Robert Gates hasn't won anything yet.
Kori Schake offers a hats off to Defense Secretary Robert Gates for his efforts on Afghanistan. After reading it, I came away a bit confused. It's clear that Schake thinks Gates is a skilled bureaucratic operator, and obviously any good policy needs skilled bureaucrats to shepherd it through the White House. But nowhere in the encomium is anything about how Gates strategy in the actual war in Afghanistan (not Washington) is faring.
The Gates strategy - to put in place a sustained surge of forces in Afghanistan until 2014 when the Afghans will be able to fight the Taliban on their own - has hardly been proven effective yet. By all means, credit Secretary Gates for seeing his preferred policy outcome prevail in the U.S. but it hasn't prevailed in Afghanistan yet. Nor is there much evidence to suggest that if it does, that the U.S. will commensurately safer from Islamic terrorism than had we pursued a less costly and ambitious plan.
(AP Photo)
