As Washington and its allies began quietly talking about a forceful response to the Libyan crisis last Friday, the US defence secretary mounted the podium at the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, to make a surprising declaration.
Robert Gates said that any future defence secretary who advised the president to send a big US land army to Asia, the Middle East or Africa “ ‘should have his head examined’, as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
It was a remarkable statement from one of the country’s most experienced national security bureaucrats, and someone who has overseen a surge in troop deployments to Iraq and, more recently, to Afghanistan.
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