying, and have their bodies blown apart; the other wars;
the political, bureaucratic, and diplomatic (and not so diplomatic) wars that
were the everyday fight of the Secretary of Defense, are the story that is
told. This book paints picture after
picture of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Gates describes a pentagon that focuses on planning for a hypothetical
future war at the expense of those fighting a current one and of both a
pentagon and Veteran’s Administration that play a callus lack of concern for
those whose bodies have paid the price of war.
This is both a gentle and, at times, a blunt appraisal of how our
government functions. Gates is probably
least flattering of Congress. He states,
“I was constantly amazed and infuriated at the hypocrisy of those who most
stridently attacked the Defense Department for being inefficient and wasteful
but would fight tooth and nail to prevent any reduction in defense activities
in their home state or district no matter how inefficient or wasteful.”
It is also
a wonderful insight into foreign affairs.
Gates describes in detail our interactions with governments and their
leaders in all of the crises that we all experienced during his over four years
as Secretary. I found his description of
the “Arab Spring” insightful. He states,
“Revolutions and their outcomes are usually a surprise (especially to those
overthrown) and damnably hard to predict. Experts can write about economic
hardship, demographic problems such as a “youth bulge,” pent-up rage, and
“prerevolutionary” conditions, but repressive governments often manage such conditions
for decades. Thus was the Obama administration— and everyone else in the world
(including every Arab government)— surprised by the “Arab Spring,” a revolution
that shifted the political tectonic plate of the Middle
East .” His observation
that, “the best organized and most ruthless have the advantage in revolutions.”
is a maximum we should all have nailed to our brains when we feel supportive of
any revolution. Few revolutions have
gone as well as our own, whether it be the Russian revolution, the French
revolution, the Chinese revolution or almost any that come to mind.
His rather candid descriptions of
individuals are not harsh but are frank and seldom flattering. Neither Joe Biden nor Dick Cheney would
likely be flattered nor would Russian President Vladimir Putin of whom he said;
“I said to some of my colleagues privately that I’d looked into Putin’s eyes
and, just as I expected, had seen a stone-cold killer.”
I found the book fascinating and I
found the critical reviews surprising.
It is a long book and several reviewers were not happy about that. One of the problems with e-books is that
their length is not obvious as it is in a printed volume where the thickness of
the binding can determine whether or not you pull it off the shelf. It is not difficult reading but there is a
lot of information and therefore requires some concentration. It is not a novel and cannot be read like
one. While the book does not divulge any
state secrets and therefore does not provide facts that are not in the public
domain, Gates insights and descriptions of how decisions were made should be of
interest to any citizen and voter. It is
important to understand how our government functions; otherwise, we might
believe anything that someone with a political agenda tells us.
I hope you read the book and enjoy
it as much as I did.
