At the nexus

One of the surprises about George Bush's selection of Robert Gates as Donald Rumsfeld's replacement is the apparent inattention to how difficult it is going to be to get Gates confirmed. On the one hand, Bush could do worse than working through the Bush I Rolodex, but by doing so he finds someone who knows a lot that he hasn't said about the Iran-Contra scandal and the US support for the Afghan mujahideen -- policies with consequences that are of course still with us today. And today's Wall Street Journal editorial (subs. req'd), perhaps feeling a little less encumbered after the election losses, notes another problem --

Which brings us back to Mr. Gates, whose nomination makes us wonder if Mr. Bush is signaling a change in policy, or worse, a new resignation toward Iraq. Mr. Gates is a capable public servant with broad security experience. But much of that experience is with the CIA, which has misjudged the nature of the enemy throughout this conflict. Mr. Gates is also on the Baker-Hamilton study group that Congress established to examine policy options for Iraq, and we hope his nomination doesn't mean Mr. Bush has already signed onto its soon-to-be-released recommendations. One of those proposals is reportedly a new engagement with Iran and Syria, which would make a hash of the President's "freedom agenda."

Most troubling regarding Iraq, Mr. Gates was deputy national security adviser under Brent Scowcroft in 1991, when President Bush's father abandoned the Shiite uprising that followed the first Gulf War. One reason the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki has had such a hard time dismantling Shiite militias is because Shiites fear that it's only a matter of time before the U.S. abandons them again and they will have to confront the Sunni Baathist insurgency on their own. If President Bush wants to reassure Shiites on this score and about Mr. Gates, he should announce that the recent efforts to appease the Sunni terrorist political fronts in Iraq have failed.

They're certainly right to ask for tough confirmation hearings, even if the specific reasons are odd. It's bizarrely insular to assume that Shiites remember who the deputy national security adviser was in 1991 when, if they did, they'd surely remember who the defence secretary was back then too. Note also the Journal's persistent view that Bush's troubles spring from a CIA "war" on the administration or from a potential coddling of Iran -- not complaints that one is likely to hear in the reality-based community.

UPDATE 10 NOV: The opposition to Robert Gates spreads across the WSJ op-ed page. Bush's plan to get him confirmed in the lame duck session might be in trouble -- from within his own base.