Duty

January 13, 2014
Gates was U.S. secretary of defense from 2006-2011, serving in the cabinets of both George W. Bush and Barack Obamaâtwo presidents who had little else in common. Gates's confirmation was a repudiation of his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, and his initial mission was to reverse a looming defeat in Iraq. As Gates, in this richly textured memoir, tells it, the Department of Defense had "alienated just about everyone in town" and the new secretary "had a lot of fences to mend." This involved overcoming resistance to maintaining the military's "nontraditional capabilities" developed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile his efforts on behalf of Gen. David Petraeus and the Iraqi surge only exposed other intractable regional flash points. Gates "did not enjoy being secretary of defense," and his focus shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan, where "the foreign-policy team was splintering"; an agitated Israel; and an ever-difficult Iran. He also faced hot-button domestic issues like Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Gates frequently presents himself as the only adult in the room, but given his accounts of administration "micromanagement and operational meddling," a Congress that "up close... is truly ugly," frequent insider leaks, and a government suffering "paralytic polarization," his call for restoring "civility and mutual respect" is a cry from the heart.

January 1, 2014
After years working for both the CIA and the National Security Council, Gates was president of Texas A & M when he was asked by President George W. Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in 2006. He accepted, and he served in both the Bush and Obama administrations until 2011. He has written a revealing but sometimes frustrating recounting of his experiences as he attempted to manage the Pentagon and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Gates offers absorbing and often surprising accounts of the formation of new and sometimes successful policies to alter the course of the wars. He also describes the internal wars within each administration and his struggles to ram change through the Pentagon bureaucracy. Unfortunately, Gates shows little introspection, or questioning regarding the basic geopolitical strategy that got the U.S. into these wars. Furthermore, given his decades in Washington, Gates' pose as an outsider banging his head against entrenched political and bureaucratic interests isn't credible, especially since Gates was regarded as a savvy infighter during his earlier experience in Washington. Still, this is a useful and informative, if self-serving, memoir covering critical years in recent history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)