Gates tries to help out Condi

Many are skeptical of today's Middle East summit taking place in Anapolis, not only with regards to what can be accomplished but also the intentions of President Bush and Condoleezza Rice. They are only trying to salvage their legacies from being completely tarnished by the Iraq war, detractors say. Maybe so, but at least member of the administration who does not exist under the shadow of the ongoing war is trying to change the United State's course. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday at a speech at Kansas State University that if the U.S. wants to keep its influence abroad, it should stop thinking so much about military matters and invest more in the State Department.

Gates' statement is interesting in light of the deal reached yesterday between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. It is all but inevitable that the United States will be involved in Iraqi affairs for years to come, but hopefully Gates will lead the way to a fresh direction for the Department of Defense, one in which it is not always at odds with the State Department, as was the case under Rumsfeld and Powell. Programs like the State Department's blogging efforts hopefully inidcate more of an emphasis on diplomacy. “Conflicts will be fundamentally political in nature and require the application of all elements of national power," Gates said. "Success will be less a matter of imposing one’s will and more a function of shaping behavior of friends, adversaries and, most importantly, the people in between.”

Still, of the twelve main appropriations bills that need to be passed for 2008, Congress has so far only put the defense bill onto the president's desk; he signed it, though apparently the $460 billion spent was not quite as much as the president had hoped for. As Gates pointed out yesterday, that's a pretty hefty sum in comparison to the State Department's $36 billion. But perhaps more than the budget, just the will to expand diplomacy needs to increase. “We are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals,” Gates said. “It is just plain embarrassing that al Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the Internet than America.”