There He Goes Again - Bob Gates and Israel

Elliott Abrams..
The Weekly Standard..
05 October '12..

Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense, got considerable attention this week when, speaking in Norfolk, Virginia, he said American officials should make it clear to the government of Israel that "they do not have a blank check to take action that could do grave harm to American vital interests." Strongly objecting to an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear sites, he claimed, "The results of an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could, in my view, prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world."

Gates has offered such views before. Jeffrey Goldberg reported a year ago, in September 2011, that Gates (then still our defense secretary) told a meeting of the "Principals Committee" of top national security officials in the White House Situation Room that Israel was an "ungrateful ally." In return for all the United States had done for Israel, Gates said, we have received "nothing in return."

But Goldberg also said that such criticism from Gates was "particularly consequential, in part because he’s not considered hostile to Israel." Well: Ungrateful ally, nothing in return, blank check—do we see a pattern here? In fact an important incident from the George W. Bush administration suggests that whether or not Gates is hostile to Israel, his judgment is badly flawed when it comes to evaluating the risks Israel faces and the likely results of Israeli action to address those risks.

Weinberg - Gates’ Gripe

Ungrateful Bob Gates

David M. Weinberg
A Citadel Defending Zion
06 September '11

http://davidmweinberg.com/2011/09/06/gates-gripe/




So, Robert Gates is peeved with Israel. And why not? American defense and foreign policy leaders have done so well in handling the Middle East over the past few years! It's only sourpuss Israel that spoils Washington's track record, right?

Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who left the job earlier this summer, has supposedly complained about Israel being an ungrateful ally. According to blogger Jeffery Goldberg, Gates said during one of his last meetings with senior officials that not only is “Netanyahu ungrateful, but he is also endangering his country by refusing to grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank." The U.S. had "received nothing" from Israel on peace diplomacy in return for the many Obama administration upgrades in U.S.-Israel security cooperation, Gates reportedly said.

Gates's gripes are unsubstantiated on three levels. But I think that they also mask a deeper American failure and fatigue – that goes far beyond Israel.

First of all, Gates knows full well that recent upgrades in U.S.-Israel intelligence sharing and weapons development are to America's benefit as much as Israel's. Israel is not being "handed-out favors" for which it is ungrateful.

Secondly, the Obama Administration has ramped up such security cooperation mainly for its own reasons – to hold Israel back from attacking Iran. In other words, to handcuff Israel. Thank you very much.

Thirdly, the notion that Israel (Netanyahu) has not budged on diplomatic matters is simply wrong, even infuriating. Netanyahu's embrace of the two-state solution, his unprecedented settlement freeze and willingness to relate to the 1967 lines rubric – are callously dismissed by Gates as non-consequential. Note that the Palestinian Authority, which gets half a billion dollars in American aid and which has crudely stiffed American diplomacy for the past year, doesn't seem to annoy Gates. So I think the disrespect runs the other way around: It is Gates (and Obama) who are being churlishly ungrateful toward Netanyahu.

I suspect that there is more to the picture. The pique supposedly expressed by Gates (take it with a grain of salt when a Netanyahu-bashing journalist is the source) is a veneer under which lurks American strategic fatigue and multiple policy failures across the Middle East. Bashing Israel is but a weak cover for the sorry Obama/Gates record.

Glick - An Obama foreign policy

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
21 June '11

http://www.carolineglick.com/e/2011/06/an-obama-foreign-policy.php

Outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates is worried about the shape of things to come in US foreign policy. In an interview with Newsweek over the weekend, Gates sounded the warning bells.

In Gates' words, "I've spent my entire adult life with the United States as a superpower, and one that had no compunction about spending what it took to sustain that position. It didn't have to look over its shoulder because our economy was so strong. This is a different time.

"To tell you the truth, that's one of the many reasons it's time for me to retire, because frankly I can't imagine being part of a nation, part of a government... that's being forced to dramatically scale back our engagement with the rest of the world."

What Gates is effectively saying is not that economic forecasts are gloomy. US defense spending comprises less than five percent of the federal budget. If US President Barack Obama wanted to maintain that level of spending, the Republican-controlled Congress would probably pass his defense budget. What Gates is saying is that he doesn't trust his commander in chief to allocate the resources to preserve America's superpower status. He is saying that he believes that Obama is willing to surrender the US's status as a superpower.

THIS WOULD be a stunning statement for any defense secretary to make about the policies of a US President. It is especially stunning coming from Gates. Gates began his tenure at the Pentagon under Obama's predecessor George W. Bush immediately after the Republican defeat in the 2006 mid-term Congressional elections.

"Lebanon's terrorist forces have more missiles than most sovereign states"

Frimet/Arnold Roth
This Ongoing War
26 May '11

http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2011/05/26-may-11-lebanons-terrorist-forces.html


Just a few weeks before he leaves office, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates delivered a punchy speech on Tuesday to the American Enterprise Institute. Speaking of the need to ensure appropriate budgets, he said keeping quiet would be "managerial cowardice."

"Our record of predicting where we will use military force since Vietnam is perfect - we have never once gotten it right... There isn't a single instance... where we knew and planned for such a conflict six months in advance." [The examples offered by Mr Gates: Grenada, Panama, the first Gulf War, the Balkans, Haiti... "You can just keep going through the list."] Gates pointed to the Mideast radical group Hezbollah, armed with more missiles and rockets than most states, possibly armed with chemical or biological warheads. Hezbollah cruise missiles could threaten U.S. ships with anti-ship missiles with a range of 65 miles. [Source: CNN]

Two months ago, an Israeli security official provided the Washington Post with a map detailing the phenomenal war preparations completed by Hezbollah's terrorist forces and fully in place: 550 bunkers, 300 surveillance sites; 100 additional offensive facilities - all owned and operated by Hezbollah under the noses of the sovereign government of thoroughly-impotent Lebanon and of the United Nations peace-keeping forces in the area. Most of the sites marked on the map are located in the southern part of Lebanon, next to Israel's border and south of the Litani River. Israeli intelligence, expressing a view that Mr Gates seems to be echoing, says the Hezbollah forces have deployed thousands of Israel-facing missiles.

In the interests of seeming to be fair, we will quote a different view:

UNIFIL has not found any evidence of Hizbullah military activity and smuggling or the presence of guerilla fighters in its area of operations in Southern Lebanon, the commander of the multinational peacekeeping force, Maj.-Gen. Alberto Asarta Cuevas [Source]

On the other hand, United Press International issued a report during the past hour quoting Israel's claims that Hezbollah has installed tens of thousands of missiles and rockets in Lebanon. Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, is quoted confirming that missiles "will remain part of the Arab equation and nobody can take them away... No one will be able to grab them, neither in Lebanon nor in the world."

Hezbullah's own website goes further today, quoting the bold and boastful Nasrallah in greater detail:

“Our missiles are not 12 thousand; your information is too old.” His eminence vowed, meanwhile, that these rockets are ready and will remain in place. “They will remain effective and will protect Lebanon. They will remain present in the equation of the region, and no one will be able to grab them, neither in Lebanon nor in the world,” his eminence pledged. Our missiles today, which Netanyahu talked about before Congress, represent our honor, our blood, our money, our dignity and our pride,” Sayyed Nasrallah said, and added that this resistance will remain faithful to its goals, to its path, to its hopes, to its sufferings and to the blood of its martyrs."

Israel, unlike the United States, cannot tolerate the risk of having "never once got it right" when it comes to preparing for attacks by the religiously-inspired jihadist zealots on our country's borders. Making an error of judgement about a terrorist enemy with so much death and malice on its mind would be unthinkable.

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Hezbollah's next milestone?

Soccer Dad
28 April '10

Close to a year and a half ago, Meryl observed a news report that despite Security Council resolution 1701, Hezbollah was three times as strong as it had been during its war against Israel in 2006 leading her to snark:

I'm so happy that UN is concentrating on the important things, like a day of mourning for the Palestinians to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UN partition of the British Mandate. It's great that Nobel Peace Prize winners are calling for the expulsion of Israel from the UN, but not a nation that has taken an armed terrorist group, responsible for the deaths of Americans and Israelis the world over, into their government and made them legitimate--even as they regularly threaten to use their weapons to destroy Israel.

Now we learn that Hezbollah is actually better armed than many countries! (via memeorandum)

(Read full post)

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Another Victory For The Obama Administration: “Hezbollah Has So Many Rockets That They Are At A Point Where They Have More Missiles Than Most Governme

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
27 April '10

This is Defense Secretary Robert Gates talking, and he is telling the stark truth to Ehud Barak, Israel’s minister of defense, who presumably already knows.

Of course, it did not start with the Obama administration at all. It was one of the sterling achievements of the Bush custodianship of foreign affairs in which Condi Rice hustled, along with Tzipi Livni, to close down the 2006 Lebanon war. Security Council Resolution 1701 was the instrument, and it had a history in the United Nations going back at least to1978. To understand the tragic-comic drama, please read the U.N.’s own historical narrative and text. It is pathetic.

Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon…

Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities…

Emphasizing the need for an end of violence…

Mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners…

Welcoming the efforts of the Lebanese Prime Minister…

Determined to act for this withdrawal to happen at the earliest…

Taking due note of the proposals made in the seven-point plan…

Welcoming the unanimous decision by the Government of Lebanon…

Aware of its responsibilities to help secure a permanent ceasefire…

Determining that the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace…

(Read full article)

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Barreling on, regardless

Caroline Glick
carolineglick.com
26 April '10

If safeguarding international security is the chief aim of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy, then at some point he can be expected to change course in the Middle East. For today, Obama faces the wreckage of every aspect of his Middle East policies. And largely as a consequence of his policies, the region moves ever closer to war.

In Iraq, Obama's pledge to withdraw all combat forces from the country by the summer has emboldened the various forces vying for control of the country to set it ablaze once more.

In Afghanistan, Obama's surge and leave policy has left would-be US allies hedging their bets, at best. And it has caused the US's NATO partners to question the purpose of their deployment in that country.

Then there is Iran. Last week's report by The New York Times that this January Defense Secretary Robert Gates penned a memo to National Security Advisor James Jones warning that the Obama administration has no effective policy for dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program exposed the bitter truth that in the face of the most acute foreign policy problem they face, Obama and his crew are out to lunch.

Gates's attempt to mitigate the story's impact by claiming that actually, the White House is weighing all its option only made things worse. Even before the ink on his correction note was dry, his Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy was telling reporters in Singapore that the military option, "is not on the table in the near term."

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Muddling the Iran Issue

Jonathan Schachter, Emily B Landau
and Ephraim Asculai
INSS
Insight No. 177
26 April '10

On April 17 the New York Times revealed that in January US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote a memo to National Security Adviser James Jones on the need to develop policy options regarding Iran’s drive to develop nuclear weapons. One senior White House official is quoted as describing the memo, which came after President Obama’s end of 2009 diplomatic deadline had come and gone, as “a wake-up call” testifying to the US's lack of a workable long term policy for confronting the Iranian nuclear challenge. The day after the Times’s publication, Gates acknowledged that he had indeed written the memo, but disputed the characterization of its content and intent, saying that his goal was “to contribute to an orderly and timely decision-making process.”

The absence of a clear American strategy to deal with an aggressively nuclearizing Iran has been apparent for some time, and thus this revelation comes as no surprise. In addition, Gates’s own description of the memo strongly suggests that “an orderly and timely decision-making process” was eminently lacking. The only real surprise, it seems, is the blunt assessment coming from within the administration.

It is possible that the memo was leaked in order to document Gates’s concerns about the increasing likelihood that Iran would achieve nuclear weapons capability before long and on his watch. It is also possible that as an appointee of President George W. Bush, Gates might be setting the stage for his own resignation. Alternatively, the memo might reflect simple disagreement or for that matter much more heated battles between the Pentagon’s civilian and military leadership. Whatever the true reason or reasons, the leak of the memo and the multiplicity of plausible interpretations and explanations are indicative of the real problem with US policy on Iran: mixed and confused messages.

(Read full report)

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Lacking an Iran Policy, The White House Seeks Scapegoat

JINSA Report #: 980
19 April '10

According to The New York Times, "Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability."

A journalist wrote to JINSA, "It seems to me the Jewish community has contributed to that (lack of policy) by making the very mention of 'containment' politically toxic-as if even planning for that contingency, however much it is unwanted, is an act of appeasement. Where's the error in my reasoning?"

The short answer is that the Obama Administration has not taken seriously Jewish concerns regarding any foreign policy area. It is an error to think he gave credence to what "the Jews" said about Iran.

The longer answer is the reason we don't have a policy for containing a nuclear Iran, if indeed we don't, is because President Obama appears not to have believed we might have to do it. As a candidate and as President he said a nuclear Iran was "unacceptable." And because it was unacceptable, it wouldn't happen. He would engage the regime, he said, and then be prepared for "crippling sanctions" with international support he said, and then leave "all options" on the table.

He appears not to have anticipated the failure of his first two options.

(Read full report)

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The Obama Administration's Conflicting Messages on Iran

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
19 April '10

The Obama Administration is sending conflicting and confusing messages both to Iran and to those who fear an Iranian nuclear weapon. According to The New York Times, defense secretary Robert M. Gates sent a top secret memorandum to White House officials bemoaning the fact that the United States simply has no policy in place to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. At the same time, it is telling Israel that although Iran has threatened to wipe it off the map, the Jewish state should not take military action to prevent a second Holocaust. Indeed former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has participated in White House discussions concerning the Middle East, has threatened that if Israel tries to destroy Iran's nuclear weapon facilities, the United States is fully capable of shooting Israeli jets out of the air.

Although Gates subsequently denied that his memo, which he acknowledges writing, was intended as a "wake up call," a senior White House official has confirmed that it was just that. There is no evidence, however, that the White House is prepared to confront the grave threat posed by a nuclear Iran. The policy that seems to be emerging from the White House is one called "containment." But what is containment? It is little more than an acknowledgement of failure. Containment implies that the United States will not succeed in preventing Iran from securing nuclear weapons, but rather it will accept such an eventuality and seek to deter the use of nuclear weapons by threats and by the deployment of defensive measures. The analogy that proponents of containment point to is North Korea, which has nuclear weapons but has thus far been "contained" from using them. But there are vast differences between North Korea and Iran.

North Korea is a secular Communist regime that is risk averse and that has no sworn existential enemies. The goal of its leaders is simply to remain in power and maintain their totalitarian control over their people. Iran is a theocratic, apocalyptic regime that believes that it has a religious obligation to destroy Israel and threaten the United States. Iran, unlike North Korea, also operates through surrogates, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and other smaller terrorist groups. They could hand-off nuclear material to such groups, or to sympathetic individuals, for use as dirty bombs directed against its enemies.

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Are the Iranians Worried About That New Deadline?

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
25 September 09

Along with the leaders of Britain and France, President Obama was forced today to take time out of the G-8 Summit to react to the announcement that Iran has been building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel. What followed was the announcement that Iran had a deadline of two months to comply with international demands to halt its nuclear program or it would face sanctions. This makes it sound as if real pressure is about to be ratcheted up on Tehran. Supposedly, this means that unless the Iranians allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct an immediate inspection of the facility, the West will press for new, tougher sanctions on Iran. Obama hopes that his recent appeasement of Russia by breaking faith with Poland and the Czech Republic on missile defense will mean that the Putin/Medvedev regime will finally play along on sanctions and drag the Chinese with them.

It’s a nice theory, but Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fresh off another vile Holocaust-denying speech at the United Nations, may not exactly be shaking in his boots about the prospect of Western resolve. Years of feckless Western diplomacy (outsourced by the Bush administration to France and Germany) did nothing but convince the Iranians that no one outside of Israel was serious about stopping them. And after months of outreach from the Obama administration, including an astonishingly weak response to their brazen theft of a presidential election and brutal crackdown on dissidents, it’s not clear that the threat of sanctions is one the Iranians take seriously.

As for what would happen after the two months if the deadline is not adhered to, Tehran understands all too well that the negotiations between the United States, its Western allies, and Iran’s erstwhile friends in Moscow and Beijing would be long, tedious, and likely to produce something short of the draconian measures necessary to produce significant leverage.

Just as important is that the two-month deadline, though seemingly indicative of some spine on behalf of the West, is hardly the sort of ultimatum likely to spur panic among the leaders of the Islamist regime. It is, in fact, not the first multi-month deadline Iran has recently received. When U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was in Israel over the summer, he attempted to placate his anxious hosts by saying that America had given Tehran only until the United Nations General Assembly to respond to Obama’s overtures before the clock would start on stronger sanctions. So, far from being the harbinger of a new era of resolve on the issue, the new two-month deadline is in effect an extension on the previous demand placed on Iran. This must lead Ahmadinejad to reason that no matter what his government does or doesn’t do between now and the end of November, it may be a reasonable bet that this date will be merely the beginning of a new period during which Washington will say diplomacy must be given just one more chance.

We may hope that Obama’s rhetoric today is the beginning of a new era of American seriousness about the threat from Iranian nukes. But when seen in the context of what has recently preceded it, and the clear preference on the part of the president and our allies for “engagement” rather than action on the issue, optimism in Tehran about their chances of further successful defiance of international opinion may well be justified.
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It’s Crunch Time for Israel on Iran

After years of failed diplomacy no one will be able to call an attack precipitous.

By John Bolton
Wall Street Journal
30 July 09

Legions of senior American officials have descended on Jerusalem recently, but the most important of them has been Defense Secretary Robert Gates. His central objective was to dissuade Israel from carrying out military strikes against Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Under the guise of counseling “patience,” Mr. Gates again conveyed President Barack Obama’s emphatic thumbs down on military force.

The public outcome of Mr. Gates’s visit appeared polite but inconclusive. Yet Iran’s progress with nuclear weapons and air defenses means Israel’s military option is declining over time. It will have to make a decision soon, and it will be no surprise if Israel strikes by year’s end. Israel’s choice could determine whether Iran obtains nuclear weapons in the foreseeable future.

Mr. Obama’s approach to Tehran has been his “open hand,” yet his gesture has not only been ignored by Iran but deemed irrelevant as the country looks inward to resolve the aftermath of its fraudulent election. The hardliner “winner” of that election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was recently forced to fire a deputy who once said something vaguely soothing about Israel. Clearly, negotiations with the White House are not exactly topping the Iranian agenda.

Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s negotiation strategy faces insuperable time pressure. French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that Iran must re-start negotiations with the West by September’s G-20 summit. But this means little when, with each passing day, Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile laboratories, production facilities and military bases are all churning. Israel is focused on these facts, not the illusion of “tough” diplomacy.

Israel rejects another feature of Mr. Obama’s diplomatic stance. The Israelis do not believe that progress with the Palestinians will facilitate a deal on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Though Mr. Gates and others have pressed this fanciful analysis, Israel will not be moved.

Worse, Mr. Obama has no new strategic thinking on Iran. He vaguely promises to offer the country the carrot of diplomacy—followed by an empty threat of sanctions down the road if Iran does not comply with the U.S.’s requests. This is precisely the European Union’s approach, which has failed for over six years.

There’s no reason Iran would suddenly now bow to Mr. Obama’s diplomatic efforts, especially after its embarrassing election in June. So with diplomacy out the door, how will Iran be tamed?

Mr. Gates’ mission had extraordinary significance. Israel sees the political and military landscape in a very inauspicious light. It also worries that, once ensnared in negotiations, the Obama administration will find it very hard to extricate itself. The Israelis are probably right. To prove the success of his “open hand,” Mr. Obama will declare victory for “diplomacy” even if it means little to no gains on Iran’s nuclear program.
(For full article)
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