Politics

Former Defense Secretary On Middle East: ‘We Don’t Have A Strategy At All’ [VIDEO]

Alex Griswold Media Reporter
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Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that when it comes to the Middle East, “we don’t have a strategy at all.” (VIDEO: Robert Gates: Obama Micromanaged Military For ‘Political’ Reasons)

GATES: First of all, I think that we don’t have — given the environment that I think we’re going to face in the Middle East, I think the first thing is we don’t have a strategy at all. We’re basically sort of playing this day-to-day, and I think our interests remain important in the Middle East.

The truth is, there have been a lot of books written about our oil, our interest in oil and so on. I sat in the Situation Room for several decades, and on every time we intervened, oil was not the reason. It was strategic consequences; early on it was the Soviet Union, then it was Iran. So there have been other reasons than oil, and I think our interests are enduring, but we certainly don’t have a strategy.

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