WASHINGTON - Friday's announcement that
General Peter Pace will not be nominated for a
second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff of the US armed forces marks the latest in a
series of moves by Pentagon chief Robert Gates to
transform the leadership of the Pentagon and
consign his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, to
distant memory.
Indeed, in the less than
seven months since Gates himself replaced
Rumsfeld, the former Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) chief has played a key, if largely quiet,
role in steering US policy
in a
more "realist" direction, promoted as well by
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her State
Department colleagues, according to observers in
Washington.
"I think Gates is all right,"
a key Democratic lawmaker, who is both close to
the uniformed military and who strongly opposed
the US war in Iraq, told Inter Press Service. "I
think he's making an important difference."
That difference has made a growing number
of hawks increasingly unhappy, including many
neo-conservatives who had grown disillusioned with
Rumsfeld's refusal to increase US forces in Iraq
well before he was forced out after last
November's Democratic landslide in the mid-term
Congressional elections.
"There's a rumor
going around that Robert Gates is the secretary of
defense," snorted the lead editorial of the
neo-conservative Wall Street Journal. "We'd like
to request official confirmation, because based on
recent evidence the man running the Pentagon is
Democratic Senator [and Senate Armed Services
Committee chairman] Carl Levin of Michigan."
Noting that Pace was "one of [President
George W] Bush's main Iraq war generals", the
editorial went on, "Mr Gates seems to think he can
succeed as the anti-Rumsfeld by appeasing the
likes of Mr Levin, but his kowtow [in nixing
Pace's second term] only makes Mr Bush look weaker
as a commander in chief who can't even select his
own war generals."
Pace, the first
chairman from the marines, served under General
Richard Myers as vice chairman from October 2001 -
that is, less than a month after the September 11,
2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon - until
August, 2005, when he replaced his predecessor. He
will retire when his current term expires on
September 30.
Like Myers, Pace was
identified closely with the conduct of Bush's
"global war on terror", including the military
campaign in Afghanistan in late 2001 and the 2003
invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of
Iraq. While Pace was reportedly somewhat more
assertive of the military brass' interests than
Myers in the face of Rumsfeld's notorious bullying
and contempt, he was still regarded by many of his
peers as too deferential.
He also did not
help his case when he said this year that he
regarded homosexuality as immoral and, more
recently, when he sent a clemency appeal to a
judge on behalf of Vice President Dick Cheney's
former chief of staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby,
who was sentenced last week to 30 months in prison
for lying to federal investigators.
"He
had to know that this was not going to make his
confirmation hearing any easier," noted one
Congressional aide.
At Gates' suggestion,
Bush has nominated Admiral Michael Mullen,
currently chief of naval operations, to replace
Pace. Like Gates' other military appointments,
Mullen is considered a realist who, according to
the New York Times, "chafed under Mr Rumsfeld's
management style", especially his disregard for
the advice of the Joint Chiefs.
Although
Mullen has used much the same rhetoric as the
administration in describing the current conflict
- in a February speech, he described the enemy has
"basically evil" and predicted that the "war is
going to go on for a long time; it's a
generational war" - most veteran Pentagon
observers see him as a professional who, despite
his own affiliation with the navy, is currently
most concerned about over-stretching the army in
Iraq.
"He represents a general trend in
the administration away from crusaders and toward
problem-solvers," Loren Thompson, a military
analyst at the Lexington Institute, told the
Washington Post.
Some observers have
compared his views with those of Admiral William
Fallon, another Gates choice who has headed the US
Central Command since February, and who is
reportedly increasingly skeptical of both the
administration's current "surge" strategy in Iraq
and its impact on the army, and of the buildup of
naval forces in the Gulf to intimidate Iran.
Both men are expected to play key roles in
deciding the fate of the "surge" - the deployment
of 30,000 additional US troops to try to pacify
Baghdad - as will another skeptic whom Gates
recommended, General Douglas Lute, the White
House's new "war czar", when the administration
concludes a full review in September.
While publicly supportive of the "surge",
Gates himself is seen as a skeptic - although last
week for the first time he spoke of a smaller, but
"protracted" US military presence in Iraq.
Until his nomination as defense secretary,
Gates served on the bipartisan Iraq Study Group
and, consistent with its recommendations, has
strongly supported diplomatic engagement with Iran
- a position he has held since at least 2004 when
he co-chaired with former national security
adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski a Council on Foreign
Relations task force on US policy toward Tehran.
Since January, Gates has downplayed
charges by other administration officials and some
military commanders that the Iranian government is
supplying weapons, particularly explosively formed
penetrators, an especially lethal form of roadside
bombs, to anti-US forces in both Iran and
Afghanistan.
It is an issue in which
Cheney's office has reportedly expressed
particular interest, apparently as part of an
effort to build a case for an eventual military
strike against Iran, much as the intelligence and
policy units that reported to Rumsfeld did in the
run-up to the Iraq War.
In a critical
appointment in January, Gates replaced Rumsfeld's
chief intelligence aide, Stephen Cambone, with
retired Lieutenant General James Clapper, Junior,
who worked with Gates when the latter served as
deputy national security adviser and subsequently
as CIA director under former president George H W
Bush in the early 1990s.
Under Cambone, a
long-time Rumsfeld protege, the Pentagon expanded
its intelligence operations significantly,
including its authority to conduct covert
operations without Congressional oversight.
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