The Quiet Fury of Robert Gates - Robert M. Gates, Wall Street Journal.
All too often during my 4½ years as secretary of defense, when I found myself sitting yet again at that witness table at yet another congressional hearing, I was tempted to stand up, slam the briefing book shut and quit on the spot. The exit lines were on the tip of my tongue: I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen, and there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit. Find somebody else. It was, I am confident, a fantasy widely shared throughout the executive branch.
Much of my frustration came from the exceptional offense I took at the consistently adversarial, even inquisition-like treatment of executive-branch officials by too many members of Congress across the political spectrum—creating a kangaroo-court environment in hearings, especially when television cameras were present. But my frustration also came from the excruciating difficulty of serving as a wartime defense secretary in today's Washington…
Comments
Carl, I think you're right about the wishful thinking, but it is of course possible to continue wishful thinking until you drop dead, so maybe we have another 7 years to look forward to? I particularly sympathized with Secretary Gate's assessment of the petty and self-serving people we elect to Congress. It was a painfully accurate assessment.
Mr. Gates said this, among other things, in the article: "Still, I witnessed a good deal of wishful thinking in the Obama administration about how much improvement we might see with enough dialogue with Pakistan...", and this after a minimum of 7 years of watching. We are rhetorically doomed, a lot of poor slob Afghans are doomed for real.