Gates Reax: The Thoughtless and The Thoughtful

Reading Ben Smith’s blog late yesterday afternoon, I was struck by the empty-headed hysteria of one commenter’s response to the news that President-elect Obama would retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense:

We’ll never get out of Iraq and Afghanistan with that war mongerer hanging on. It’s time for real change not more of the same from Bush’s lackey

That comment succinctly echoes longer, and purportedly more serious, reactions from across the leftosphere. Thankfully, some left-leaning commentators are more grounded, including Yoni Applebaum at TPMCafé:

In a properly functioning administration, the Secretary of Defense is one of several key voices advising the president on where and how to exercise military force. But he possesses primary responsibility for deciding how that force should be structured, staffed, equipped, and supplied. Those are decisions the president largely delegates, and thus where the secretary exercises his greatest degree of autonomy. And it is in those realms of defense policy that Gates has most distinguished himself. In retaining Gates, Obama is sending a clear signal to the Pentagon bureaucracy that their usual strategy of stalling and out-lasting civilian appointees is going to fail; that he intends to pursue Gates’ key reforms. And that’s a decision which should make us all stand and cheer.

In a similar vein, Steve Clemons at The Washington Note:

After speaking to some other national security policy experts very close to Bob Gates and General Brent Scowcroft, I changed course and began to see the value of Gates staying at DoD.

My hunch is that Gates wants a chance to make the kind of leaps in the Middle East I have been writing about for some time. He wants to try and push Iran-US relations into a constructive direction. He wants to change the game in Afghanistan — and the answer will not be a military-dominant strategy. He wants to try and stabilize Iraq in a negotiated, confidence building process that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and other regional forces. And he wants to support a big push on Israel-Palestine peace and reconfigure relations between much of the Arab League and Israel.

A tip of the hat to Andrew Sullivan for highlighting both of these reasoned voices.