WASHINGTON - The promotion of Robert M Gates as president-elect Barack Obama's
secretary of defense appears to be the key element in a broad campaign by
military officials and their supporters in the political elite and the news
media to pressure Obama into dropping his plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq
in as little as 16 months.
Despite subtle and unsubtle pressures to compromise on his withdrawal plan,
however, Obama is likely to pass over Gates and stand firm on his campaign
pledge on military withdrawal from Iraq, according to a well-informed source
close to the Obama camp.
Within 24 hours of Obama's election, the idea of Gates staying on
as defense secretary in an Obama administration was floated in the New York
Times, which reported that "a case is being made publicly by columnists and
commentators, and quietly by leading Congressional voices of Mr Obama's own
party - that Mr Gates should be asked to remain as defense secretary, at least
for an interim period in the opening months of the new presidency".
The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday that two unnamed Obama advisers had
said Obama was "leaning toward" asking Gates to stay on, although the report
added that other candidates were also in the running. The Journal said Gates
was strongly opposed to any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, and it
speculated that a Gates appointment "could mean that Mr Obama was effectively
shelving his campaign promise to remove most troops from Iraq by mid-2010".
Some Obama advisers have been maneuvering for a Gates nomination for months.
Former navy secretary Richard Danzig publicly raised the idea of a Gates
reprise in June and again in early October. Danzig told reporters on October 1,
however, that he had not discussed the possibility with Obama.
Obama advisers who support his Iraq withdrawal plan, however, have opposed a
Gates appointment. Having a defense secretary who is not fully supportive of
the 16-month timetable would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for
Obama to enforce it on the military.
A source close to the Obama transition team told Inter Press Service on Tuesday
that the chances that Gates would be nominated by Obama "are now about 10%".
The source said that Obama is going to stick with his 16-month withdrawal
timeline, despite the pressures now being brought to bear on him. "There is no
doubt about it," said the source, who refused to elaborate because of the
sensitivity of the matter.
Opposition to Obama's pledge to withdraw combat troops from Iraq on a 16-month
timetable is wide and deep in the US national security establishment and its
political allies. US military leaders have been unequivocal in rejecting any
such rapid withdrawal from Iraq, and news media coverage of the issue has been
based on the premise that Obama will have to modify his plan to make it
acceptable to the military.
The Washington Post published a story on Monday saying that Admiral Michael
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposes Obama's timeline for
withdrawal as "dangerous", insisting that "reductions must depend on conditions
on the ground". Along with General David Petraeus, now the head of Central
Command and responsible for the entire Middle East, and General Ray Odierno,
the new commander in Iraq, Mullen was portrayed as part of a phalanx of
determined military opposition to Obama's timeline.
Post reporters Alec MacGillis and Ann Scott Tyson cited "defense experts" as
predicting a "smooth and productive" relationship between Obama and these
military leaders "if Obama takes the pragmatic approach that his advisers are
indicating, allowing each side to adjust at the margins". But if Obama "presses
for the withdrawal of two brigades per month", the same analysts predicted,
"conflict is inevitable".
The story quoted a former George W Bush administration National Security
Council official, Peter D Feaver, who was a strategic planner on the
administration's Iraq troop "surge" policy, as warning that Obama's timetable
would precipitate "a civil-military crisis" if Obama does not agree to the
demands of Mullen, Petraeus and Odierno for greater flexibility.
Underlying the campaign of pressure is the assumption that Obama's 16-month
timetable is mainly posturing for political purposes during the primary
campaign, and that Obama is not necessarily committed to the withdrawal plan.
Feaver, who has returned to Duke University, said in an interview with Inter
Press Service that he did not believe such a crisis was likely. "It is unlikely
Obama will come in and do what he said he would do during the campaign." Obama
has given himself "enough wiggle room to change the plan", Feaver said.
Similarly, CNN Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre also reported on November
7 that Obama "gave himself some wiggle room" to respond to military demands for
more flexibility. McIntyre said he had "pledged to consult US commanders and
adjust as necessary".
Obama's website makes no such pledge to "adjust" the timetable. Instead, it
says the "removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by
military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi
government". It defends the rate of withdrawal of one or two brigades per month
and offers to leave a "residual force" in Iraq to "train and support the Iraqi
forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away
from sectarianism".
When Obama met with Petraeus in Baghdad in July, Petraeus presented a detailed
case for a "conditions-based" withdrawal rather than Obama's timetable and
ended with a plea for "maximum flexibility" on a withdrawal schedule, according
to Joe Klein's account in Time on October 22.
But Obama refused to back down, according to Klein's account. He told Petraeus,
"Your job is to succeed in Iraq on as favorable terms as we can get. But my job
as a potential commander in chief is to view your counsel and interests through
the prism of our overall national security." Obama defended his policy of a
fixed date for withdrawal in light of the situation in Afghanistan, the costs
of continued US occupation and the stress on US military forces.
Opponents of Obama's plan outside the Bush administration appear to be unaware
of the fact that the Bush administration has already given up the
"conditions-based withdrawal" that the US military has called for in agreeing
to Iraqi demands for complete US withdrawal by the end of 2011.
Feaver, the former strategic planner for National Security Adviser Stephen
Hadley, said he assumes that "if the US agreed to it, it preserves the
flexibility that Petraeus and Odierno say they've needed all along".
But even the small loophole left in previous versions of the text, allowing the
2011 deadline to be extended if the pact were revised with the agreement of the
Iraqi parliament, has now been closed in the "final" version which the Bush
administration submitted to the Nuri al-Maliki government last week, according
to a November 10 report by The Associated Press, which had obtained a copy of
the text.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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