Enter the Grown-UpRobert Gates' impressive—and reassuring—confirmation hearings.
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2006, at 5:12 PM ET
The most eyebrow-raising moment—of many such moments—in Robert Gates' confirmation hearings today came when Sen. Robert Byrd, the stentorian Democrat of West Virginia, asked if he favored attacking Iran.
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StumbleUponMost witnesses in Gates' position would duck the question, citing the time-honored practice of avoiding "hypotheticals." No senator would have condemned him for following precedent. But Gates plunged right in and said, basically, no.
"We have seen in Iraq," Gates replied, "that once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable." The Iranians couldn't retaliate with a direct attack on the United States, he said, but they could close off the Persian Gulf to oil exports, send much more aid to anti-American insurgents in Iraq, and step up terrorist attacks worldwide.
Byrd then asked about attacking Syria. "The Syrians' capacity to do harm to us is far more limited," Gates said, but an attack on Syria "would give rise to a significantly greater anti-Americanism" and "increasingly complicate our relationship with every country in the region."
I've been watching defense secretaries in confirmation hearings for 30 years, off and on, but I don't think I've seen any perform more forthrightly than Gates did this morning.
When he was asked if invading Iraq was a good idea in retrospect, he paused, then said, "That's a judgment the historians are going to have to make."
When Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, the panel's senior Democrat, asked if the United States was winning the war in Iraq, he said, "No, sir." Later, when James Inhofe, R-Okla., asked if he agreed that we weren't losing the war either, Gates replied, "Yes," but added, "at this point."
When Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.,* asked if he favored a return to the military draft, given a decline in Army recruitment, he said, "No," then added—again, without prompting—that this decline might be temporary, that the numbers will climb back up once young people see that joining the military doesn't mean they'll be sent to Iraq.
It is impossible to imagine any of George W. Bush's previous Cabinet appointees, or any of his sitting Cabinet officers, making such stark—and, at least implicitly, critical—statements in an open Senate hearing.
In short, Gates may well be that entity that Washington has not seen for many years: a truly independent secretary of defense.
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