Robert M. Gates Quotes
There are so many elements of the Department of Defense that have to sign off to do anything, that any one of them was able to stop something. The only person who could make something happen was the Secretary of Defense.
Robert M. Gates, U. S. Secretary of Defense (Republican), Director of the CIA, Interview, C-SPAN Radio, October 2014
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He was objecting to the current crop of senior military officer who have little experience in fighting and much in academic, strategic and technical training. Many however see him as a dinosaur who does not realized the complex nature of the modern military missions. In general, we have won almost all of our fighting battles but often failed in our maintaining civil society, occupation, nation building, military procurement, preventing sexual assault of our own troops by our own soldiers, assuring mental health of our soldiers. Hackworth, detractors argue, wants to change what already works and ignore what does not.
The new director was faced with 2,600 personnel vacancies in this critical office and the jobs were not getting filled quickly. Many people who are appointed to high Federal Office and come from the private sector or state and local government, are appalled at the extensive and cumbersome bureaucracy that makes the hiring of Federal employees so tedious and slow.
Generally, the American military is much more optimistic of its ability to accomplish its objectives as that it the way they have been trained. The General warns that the same attitude will make them more optimistic and willing to tackle a very difficult if not impossible problem than most would be. So civilians in America have to question what they are doing. At the same time, there have been a number of highly sophisticated military officers who have both a military and civilian perspective and education. They tend to be more realistic and at times argue against military deployments and missions that are being considered. However, once deployed and committed, it is culturally difficult or impossible for a member of the military to be pessimistic about the eventual
Lawrence of Arabia
Though the Communist Party was trying to organize and gain support from the unemployed, it was difficult due to the bureaucracy.
Robert Michael Gates is an American intelligence analyst, and university president who served as the 22nd United States secretary of defense from 2006 to 2011. He was originally appointed by President George W. Bush and was retained for service by President Barack Obama. Gates began his career serving as an officer in the United States Air Force but was quickly recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Gates served for 26 years in the CIA and the National Security Council, and was Director of Central Intelligence under President George H. W. Bush. After leaving the CIA, Gates became president of Texas A&M University and was a member of several corporate boards. Gates served as a member of the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan commission co-chaired by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, that studied the lessons of the Iraq War.
