Gates in Abilene

I’ve seen some mention of the speech Defense Secretary Robert Gates made in Abilene Kansas last Saturday. Gates was giving notice to the defense establishment that the gravy train is over.

"The gusher has been turned off and will stay off for a good period of time," Gates said on the steps of the Eisenhower Presidential Library to a crowd of around 300 people.

"Given America's difficult economic circumstances and parlous fiscal condition, military spending on things large and small can and should expect loser harsher scrutiny," Gates said

"Simply taking a few percent off the top of everything on a one-time basis will not do," he said. "These savings must stem from root-and-branch changes that can be sustained and added to over time.".”

Gates means to prioritize spending to give us “more tooth and less tail.” This means reforming a military top-heavy with brass, where the pentagon bureaucracy consumes forty percent of the $550 billion annual budget, where weapons and supply programs become sacrosanct because they are parceled out to all 435 Congressional districts.

It’s interesting that he gave this talk outside the Eisenhower Library. Ike in his farewell address to the nation warned about the influence of the military-industrial-congressional complex; not that we’ve heeded the warning.

This was exhibit “A” for what James Carroll called the retirement syndrome; “criticism of policy by the creators of policy after they no longer have responsibility for it.” For over fifty years we’ve had retired warriors and hawks go about face and start talking about détente and beating swords into ploughshares. I wouldn’t count Gates among their number. A holdover from the Bush Administration, this former CIA Director became Defense Secretary after serving as President of that conservative bastion of militarism, Texas A&M University; but that doesn’t mean that he’s not on to something here.