Here’s the exchange with Fred Kaplan:
FK: But here you are. The war — the Afghanistan war is now yours to a much greater degree than the Iraq war ever was. You’ve got these budget initiatives going, which I guess are in the very early stage. One can see them going on for another couple of years. I mean, it looks like you might be here for a fairly long time. If the president said, “Could you please stay till the end of the term?” — I mean, is that, is it different; is the question, “Would you please come join my administration?” different from “Would you please stay a little bit longer?”
RG: Well, first of all, I’m a big believer in the old line that the cemeteries are full of indispensable men. And, you know, the truth is this budget initiative really gained a full head of steam over a year ago when I went out in early April and announced something like 33 program changes or cuts or caps. And we got 31 of the 33 through the Hill, and I’m back for the other two.
And so what I’m undertaking now builds on that. The programs really got a full head of steam in April of 2009. So that’s had time to mature. This next piece is really a reflection of the economic condition of the country and an effort to avoid having the military gutted as it has been kind of after every conflict. And so the idea here is to preserve the top line that’s been agreed — that I’ve agreed with the president.
But within that budget, because it takes 2 to 3 percent real growth to sustain the force structure and future investments to find efficiencies in the overhead, unnecessary overhead where we can plus up the combat support capabilities 2 to 3 percent of the growth. So that’s kind of what this series of initiatives that began with the speech at the Eisenhower Library is about.
And frankly, you know, these things are — I’m going to strike early. I’m going to announce a bunch of things. You know, I’ve been around bureaucracy long enough to know what the strategy is in terms of waiting me out. To tell you the truth, that strategy would be in place if I were here four or eight more years. So I intend to start fast and with some fairly significant decisions to make it clear I won’t be outwaited, that this is going to happen.
The point of all of that is I think that by next year I’ll be in a position where, you know, we’re going to know whether the strategy is working in Afghanistan. We’ll have completed the surge. We’ll have done the assessment in December. And it seems like somewhere there in 2011 is a logical opportunity to hand off.
I think that it would be a mistake to wait until January 2012. First of all, I think we might have trouble getting the kind of person they want if there’s a possibility that they might only be in the job for a year. You know, who knows what the election situation will look like. But also I just think this is not the kind of job you want to fill in the spring of a presidential election. So I think sometime in 2011 sounds pretty good.
Interesting that the Gates mentions the possibility of Obama failing to win reelection as a factor in his decision to leave before 2012.