A better idea than I gave Obama credit for

I admit I was the first to criticize when President-Elect Obama announced he was keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense. I wouldn't have considered his tenure all that spectacular a success up to know - we are, after all, still fighting two futile wars - and I thought the tendency not to "change horses mid-stream" was stupid when we tried it the first time while reelecting Bush in 2004.

However, this article from Slate points out some of the thinking on Gates' that must have been evident to Obama, and that undoubtedly informed Obama's decision to keep Gates on at least for the near future. Deciding that a military that has spent the last six years figthing an insurgent force in the middle of a desert could use fewer stealth bombers and navy warships and more armored vehicles to protect against roadside bombs may not seem like revolutionary thinking, but in a military that has been painfully slow to change its thinking since the end of the cold war, its practically a renaissance in tactics. And it is men like Gates in positions of civilian power - in conjunction with men like Petraeus in the military ranks - that are accomplishing some of the most fundamental change the American armed forces has seen in decades.

Here's hoping it works.