U.S. ‘Cannot Afford To Fail’ in Iraq, New Defense Secretary Says

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Defense Secretary Gates said America “cannot afford to fail” in the Middle East and that he will visit Iraq “quite soon” to consult with military commanders there.

Mr. Gates said he wants their advice “unvarnished and straight from the shoulder” so he can help President Bush develop a strategy for helping Iraq’s new government quell the sectarian violence there and bringing American forces home.

Mr. Gates spoke at the Pentagon after taking the oath of office from Vice President Cheney in a public ceremony. About six hours earlier, he was sworn in by White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in a private White House ceremony.

Mr. Gates, 63, the nation’s 22nd defense secretary, faces a host of difficult challenges as he takes the helm of the American military.

“He’s fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. “He has a major military-manpower problem. He has to rebuild readiness, which involves a massive investment in reconditioning equipment that was damaged in Iraq. Then, virtually every major procurement program we have is in financial trouble.”

Mr. Bush said at the Pentagon that Mr. Gates’s long service in government, culminating in his tenure as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1993, would serve him well in meeting those challenges. “He’s got a track record of steering large organizations through change and transformation,” Mr. Bush said.

Adding to Mr. Gates’s challenge: He is the first defense secretary in almost four decades to be appointed by a sitting president in the midst of a full-blown war. The last time that happened was in 1968, when Clark Clifford succeeded Robert McNamara at the height of the Vietnam conflict.

Then, as now, the new Pentagon chief faced the task of selling the president on a new approach to an unsuccessful and unpopular war.

Clifford persuaded President Johnson to reject calls from his generals for a new infusion of troops and to halt the bombing of North Vietnam, the first step on a path that led to a 1973 agreement for the withdrawal of American forces.

How Mr. Gates, who most recently was president of Texas A&M University in College Station, will fare with Mr. Bush on Iraq remains to be seen. The new secretary raised war critics’ expectations during his December 5 Senate confirmation hearing by acknowledging that America wasn’t winning in Iraq, criticizing the handling of the conflict and saying that “all options are on the table.”

He also said he didn’t favor setting a timetable for decamping from Iraq, a central demand of war opponents. Since then, Mr. Bush has raised doubts about how far he is willing to go to change policy, saying December 13 that he would reject ideas “that would lead to defeat” or mean “leaving before the job is done.”

Still, Mr. Gates has made clear that he intends to be a central broker in the administration’s review, starting with a trip as early as this week to Iraq to meet with commanders.

At the Pentagon ceremony, Mr. Gates says he expected straight talk from American military commanders in Iraq when he visits, and told Mr. Bush to expect the same from him.

“You have asked for my candor and my honest counsel at this critical moment in our nation’s history, and you will get both,” Mr. Gates said.

The new secretary also made clear that he doesn’t favor a hasty withdrawal.

“All of us want to find a way to bring America’s sons and daughters home again,” he said. “But, as the president has made clear, we simply cannot afford to fail in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility and endanger Americans for decades to come.

If Iraq is the first challenge facing the new secretary, it isn’t the only one — or perhaps even the most important in the long run. Mr. Cordesman said it was striking that almost all the questions from senators during Mr. Gates’s daylong confirmation hearing dealt with Iraq — and none with issues such as manpower, readiness, and weapons acquisition.

“Almost no one focused on what it means to be secretary of defense,” Mr. Cordesman said. “You are running a half-trillion-dollar business, and Iraq is only a small part of it.”

Mr. Gates will immediately face questions about whether the Army’s present size of about 507,000 active-duty soldiers is sufficient. His predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, 74, didn’t push for a permanent increase even as the force was stressed to the limit by fighting simultaneous conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Early in the administration, Army officials accepted this decision because of the cost — about $1.2 billion annually for each additional 10,000 troops. Analysts such as Michael O’Hanlon of Washington’s Brookings Institution say that not boosting the Army’s size was Mr. Rumsfeld’s top strategic failure — and Army officials now advocate an increase.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s major priority has been converting the military from a force designed to fight conventional wars against national armies to one suited for “asymmetrical” conflicts like those against Al Qaeda terrorists.

Mr. Gates will have to grapple with the costs of the Pentagon’s two largest weapons-acquisition programs, which Mr. Rumsfeld has called central to the transformation effort. They are the $164-billion Future Combat Systems, which seeks to link soldiers and weapons through a sophisticated communications network, and the $276 billion Joint Strike Fighter aircraft.

“Rumsfeld took a perverse pleasure in avoiding involvement in acquisition matters, but transformation is mainly about what tools the military buys,” said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Arlington, Va.-based Lexington Institute. “And the nation’s arsenal is beginning to look downright decrepit.”

If Mr. Gates “can just keep the programs going that have already been started, that will be a major achievement,” Mr. Thompson said.”If he can actually find time to manage them, he’ll be a better leader than his predecessor.”

Mr. Gates also must rebuild military ties with China, sort out the relationship between Pentagon intelligence analysts and the rest of the intelligence community and sell Congress on a war spending measure that may total almost $100 billion.

Those who know Mr. Gates say he takes a collegial, cerebral approach to decisions, drawing out divergent views and shaping them into a consensus. “He’s not a shoot-from-the-hip guy,” said William Nolte, the CIA’s deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia under Mr. Gates.


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