Transcripts For CSPAN2 Memoirs Of A Secretary At War 2014012

In the book mr. Gates, who served as secretary of defense under president george w. Bush and president obama, talks about his management of the wars in afghanistan and iraq, and he shares stories about his relationship with the white house and congress. [applause] secretary gates, i also want to thank you for being here, especially in light of the fact that youve recently had an injury. I know youre making a robust recovery, but having to wear a neck brace is surely has surely complicated your being here and getting here, and we thank you for making that effort. Until i became secretary of defense, i had never broken a bone or had a surgery. [laughter] february of 2008 i fell on the ice and broke this shoulder in three places. Ten months later putting a snowplow blade on a tractor, i pulled the bicep tendon off arm. My security guards quickly came to the conclusion that alqaeda was no risk to me at all compared to myself. [laughter] and before we start, id like to say it is good to be back here at the center and to apologize to the audience on my right for not turning in your direction. But the result of a broken member is somewhat limited mobility of my head. Well, lets that being said, lets get to your book, duty memoirs of a secretary of war. I found it a most striking account of your time under both president bush and president obama not the least because it gave what i would call an almost realtime account of your interchanges with president obama and the former secretary of state, hillary clinton, as you and other very top members of the nations security establishment, as you wrestled with the difficulties on the ground this afghanistan. And id like to talk to you at some length about your impressions of president obama. But before we get into that, i wanted to focus on a part of the book that hasnt gotten that much attention but which i think is equally important, and thats your description of the situation in the government, in the white house when you took over as secretary of defense in december of 2006. You describe a dire situation in iraq. American troops are dying at increasing rates, the insurgents are gathering force, theres extreme, explosive sectarian violence and no apparent plan on the part of the United States government for coping with that. The takeaway there that part of the book from that part of the book is that we hadnt planned properly for the occupation. And that, indeed, it never occurred to military planners that we might be there as long as we had. Why were we so mistaken on that point . Why do we miss that . One of the concluding sections of the book is, this effect, on Lessons Learned about war. And one of the thicks that one of the things that youd think people would understand would be how frequently people who advocate going to war and people who make decisions to go to war almost always are convinced the war will be short. This year well celebrate the centenary of world war i which is a classic example of where everybody thought the war would be over by october or thof, 914 november, 1914. The problem in iraq in particular, and it really is true of both iraq and afghanistan, that what began as swift military victories quickly degenerated into long and grinding wars. In the case of iraq, it was always believed that it would be a shortterm commitment. I think it would be interesting to ask those who were participants in the Decision Making add they known this march had they known in march 2003 that the country would be at war in iraq for six or seven more years whether they would have made the decision they did. But this assumption that the war would be short or that its end was right around the corner afflicted the department of defense as badly as it did the Decision Makers themselves. And because everyone assumed that the war would be over quickly, there was a great reluctance inside defense to spend significant sums of money on equipment that might be needed to protect the troops, but that might be useful only in iraq or afghanistan. As i describe it this the book, the department this the book, the department of defense is organized to plan for war, not to wage war. And so the services dedicate all of their efforts, pretty much all of their efforts to developing their longrange procurement plans and then defending those plans in the budget process regardless of what comes along. And so people were reluctant to, for example, fund, develop and fund the mineresistance ambush protect about the vehicles that save so many lives and limbs because that particular kind of vehicle was not in any plan for the army or the marine corps id like to ask you about that in just a moment. One of the key themes in that portion of the book, it seems to me, that the military planners inside the beltway, civilian leaders inside the beltway simply didnt adjust or respond to it. And, in fact, you do write they did not adjust to changing situations on the ground in iraq. Well, that and the fact i also write that after the initial invasion there was just a series of stunningly bad decisions and mistakes. Well, id like to read a portion of the book, a situation that came across to me as scandalous. And i say this also because you heap quite a bit of raise on president bush in this praise on president bush in this. And i think your critique of the president and the muchreported critiques of president obama have missed the point in that theyre part of a larger fabric in evaluation of both of these men which is much more nuanced than weve gotten so far. But let me read this one portion which describes what i think is a scandalous situation. Our fundamentally flawed and persistent assumption from the outset that the iraq war would be a short one caused problems on the ground and for the troops as the months stretched into years, those at senior levels clung to their assumption and seemed unwilling to invest substantial dollars to provide the troops everything they needed for protection and success in their mission and to bring them home safely, and if wounded, provide them with the best care. Who wanted to spend precious dollars on equipment for todays troops that after iraq would be, would just be surplus . So for years in iraq, our troops traveled in light vehicles like humvees, the modern equivalent of a jeep, that even with armoring were vulnerable to weapons such as rocket propelled grenades and explosive projectiles. Were people asleep at the switch . Why did they not respond to casualties were increasing, what we were doing in iraq was not working . Were they not visiting the country enough . Were they getting Bad Information . Why was there such bureaucratic resistance to making change . Well, i think as i indicated earlier, i think they kept thinking that the end of the war was right around the corner. Throughout 2006 commander in the field until the fall of 2006, our commander in baghdad was still planning to draw down from 15 to 10 brigades by the end of 2006. And only realized toward the end of 2006 that wouldnt be possible. Actually, the first person, i think, seriously to conclude that the strategy wasnt working was president bush. And i think that happened probably in the late spring or summer of 2006. There were several different reviews launched of our strategy including the most important one was probably led by the National Security Council Staff which then led to the president s decision to surge troops to get control of the security situation particularly in baghdad. This is a case, and i pointed out, you know, its been presented mostly in a negative light, but i dont think its a negative consideration that both bush and obama pushed back against the generals. In the case of iraq of 2006, it was the civilian leadership that decided the strategy wasnt working, not the military. And when bush decided to support the iraq surge, he was opposed by the entire joint chiefs of staff, the chairman of the joint chiefs, the theater commander, the commander in baghdad and the commander of Central Command in florida. But i must ask you, though, i mean, you can hardly characterize that as a brilliant insight. The entire country seemingly had turned against the war because we were not doing well there. Why did the generals, why were they so late when everybody else had decided this was not going well . I wish i had an explanation for that. I wasnt there. I think that they, i think they had concluded that their view was that more troops would aggravate the situation rather than help it. That it would let the iraqis off the hook in terms of assuming responsibility for their own security and that it would, and that the iraqis were expecting to see a reducing u. S. Presence, not an increasing one. Like to ask you one other question on this subject. You write in the book that general shinseki famously predicted at a congressional hearing that an occupation would have required, would require this is before the invasion, i think, in march of, whenever it occurred that a occupation would require hundreds of thousands of troops. Was he right . Would that have been a better approach . Well, i think that the initial this goes back to the mistakes that i think were made after the original invasion. Had the iraqi army not been disbanded which was one of those catastrophic mistakes in my view turning 400,000 men who didnt know anything else except how to shoot into the civilian economy with no support for their families was just a formula for disaster. If those troops, if we had done our best to keep the iraqi army coherent but with different leadership, then you probably would not have seen the looting that took place in baghdad and elsewhere, and you might have had greater civil order that would have prevented the sectarian violence that became so bad by 2006. So the number of troops required after the invasion in part depended on making smart decisions about what we would do next in iraq. I wrote i said in a speech in may of 2003, just six weeks after the invasion, that now that we had overthrown saddam, it reminded me of the situation where the dog catches the car. Now what do you do with it . And i said at the time if we have more than 100,000 troops in iraq for more than a few months, we will be in serious trouble. And i said i thought that the Political Part of this would be far more difficult than the original envision. So invasion. So i think if different decisions had been head in that period after the original had been paid in that period after the original invasion, then you might have had a different outcome. But we ended up with what we did. And people seemed unwilling to stick their neck out to say that was a really stupid decision. Debaathification, i mean, i write in the book its like nobody ever read a book about the denaziification and the fact that if you ran the local power plant, you still had to be a member of party. That didnt mean you were himmlers best friend. The same thing this iraq. You had to be a member of the baath party, so just being oblivious to those kinds of things led to some amazingly stupid decisions. It wasnt a matter of their military infrastructure being dissolved, but also the bureaucracy as well exactly. Which i think disappeared overnight and left you without nothing. I have to ask you i mean, it goes in a way, and it goes to the equipment question you asked me. Secretary rumsfeld famously said to a soldier, you go to war with the army you have. And thats true. But what i add is, then you better make it into the army that you need as fast as you can. And thats what i think we did not do. I have to ask you this. You mention this mentioned this and i think that i have this right. That your good friend i think it was the First Bush Administration that opposed the invasion in iraq. And im wondering, you never really address that issue as far as you are concerned. Have you been asked a part of these, would you have supported this . In the last chapter, sort of summing up a reflection that i dont know and its hard for me to say what i would have advocated in 2003. Like a lot of people in the congress and most other countries in the world, initially they all accepted this and that is how the u. N. Security council got past with even russia and china. And so in that speech that i reviewed two, i supported the original decision and so i say in the book toward the end that, you know, i had argued strongly against going to baghdad in 1991 in the First World War because that would have meant to overthrow the regime and to get saddam would have meant occupying two thirds of iraq and then it would be our problem. Until we were unanimous in the First Bush Administration in opposing the idea and we took a lot of grief for it or not part of this. We cannot get the criticism after march of 2003 anymore. But i argued maybe i wouldve made the same argument that i did in 1991 about going to baghdad. I also might have been far more skeptical because of my intelligence back then and the intelligence case that he had weapons of mass destruction and others were around the on the table this because i have a pretty good view and intelligence capability. And so to be honest i think it is hard for me to say what i wouldve advocated in 2003 with 10 years of hindsight. Can you talk about your effort to get these vehicles for the troops in iraq . You are surprised to learn that there were these vehicles and developments in these mine resistant ambush and so how did you get that . A noted that senator biden was a target of much of your criticism. Yes, and i give him credit for it. And actually it is a lesson that i tried to hammer home to the military leaders with when they read criticism in newspapers want to go into eight defensive mode but to find out whether the newspaper series in the Washington Post had put me on to the problem of Wounded Warriors and let me to fire the secretary of the army. He was a newspaper story that i first read about this. And the marines had about 300 vehicles and he was riding in one of these vehicles. And i wanted to buy these things in large numbers. And so i basically said, well, we are going to do it. And this is one place that im very critical of the congress in this book are that this is the one place that they did the right thing and we ended up buying 27,000 of these vehicles for iraq and afghanistan. When i first visited the Army Burn Unit at the dick Army Hospital in san antonio is absolutely full because most of those young men had been in humvees that had blown up and became part of them. By the time that i was within six months, the burn unit was nearly empty and so ultimately everybody came around to the fact that this is a good idea and looks good on that probably because i said so. The secretary of defense and there was a lot of opposition and again because these vehicles were not in anyones longterm procurement plan. They were more worried about what they would do with them after the war and what good they might do in the war. My attitude is particularly when youre dealing with the lives of young men and women, it is when you are in a war you are all in whatever it takes to protect them or give them the tools to do the job and come home safely. You make that investment and if you have all this stuff at the end of the war, so be it. Is one of the most disturbing elements because it was a mailable to the military to say okay, now we have reasons of bureaucratic agendas and it wasnt implemented. So how do you fix a problem like that Going Forward . It seems that that is cultural and the culture survived. It is a leadership issue. And i will give you another example. Its even more shocking in my view. And the time for medevac anorak was an hour. It was called the golden hour the wounded and getting to the hospital within an hour. In afghanistan it was two hours. And i said i think it should be an hour. Just like in iraq. In both senior officials came to me and had all of these statistics about how the death rates were comparable and in iraq and afghanistan despite the time difference and so on because it was statistically a wash. It wasnt worth the investment to put Additional Resources into it. And so my reaction was a simple one. Im a soldier that had been blown up and i want a helicopter there as quickly as possible. And so we sent more helicopters and i made that decision in january of 2008 or 2009. I cant remember which. And by july Something Like 80 are medical decorations are taking place in less than 40 minutes. Is that there are so many different elements the department of defense who have to be on board. Who have to agree the money people or the Technology People or the budget tiers orements whatever. Ey people basically slow down only the he e has thauthority toverr sec mmitment to getting this thing done. I wanted to ask you. Theres nothing like getting the attention of the senior military and the pentagon as a whole. Likes firing some people. Which he did a lot of from what i read in the book. My attitude was in the case of both walter reed and the Nuclear Issue which is back in front of us, when i fired both chief of staff and secretary of the air force didnt fire them for not knowing about the problem in the first place. I fired them because once they knew about it they didnt take it seriously enough. That is the kind of accountability that i think needs to be exercise more frequently in washington. Speeds and she brought up the issue of firing how did you feel about losing Stanley Mcchrystal . Well at first, i mean i felt he committed a terrible error and i say so in the book. Giving access to this reporter and mcchrystal is probably one of the most effective combat generals we have had since world war ii. Both as commander in afghanistan and as commander of the joint special Operations Unit in iraq and afghanistan. He did a lot of damage to our enemies and the people who were killing our troops. But the world of politics and the media was the new battle space for general mcchrystal and he was, he was a brandnew Second Lieutenant and that realm. And as effective as he was in the command position, he stepped out of line on some of his interviews. But i felt, when the report, when the article came out about him with the quotes that seem to disparage the Vice President and the National Security adviser and others, my worry was that if he was relieved, that we might lo