After Rumsfeld, a new dawn?

By Mark Perry
Asia Times

In the American movie "Cool Hand Luke" — a cult classic in the US — a drunken Paul Newman faces his jailer. "What we have here," intones the captain of Road Prison 36, "is a failure to communicate." The movie has provided fodder for a gaggle of bloggers, who now refer to US Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute, President George W Bush's new "war czar", as "Cool Hand Lute".

Lute recently made the rounds of official Washington, telling everyone that aside from the advisability of invading Iraq in the first place (something with which, in private, he had real problems), the US national security establishment's failure to coordinate policy, its failure to communicate, is leading the nation into a foreign-policy debacle.

Lute's appointment in May as "war czar" is a talisman of this disaster. Lute's job, as he sees it, is to help reverse this potential disaster and shape a national security establishment that actually works. His colleagues say he's terribly worried that he's fated to fail.

Lute's most powerful ally in his lone battle to rebuild what he sees as the shattered American national security establishment is Robert Gates, the unassuming, seemingly soft-as-a-pillow new secretary of defense. Gates is Donald Rumsfeld-in-reverse. Gates is a man who has spent a career being underestimated. "Gates is soft-spoken, courteous, a very good listener, workmanlike, treats people well, has a good sense of humor — and is completely and absolutely ruthless," a colleague who has worked with him for three decades notes.

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