Selecting an Intelligent Mission and Sticking to it Is Important

© 2010 Peter Free

 

09 September 2010

 

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, honorably carrying out a mission of service

 

Honorable dedication to public service by high-ranking leaders is rare in this era of enhanced selfish self-worship.  Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is an exception.

 

Columnist/author David Ignatius said of him:

 

When I asked Gates in an interview on the way home how he wanted to be remembered as secretary of defense, he answered: "I would like to have the troops think of me as somebody who really looked out for them."

He gets angry -- in a way we don't see often enough in Washington -- when he encounters political or bureaucratic resistance that puts these soldiers at greater risk.

If people in Gates's Pentagon don't do their jobs, he fires them. That sense of accountability may be his biggest achievement.

 

© 2010 David Ignatius, Gates: The Pentagon’s accountability cop, Washington Post A21 (09 September 2010)

 

Read more about Bob Gates in Foreign Policy

 

Fred Kaplan, The Transformer, Foreign Policy (September/October 2010)

 

The key to honorable service is defining an intelligent mission and sticking to it

 

Secretary Gates is an example of someone who knows how to dedicate himself, and the organization he heads, to a mission that encompasses more than organizational survival.

 

Our political leaders could learn from him.

 

We might look critically at ourselves, as well.  Out of sight means too often out of mind.  As with Afghanistan and Iraq.