Will Gates Really Step Down in 2011?

Is everyone rushing to judgment when they say that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has announced that he’ll retire sometime next year? Noah Shachtman at Wired reminds us that in 2007 Gates kept a clock ticking off the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the end of George W. Bush’s presidency on January 20, 2009—a date after which Gates said it was “inconceivable” that he would stay on. Of course, he agreed then to serve under President Obama. Shachtman writes that, if Gates’ projects to turn Afghanistan around and streamline the Pentagon’s bureaucracy are unfinished by late 2011, “Gates will stay. He doesn’t strike me as the type to have a losing war or a losing fight with the military-industrial complex as the final mark on his decades-long government career.” Gates’ press secretary writes Shachtman to caution, “I would remind you all that every time Secretary Gates has seriously considered hanging it up for good, he ultimately has decided to keep serving, so my personal advice would be to wait for a real announcement, or better yet, wait to see what happens next year.”