You Never Know

The Russians will never leave Afghanistan. Gorbachov is a bluff master. This was indeed not only the line of thinking of Robert Gates who now leads the Pentagon and travels in the Doomsday ( the air machine that he uses ), but also of an average American who believed that the threat from Communism to the American civilisation was bigger and graver than all else.

When Marx wrote Das Capital of which the first 30,000 copies were sold, as publishers positioned the book as a treatise on capitalism, being precious sure, it would not sell otherwise and people bought the first copies looking for methods to make capital, little did he know, he is propounding a philosophy that would that would keep the mightiest economic and military power unsettled for almost a century.

By the time the myth of rising tide of communism died, Gates a go getter, old school soldier had morphed into an anti terror and middle east expert and had upped the ante against islamic terrorism. Many of the promises made by Obama were softened as Gates opposed them. Such is his power of persuasion of this ex Eagle Scout.

Clearly, our chiefs of staff can learn a few things from this rabid patriot and arch exponent of American Exceptionalism and not treat the Chieftancy of the force they head an a pre-cursor to a gubernatorial assignment or license to relax, party, inaugurate and hope to get immortalised by the plethora of commemrative plaques that cite them.

Bringing back the reality of the borders to the corridors of power in the North and South Blocs, shaking the bureaucracy out of slumber and conceit and ensuring decisions that preserve the territorial integrity of the country is a key and critical funtion of the top brass of the army, which apparently they have for long abdicated. They must like Gates, commit themselves for keeping their promise to the country.