The Pentagon's been planning a big escalation in Afghanistan and within Pakistan since well before the 2008 election. Obama's recent announcement, after much supposed debate in the cabinet, merely made the inevitable, official.
Robert Gates, the Secretary of "Defense" appointed by GW Bush, just took a trip to Pakistan, where he made clear that US strikes will be extended to new areas against the stated wishes of the supposedly allied Pakistani military. (See NY Times story, linked below.)
With unknown chaos and fallout likely to follow, Gates gets on his plane for the flight home and, as a Times author learns and tells us at the end of her dispatch, "His final message delivered, he relaxed on the 14-hour trip home by watching 'Seven Days in May,' the cold war-era film about an attempted military coup in the United States."
Now think about it. A SecDef travels all around the world. Has the NY Times ever before told you what movie he watched on his flight? This detail is not incidental color. It is a communicative act - probably sending a message from Gates to Obama, or perhaps from the reporter to us.
Plot of Seven Days In May (1962):
The fictional president is about to cut an arms deal with the Soviets, which the Republicans are calling treason. The Joint Chiefs conspire to carry out a coup d'etat under cover of a military exercise. The Good Officer, Kirk Douglas finds out and tries to stop the plot.
According to the film's producers, JFK was anxious to have it made and accommodated filming outside the White House, because he wanted greater awareness of how Pentagon warlords like Walker and LeMay were creating resistance to his policies. (JFK killed at Dallas in assassination widely recognized as a coup d'etat the next year.)
Robert Gates:
- Long-term high satrap of the Bush mob, on a level with Scowcroft or Baker.
- Hands all over the Iran-Contra complex, including planning for emergency rule and martial law contingencies with Oliver North's office and FEMA (Rex 84 exercise).
- Appointed by CIA's Bush Sr. to head the CIA.
- At Secretary of "Defense," the big holdover from the Bush Regime under Obama - was this a Pentagon condition?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/asia/24military.html?scp=2&sq=robert%20gates&st=cse
Pentagon Memo
Gates Sees Fallout From Troubled Ties With Pakistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: January 23, 2010
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Nobody else in the Obama administration has been mired in Pakistan for as long as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates...
“Are you with us or against us?” a senior military officer demanded of Mr. Gates at Pakistan’s National Defense University, according to a Pentagon official who recounted the remark made during a closed-door session after Mr. Gates gave a speech at the school on Friday. Mr. Gates, who could hardly miss that the officer was mimicking former President George W. Bush’s warning to nations harboring militants, simply replied, “Of course we’re with you.”
That was the essence of Mr. Gates’s message over two days to the Pakistanis, who are angry about the Central Intelligence Agency’s surge in missile strikes from drone aircraft on militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, among other grievances, and showed no signs of feeling any love.
SNIP
As the No. 2 official at the C.I.A. in the 1980s, Mr. Gates helped channel Reagan-era covert aid and weapons through Pakistan’s spy agency to the American allies at the time: Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Many of those fundamentalists regrouped as the Taliban, who gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and now threaten Pakistan.
SNIP
But Mr. Gates perked up when he was brought some coffee, and he soon began to push back against General Abbas. American officials say that the real reason Pakistanis distinguish between the groups is that they are reluctant to go after those that they see as a future proxy against Indian interests in Afghanistan when the Americans leave. India is Pakistan’s archrival in the region. “Dividing these individual extremist groups into individual pockets if you will is in my view a mistaken way to look at the challenge we all face,” Mr. Gates said, then ticked off the collection on the border.
“Al Qaeda, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tariki Taliban in Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network — this is a syndicate of terrorists that work together,” he said. “And when one succeeds they all benefit, and they share ideas, they share planning. They don’t operationally coordinate their activities, as best I can tell. But they are in very close contact. They take inspiration from one another, they take ideas from one another.”
SNIP
His final message delivered, he relaxed on the 14-hour trip home by watching “Seven Days in May,” the cold war-era film about an attempted military coup in the United States.
Was Bumiller on the plane? I wonder if she got to watch the movie too.
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