We owe Larry Korb a debt of gratitude for offering some perpective on the premature beatification of Robert Gates. He properly highlights a distressing lack of congruity between public aura and actual behavior that borders on the habitually dishonest. A bit more candor on the measures we use for evaluating public performance in general is in order. Gates has been a justifier, promoter or apologist for every one of the serial failures that mark American misadventures in the Greater Middle East during the 9/11 decade. If you believe that those policies, most of which continue to register painful costs, constitute a success, then Gates indeed deserves encomia. If you believe that the record is uniformly one of fiasco and tragic failure, as I do, then he gets low grades.

On this, I part company from Larry Korb in assessing the Iraq outcome as satisfactory. In an earlier post, I offered my own summary of thatunmitigated disaster. Perhaps Gates last gift will be using his visit to Irbil last week to pave the way for the Kurdish province to invite the United States to hang around places like Kirkuk whatever mr. maliki wants. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

Finally, let's recognize that Robert Gates has been a visceral hawk throughout his career - someone who habitually saw grave threats lurking behind every event and an advoocate of the hard line. This is a man who in January 1991 (after the fall of the Wall and acceptance of a unified Germany into NATO) declared to NSC colleagues that Mikhail Gorbachev had shown his true colors as a dyed in the wool Bolshie (because of Lithuania). He is so quoted in the book of Condeleezza Rice and Philip Zelikow. Ms Rice, according to her own testimony, nodded agreement with the revised appraisal.

Of such stuff are modern heros made.

Mr Gates has done a great job. On a number of bad issues, he has turned a sow's ear into a respectable cloth purse. He has been tough on the brass, and he has postured the department for the deep cuts to come, while successfully managing two wars

The next Secretary needs to be smart, know the building, be able to work the Congress, and be a prudent realist. Much of any SECDEF's day --- my direct observation goes back to Cap --- is spent with the President, the principals or key aides talking about the foreign aspects of national security policy. In recent years, when the fur flies, it is the SECDEF's sound bites that lead the evening news. Issues of war and peace will outrank even the pressing resource issues of the "next era."

The good news is that there are any number of great candidates to take Mr. Gates's job. John Hamre, Ash Carter, Secretary Mabus, et al., what's not to like? The chosen one among them will have one disadvantage that Gates did not. He followed Mr. Rumsfeld, whose popularity was low, to be kind. Whoever comes in after Gates will have to deal with the WWGD (What would Gates do?) question. Gates leaves on top of the public opinion heap, and he deserves to be there.

What should his successor do? Well first, he should read my article in Armed Forces Journal, http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2011/04/5923767 on what the next SECDEF should do, then he or she should fall to his or her knees, and plead for divine guidance. It couldn't hurt, especially in Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen.

Whoever succeeds Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense will have a difficult task. But not just for the reason most commonly mentioned, namely that the defense budget will not continue to grow as it has for the past decade. While it is true that if the nation is to deal win a meaningful way the defense budget will have to decline in current and constant dollars, the real problem for Gates’ successor is that Gates’ actions have not matched his rhetoric and that he does not deserve many of the accolades his is receiving.

Let me give a few examples. First, Gates went to West Point and said that any Secretary of Defense who recommends sending large land armies into the Middle East, Asia, or Africa should have his head examined. This is from a person who recommended sending over 100,000 additional troops into Iraq and Afghanistan (the Middle East and Asia). Moreover, when confronted by a Wall Street reporter about this apparent contradiction, Gates responded by saying he wished he had not said it.

Second, Gates spoke at the annual meeting of the Navy League and questioned why the Navy needed 11 carrier battle groups when no other country has even one comparable group. But when asked if this meant we should cut the number of carrier battle groups he said no.

Third, after going to the Eisenhower library and saying that the gusher of defense spending was over because of the exploding federal deficit, Gates later stated that defense should be exempt from deficit reduction because it had no part in creating the deficit (Ike must have turned over in his grave). This statement ignores the fact that in the past decade defense spending has increased by $2 trillion over projected levels -- $1 trillion for the wars and another $1 trillion in the base budget.

Gates then went on to say that he has made about $300 billion in program reductions and eliminated another $178 billion in wasteful spending from the Pentagon. This ignores the fact that in 2008, the last year of the Bush administration (and what he presumed would be his last year as SecDef), Gates told Congress that the FY2012 baseline budget would need to be $542 billion. But in 2011, despite all the “cuts” he made, Gates requested $553 billion for the base budget.

How did this happen? Most of the $300 billion in program reductions resulted from terminating programs, like the F-22 at 187 planes and the DDG-1000 at three ships, that were already scheduled to be terminated at those numbers. Moreover, Gates plowed $100 billion of the efficiencies he found back into the base budget. His sleight of hand even fooled House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, who accepted Gates’ $178 billion in reductions as part of his own deficit reduction plan.

Finally, when the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission recommended reducing defense expenditures by about $900 billion over the next decade, Gates called their plan catastrophic, conveniently ignoring the fact that if fully adopted, DOD would still receive more in real terms than it did on average in the Cold War when we had to contain a rival superpower.

Fourth, Gates proclaimed that health care costs are eating the Pentagon alive and indeed they are. Over the past decade, they have increased from $19 billion to $52 billion and are projected to rise to $62 billion by the middle of the decade. Yet in February of this year, all Gates could propose was a plan to reduce these expenditures by $8 billion or 3 percent over the next five years, primarily by raising Tricare premiums by only $30 a year for individuals and $50 a year for families of military retirees, even though the premiums have not been raised for 15 years.

But many of his supporters will argue that Gates deserves a lot of credit for turning things around in Iraq. Not really. President Bush had appointed General Petraeus and decided on the surge before Gates took over. His main contribution was to break faith with the troops by extending the tours of some units in Iraq from 12 to 15 months and allowing some soldiers to deploy without completing unit training.

Moreover when Petraeus’ strategy and tactics in Iraq were questioned by his superiors in the chain of command, namely two Gates appointees, Admiral Fallon at CENTCOM and Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the JCS, it was retired army General Jack Keane who got the White House to back Petraeus and overrule Fallon and Mullen.

But even if Gates deserves some credit for Iraq, how about blame for Afghanistan? In early 2008, he ignored the request of General McKiernan, whom he had appointed to run operations in Afghanistan, for more troops to reverse the Taliban’s momentum, thus handing Obama the quagmire he has been dealing with.

Gates has not been a failure as Secretary of Defense. He certainly has been an improvement over Donald Rumsfeld. But he does not deserve to rank alongside such significant secretaries as Melvin Laird, who from 1969 to 1973 executed the withdrawal of 500,000 troops from Vietnam, ended conscription, and developed the weapons that laid the foundation for winning the Cold War while slashing defense spending to help deal with the inflation caused by the war in Vietnam. And despite the public perception, Gates will be handing his successor more problems than most people realize.

I'll steer a middle course between Dr. Carafano's doomsaying on the right – the claim that we're shortchanging defense – and Dr. Vlahos’s doomsaying on the left – the claim that defense has grown to a nation within the nation. We can't keep doing everything we do now on the current budget, let alone a smaller one, but the current budget is only going to shrink. And Secretary of Defense who asked for more in today's environment would be laughed out of the room. Yes, we used to spend a much larger share of GDP on defense than we do today, but (a) that was in the Cold War when we faced a real threat of nuclear war and/or a Soviet blitzkrieg in Central Europe (b) our fiscal situation has gotten worse and keeps deteriorating in profound ways – national debt, trade deficit, entitlements – that aren't going away even if the economy recovers. The security situation permits, and the economic situation demands, that Defense give up some of its budget, which means giving up some of its assets and activities, which in turn means not only offending political constituencies but, more importantly, making strategic compromises.

Bob Gates did not solve this dilemma. He did not even offer a comprehensive vision of how to solve. But he did make a serious start. And I'm not going to slam Gates for not figuring out the future when he had to spend most of his time pulling us out of a nosedive in the present. Admittedly, almost anyone would look good after Donald Rumsfeld and, for that matter, Clinton SecDef William Cohen. But Bob Gates has been a genuinely good Secretary of Defense in his own right, not just in comparison, and quite possibly great.

I'm not going to play the “guess the next secretary” game: I'm not qualified and even those who seem to be mostly get it wrong. But I will lay out an agenda for the next Secretary of Defense, whoever he (or she) turns out to be. Based on the more than 190 interviews I've conducted with veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, I believe the critical task is not modernizing the military's hardware but sustaining its human capital. If I have to cut one more than the other – and we will – then I'll cancel high-tech weapons to keep highly skilled people, every time.

That said, how many people we have, though, is less important than which people we have. Some manpower cuts will have to happen, given that personnel is the single most expensive thing in the Pentagon budge. Adequate budgets will ensure the cuts aren't too agonizing on either the human or the hardware side. But more important than money is reform.

My interviews have convinced me that the nation faces both a danger and an opportunity:

—Not since the aftermath of Vietnam have we had a military so exhausted by years of fighting and so isolated from the society it serves.

—Never in our history have we had a military so experienced, professional, and adaptable.

The current discussion about “resetting” the force emphasizes repairing the damage done rather than building on the experience gained. This is a mistake. Hundreds of conversations have convinced me that people join the military for countless individual reasons, but they stay because they believe they are doing important work in a great cause. When they feel thwarted, they leave.

Of course, pay matters for morale. So does time with family. So does decent healthcare. But even generous benefits are not enough if our dedicated military professionals feel unable to do their best. A generation raised on the urgency, independence, and constant adaptation of the past decade will not take well to peacetime bureaucracy, make-work, or drift. To keep these skilled professionals in the force, we must offer them not only benefits but also the opportunity to further develop their skills. Preserving our human capital and enhancing it are not two separate tasks. They are inextricably linked and require an integrated policy approach.

Based on my six years interviewing post-9/11 combat veterans, thirteen years covering national defense, and a lifetime studying military affairs, I believe we must aim at four interconnected goals:

—Empower the rising generation of military professionals to institutionalize their hard-won knowledge of counterinsurgency, rebuild disused skills for large-scale maneuver operations, and synthesize these historically opposed approaches into a hybrid way of war.

—Reform the military’s rigid personnel bureaucracy into a system that rewards servicemembers for their unique experiences—actively encouraging, for example, study abroad or service as an advisor to foreign forces—instead of punishing those who stray from the traditional career paths.

—Integrate the generous but disjointed array of services for servicemembers, former servicemembers, their families, and above all those wounded in body or in mind, weaving the current patchwork of military, VA, state, local, and non-profit programs into a seamless network.

—Bridge the gap between America and its military, one person at a time, for example by boosting programs like ROTC, the G.I. Bill, and military fellowships that bring future, former, and current servicemembers onto civilian campuses.

The above is largely lifted from the Learning From Veterans mission statement on my website. I invite anyone who's interested in finding out more to click on over.

I am personally a little sad to see Bob Gates leaving the political stage for likely the last time. He is 67 years old and had a spectacular career even in advance of his stellar performance at DOD. Admittedly, I am a fan. I worked Congressional affairs for him for two years at CIA. He understood instinctually what he needed to do politically and we did well and good for CIA,

Gates is also a master of good timing. The SecDef job is about to get a lot less fun. The budgets are going to have to decline in the face of Iraq winding down and appeasing the budget deficit gods. Commitments overseas will be judged much more harshly as we now enter campaign 2012. So who in the world would l pick to replace Gates -- a logical choice would be John Hamre.

Hamre currently heads tthe Center for Strategic and International Studies. So, he has kept his fingers in the policy pot. As for the ugly business of a declining budget -- he oversaw the terrible days of the 1990's in the Pentagon through his various senior policy and budgetary position and fought hard for sensible cuts. Hamre is also someone who is relatively non-partisan and respected on the Hill

Whoever draws the short straw and gets the SecDef job will have a hell of a fight. As for Bob Gates, I thank him for his service and wish him nothing but the best of fortune in his future.

In the Obama administration, Robert Gates has acted less as Secretary of Defense and more as president of an increasingly separate and autonomous realm within the United States. Is this simply a consequence of weak presidential Defense authority and and a lack of confidence in its war leadership? Or has this become a genetic failing of Democratic administrations — an hereditary condition caused by Republicans' successful appropriation of War and Defense enterprises?

Democrats may feel their Defense anemia acutely, yet the emerging DOD "presidency" represents a broad secular trend. Over several decades the Defense World has become a powerful political player in Washington, to the point where it is effectively insulated from both congressional and executive policy. Moreover since the introduction of the All-Volunteer Force military societies have evolved into increasingly separate and insulated sub-cultures within American life. Finally, ten years of war and its bitter politics has effectively denied Media, Congress and the Presidency permission to strongly criticize Defense policy — unless the critical source bears unimpeachable military credentials. The 9-11 War cemented the political immunity of the Defense World.

Certainly war policy is still vigorously debated. Likewise specific Defense programs can come under critical scrutiny. But the Defense World itself is basically off-limits, because of three factors: 1-Republicans remain wholly successful in representing any criticism of our military as an act of cowardice and perhaps even treason "during time of war;" 2-Americans wholeheartedly support our Defense effort without question or reflection; 3-Congress, Media, and the executive branch are therefore loath to take anything on.

In this political context the Defense World seeks a leader who can protect this advantageous situation and be their advocate. Remember too that this realm is much more than the Department of Defense alone — it is really more like a vast federation of tribes, including Ike's famous "military-industrial complex," active retirees, and everyone's family. This "Defense Tribal Confederacy" begins to look increasingly like a nation-within-a-nation of perhaps 25-30 million.

So any president who nominates a SecDef to reform and "clean house" will be met with stiff resistance not only "inside the building" but across the public political landscape — a battle no president will even consider. Only in the instance of true economic calamity might a tough chief — wielding machete — be named, and this evolution, reversed. But such an exigency is not yet before us, and such a figure is on no current list.

Hence to be a "strong" Secretary of Defense now by definition means being an advocate for the Tribal Confederacy, not serving as the president's minister. If serving the president also means advocating for Defense, that is okay. But the prime directive is now to serve, and lead, the Defense World. Robert Gates managed this magnificently.

So who is chosen will tell you all you need to know about what will happen.

Secretary Gates has done exactly what his president has asked. That has resulted in as much harm as good. Always sensitive to the charge of being "weak" on national security, Obama has been the reluctant warrior in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Gates has accommodated him every step of the way.

Since Obama is disinterested in maintaining American power, Gates has paved the way there as well—clothing the decline of capabilities and readiness in faux talk of savings and being "realistic."

The reality is that Gates blithely walks out the door leaving the military on the verge of becoming hollow--lacking the capacity to pay for current operations, maintain readiness and prepare for the future. Nor is any major task finished from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya. There is much more to be done in each case.

The Gates legacy will be seen as little more than serving as a caretaker for Obama's agenda to preside over the decline of American military power.

Maintaining an adequate military that can address current and future challenges will require budgets of about $720 billion for at least five years. Gates has not supported anything like that. Furthermore, "real" reforms and efficiencies would require tackling runaway manpower costs. Gates' answer is rather than address the problem to just cut troops down the road. Also, the Pentagon must grapple with logistics and operations practices that are grossly inefficient. Gates' answer is just buy less ships, planes, vehicles.

Since the president will only select someone to replace Gates who will do more of the same--honestly what does it matter?

Congress is now the only force in Washington that can stop Obama's disastrous defense agenda.

The 2003 Iraq alumni association is studded with stars. Its reunion would be a cheerful occasion for mutual congratulations. Donald Rumsfeld is promoting his self serving memoir on the talk show circuit where he is received as a respected elder statesman. Condoleezza Rice of Stanford University has just composed an endearing, skillfully mendacious account of her noble service to the Republic. General Stanley McChrystal, who set up the network of torture facilities in Iraq and then laid the cornerstone of its Begram counterpart, teaches Modern Leadership at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. Paul Wolfowitz, spiritual leader of the neo-con pack, is avidly sought by network anchors for sage advice on Egypt, Libya, Bahrain et al. His brother in arms at the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, is Professor and Distinguished Practitioner in National Security Policy at Georgetown; evidently without a reference letter from General Franks who judged him to be “the f…..g dumbest guy on the face of the planet.” (Quote from Woodward, 2005). Meghan O’Sullivan, right hand woman to L. Paul Bremer III in the Green Zone, is the Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. There, she invites media inquiries on some 42 topics ranging from Accountability through Ethics, Judgment & Decision-making to Volunteerism and Women. Many other less renown alumni has done commensurately as well.

This recitation of the professional successes racked up by those who produced the catastrophe of Iraq calls our attention to how evanescent are memories of that historic exercise in deceit and failure. It is necessary to point this out because the process of individual rehabilitation is apace with the spreading number of benign retrospectives of Iraq that are drawn upon to offer forecasts for America’s future place in an unruly Middle East.

Envisaging the future largely depends on how one understands the past and interprets the present. On Iraq, America’s political class lives complacently in a virtual reality of myth and legend. The miraculous ‘surge,’ Petraeus the Messiah, a vibrant democracy in the land of the three rivers, an abundance of possibilities – for Iraqis and for us – beckon: a kindred country and close ally, American bases strategically sprinkled around Mesopotamia, a Vice-Regal Embassy peopled by 1,600 dedicated American officials, 30 – 50,000 troops cleverly camouflaged as trainers or private security guards, oil gushing from every crevice. All that’s missing is a parade down Broadway and a national holiday commemorating our triumph.

However, present this sketch to knowledgeable and experienced people who do not have a personal stake of so kind in perpetuating the fantasy and listen to their bellows of sardonic laughter. It is nothing but a tall tale compounded of equal parts studied ignorance, political and intellectual cowardice, public naivete, and the willfulness of the careerists to whom we entrust the Republic’s future. Here are a few hard, unpalatable facts that elude the mental grasp of those who dominate and exploit our public discourse.

1. The United States is viewed throughout the Islamic world (and beyond it) as having savaged a country and a people for its own selfish purposes. We thereby have lost credibility and moral authority throughout the region, and are despised or hated by many.

2. Our inability to own up to the human costs – especially there but also among Americans – is seen as further evidence of our coarseness and callousness to human suffering.

3. Iraq itself is in parlous shape. Most of its citizens still receive less electricity and potable water than they did in February 2003. 40% of the population lives below the poverty line – as defined by Iraqi standards. The country no longer can feed itself. Its prisons operate in the Saddam mode. 2 million of its citizens are in self-imposed exile, including a large slice of its educated elites. Another 2 million are displaced internally.

4. Iraq’s government is corrupt, brutal and incompetent at every level. Mr. Maliki in Baghdad heads a fragile coalition that it took nine months to cobble together. Sectarian hostilities remain barely abated even if violence, for the time being, is not at civil war levels. Civil war between Kurds and Arabs is a distinct possibility, though.

5. The kingmaker in Baghdad in Moqtada al-Sadr who has fought the United States occupation from day one. He will not allow Maliki to take up the generous American offer to keep all those trainers and guns for hire in Iraq indefinitely. Mr. Maliki himself has little incentive to do so.

6. The overriding regional reality is the bitter divide between Sunnis and Shi’ites which we have done so much to foster. The Khalifa and Saudi clans now have laid down a line of blood that no one dare ignore. Iraq’s leadership is Shi’ite (empowered by the American invasion). It has close ties of a religious and political nature with Iran (our no. 2 obsession after the ‘war on terror’) whose political influence behind the scenes already surpasses ours. The Saudi led Sunni states of the Gulf are frightened and gearing up for what they see as a mortal combat with Iranian led Shi’ites throughout the Middle East. They have supported and will continue to support Iraq’s marginalized and estranged Sunnis. The threat that poses to Iraq’s Shi’ite leaders pushes them into a tighter embrace of Tehran. None of these parties are inclined to take our advice on matters of life-or-death to them.

7. Our timid, vacillating and in the end self-serving attitude toward the democratic wave sweeping the region has lost us whatever shreds of credibility we still retained. Equally important, it has lost us the opportunity to be a respected partner of the reformist youth who are destined to be a dominant political force across the Middle East. Large demonstrations in Iraq (mostly unreported by the MSM) railed against elected despotism. They were followed by other large demonstrations (including one this Saturday) that targeted the United States for its tacit complicity in the on-going brutal suppression of democratic Shi’ites in Bahrain. The latter affair has hardened most Iraqis’ resentment toward America. Maliki’s police killed 30 or so of the former protesters - an action aligning him with fellow autocrats across the region.

8. Washington is left with only the grudging partnership of scared potentates, a less pliable if pragmatic Egypt - and of course the Israelis..

So we have two choices. Join the pageant of praise and celebration for our grand success in Iraq or soberly admit our failings and prepare to endure the bed of nails we have made for ourselves.