A Limited Defense of Gates
By Matt Zeitlin - Dec 19th, 2008 at 9:30 amDylan makes a ton of good points in opposition to Gates staying on at Secretary of Defense, but I think there’s one way in which he’s umambiguously better than any potential Democratic nominee is that he can bring a ton of credibility to pursuing unambiguously progressive ends like closing Guantanamo:
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Mr Gates - who is to retain his position in the new administration - had wanted to be prepared in case Mr Obama wished to tackle the issue “early in his tenure”.
“He has asked his team for a proposal on how to shut it down, what will be required specifically to close it and move the detainees from that facility, and at the same time protect the American people from dangerous terrorists,” he said.
A big problem in the next four (and hopefully eight years) is how Obama can move our defense and foreign policy to the left by withdrawing from Iraq, closing Gitmo and restoring law and order to interrogation, detention and surveillance policy without Republicans harping about he’s stabbing America in the back and why those moves are responsible for “defeat” in Iraq or a future terrorist attack. Of course, Republicans will oppose all these moves, but if a widely respected conservative Republican gets behind some of these policies, than the salience of this harping will be much reduced. This is not to say that Gates is the best pick, or even a good one, but his ability to deflect criticism of Obama’s foreign policies is something that makes him standout from other, more progressive picks.
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