Robert Gates: Last Time The Military Became Political, We Had 20 Years Of War | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates discusses his new book 'Exercise of Power.' Aired on 6/17/2020.
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Former Defense Secretary On 'Exercise Of Power' | Morning Joe | MSNBC

93 comments

    1. shkspr78 s but the vast majority of those people fired by Trump were people hired/chosen by Trump. You remember his claims “we have the best people”. If they were the best, why do they get fired?

    2. @shkspr78 s I think you need to worry about trump. The poor old boy can’t even walk down a ramp unaided.

    3. @Leonie Romanes that’s okay. Trump can walk
      Joementia just sits in his basement in soiled depends.

    4. @shkspr78 s Biden will have a strong VP to do all the heavy lifting for him. Meanwhile where’s bunker boys buddy, pence? Trump needs help to drink and walk.

    1. @long nose
      I ignore trolls completely. Think of them as a needy pet, desperate for attention. Let em bark but ignore them until their behavior improves.

    1. @gardengnome 1 and why do you think democracy = freedom?

      There is a lot more to freedom then how you government is formed.

    2. Democracy – rule by the idiots you see in Walmart. No. We need a constitutionally limited cognitive aristocracy. For the vast majority of people, political paternalism is warranted.

    3. @Rusty Shackleford you should get out more. People living in Europe and commonwealth countries actually have more rights and a higher standard of living than the average American.

    4. Rusty Shackleford You are kidding? What about the rights of African Americans. What about the rights of those poor refugees on the border. What about the rights of the Native Americans? What about the rights of women? I could go on….. and on.

    1. @John Lightfoot Why do you blame TRUMP it was the BLM extremists and criminals ,but if it makes you feel good you can blame TRUMP ,answer this If Biden was President and this happened would you blame him ,here are the riots during obama and biden stint in office did you blame them ?
      Oscar Grant Riots, California
      Trayvon Martin Riots, Florida
      Manuel Diaz Violence, California
      Kimini Gray Riots, New York
      Michael Brown, Missouri
      Freddie Gray, Baltimore
      Tamir Rice, Ohio

    2. Dennis O’Brien ANZAC means everything to me. I toady up to no one. I love Australian people. And I mean what I say Dennis. Anything I say on the net, I mean what I say. Even my name given on here is me.
      Despite what you may think or not think, we in NZ look up to our Australian cousins. My sister, after living half her life in Brisbane, returned home 2 years ago to live in Nelson.

      Also my wife’s sister is American.

      John Lightfoot. Auckland ( Henderson )

    3. @John Lightfoot I agree with you Gordon I am the same ,this is my real name also ,we all have freedom of speech ,we can discuss our views calmly not with abuse ,I like ‘TRUMP you don’t ,but does not mean i don’t like someone because the have different beliefs to me ,I have done a lot of research and as abrasive as TRUMP is he is doing many good things ,a lot more than obama ,biden did in 8 years, also my son lives in Massachusetts

  1. Can you imagine if the entire population of Ann Arbor, Michigan were to disappear in less than four months?
    June 16, 2020: USA has more CONFIRMED Covid-19 deaths than any other country; 119 132, and the 9th highest deaths per capita at 360 per million. World average is 57.2 deaths per million.
    My modelling forecasts 563 000 US fatalities by election day.

    1. @Verruca. . . The Governor of Florida, upon being questioned about the spike in covid cases, declared that they will never shut down the state again. During the Spanish Flu, the second wave killed twice as many people as the first. That was caused by areas that stopped using pandemic precautions too early and soldiers returning from WW 1.

    2. @Raoul Fleckman Only in the middle of first wave right now. Florida, Texas, Georgia and more will be like New York City was in a couple of weeks.

  2. There are no effective checks and balances. You can have the safest car in this world, but when the driver is drunk with power the car is going to leave the road. The president was impeached and he still sits in the driver seat . I’m so tired of hearing about reform and change of the system. There is nothing wrong with the system (the car). Its the character and judgement of the people driving that is broken.

    1. There’s a problem with the system when it allows people like Trump to be elected as president.
      We need to dig deep and re-evaluate a lot of things, including the Electorate.

    2. Right?! I honestly think that there needs to be a constitutional amendment adopted stating that any president that is impeached during his/her first term is not allowed to run for a second term.

    3. Honey, just wait until you hear about the contents of John Bolton’s book, it will curl that blonde hair or turn it orange.

  3. Overseas America has, as he says, tried to enforce democracy at the point of a gun.
    But at home dictatorship and racism are enforced at the point of a gun

    1. @Keigan The Tennessean You tell me; Bad luck? Collateral damage? Wrong place, wrong time? All the aforementioned?

    2. Marin Moyes I’m not so sure that democracy played much part other than a fig leaf for military intervention.

    3. @Keigan The Tennessean LET’S STOP THE POLICE MURDERING OUR CITIZENS!!! FIRST!!!!THEN WE CAN TALK ABOUT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY!!!!! GET IT??? DESTROYING LIVES,, IS A FAR GREATER CRIME!!!

    4. @Keigan The Tennessean. . . There hasn’t been any looting in about 10 days, it is sad that they get caught in a civil rights movement, but this is the way a country makes changes

  4. Bringing democracy and effective government to Iraq and Afghanistan? WTF? We CAN’T do that HERE, how can we do it overseas where we are HATED?

    1. @Alex …American’s are not hated overseas, we just hope that one day American’s will realise they live in a country controlled by the Military, and not a “Government”. Once you can break free from the reigns of the Military Industrial Complex (President Eisenhower warned of this) , the country will again become great. Until then, the US Military will not allow the endless wars to stop. They need to keep the country fighting around the world to keep themselves relevant to the extent that they control all US foreign policy.
      You American are usually so welcoming,… so friendly… you might be a bit loud at times but when confronted with someone from another country, my experiences is one of friendship.

    2. who hates Americans only the CCP the terrorists etc I like Americans i am Australian ,I like you if you are democrat or republican as long as you are a good person in the BLM rallies unfortunately the small number of bad people make the good look bad also and the same thing goes for the cops .

  5. He tried to call in his radical right gun nuts to fight the protest. He doesn’t realize these men are cowards and are all talk in their garages. They ain’t fightin no one.

    1. Not to mention MUCH smaller in #s than the rest of us and who while doing exactly what you described, ie; talking and thinking their hard men, when their only experience with violence was on the lawn of their high school, and maybe at a few parties during high school.

      When they’re confronted with a person who has been born and bred to conflict and violence, not only will they realize the had zero concept of what a real fight Is, just how useless a gun becomes when you point one at someone else that doesn’t fear them in the slightest, and that they couldn’t “fight” their way out of a cardboard box if they had a chainsaw and a map showing where the opening is.

    2. You mean ‘Meal Team Six’? Yeah, I wasn’t expecting them to actually show up anywhere either.

    3. Being radicals means they don’t know how to team with others and organize.
      Hence just a bunch of radical right nuts.

  6. Jimmy Carter said the US was “the most warlike nation in the history of the world” due to its desire to impose American values on other countries.
    Korean Peninsula 1950-53
    China 1950-53
    Guatemala 1954
    Indonesia 1958
    Cuba 1959-60
    Guatemala 1960
    Belgian Congo 1964
    Guatemala 1964
    Dominican Republic 1965-66
    Peru 1965
    Laos 1964-73
    Vietnam 1961-73
    Cambodia 1969-70
    Guatemala 1967-69
    Lebanon 1982-84
    Grenada 1983-84
    Libya 1986
    Panama 1989-90
    Iraq 1991
    Kuwait 1991
    Somalia 1992-94
    Bosnia 1995
    Iran 1998
    Sudan 1998
    Afghanistan 1998
    Yugoslavia-Serbia 1999
    Afghanistan 2001
    Libya 2011
    Syria 2015
    Yemen 2016
    Iraq/Iran 2020
    Venezuela 2020
    And Palestine all the while
    US Is the most warlike nation in the history of the world … Jimmy Carter

    1. A very interesting statistic America have certainly had their share of conflicts over the years and it says very much about America and throughout the years they have stormed into countries and tried to enforce their standards of living but iff anything good have come from the internet is since the internet we have learnt a lot more about other countries that are war torn and we have learnt about how the people live their culture and generally the history of the country a lot more since the internet has been around and the one thing I’ve learnt about America especially the political side of America and what the country stands for and I’ve learnt that America does not have a good track record when it comes to America going into another country and trying to restore order I don’t see countries screaming out for Americas help Vietnam is the biggest example look at the misery America took to the people of Vietnam it was so bad they couldn’t live with themselves a lot of the veterans were strung out on hard drugs mental health issues from bad memories of the conflict and all sorts of bad stuff that people are still suffering from and when they came back to America they were despised for being like it so what’s the point of it all trump says he doesn’t want America to police the world anymore I can understand him saying and thinking that then he says but don’t worry I have got the oilfields secured in Syria Iraq and Saudi Arabia so he wants to bully the world instead cause that’s what it says in a nutshell and the world isn’t gonna let America do stuff like that without a payback of some sort and to be honest the best thing for America right now is to let America fight America from within and get rid of trump and rebuild the whole political system

    2. N. deG I choose the last one you said they have always been known to stamp their authority but is always getting chased from the country usually

    3. @Greg Espinoza there never has been either, it’s always been colonized by European and Arab powers, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Portugal, England, Netherlands, and as soon as any of them pulled out the African country they pulled out of would spew much propaganda and rhetoric about being a Democracy and then they’d have elections that were usually fixed, and then they’d have a new president for life DICTATOR remember Idi Amin ? Then usually the Military who would be a different tribe from the president would pose a coup and some “General’ would appoint himself president claiming that they would have free elections once things have calmed down and they rebuilt the infrastructure, and of course they didnt and then civil war would break out…..in pertepuallity…..

  7. It’s so great to hear from Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates who served both American administration and is not a political pawn.

    1. @rramales1 strength is how he got elected. 8 years of the turd going country to country giving head to their leaders is over. No more U.S. being a door mat.

    2. @Greytro interesting analogy. If the US was a doormat during Obama’s administration then under Trump is an old dirty mop. World leaders are amazed how the US elected an ignorant buffoon who have made the country a laughing stock and worse they laugh at the clown right in his back and his face. World leaders don’t want to be around the embarrassing clown because it’s hard for them to try not to be embarrassed for his stupidities and his childish behavior. Every time the clown opens his filthy lying mouth the Christian conservative and the white supremacists try to explain or excuse his idiotic statements becoming themselves a laughable cult.

  8. Trump’s strategy is to bring the “war on terror” home. He wants soldiers and tanks to violently suppress urban protests. He gassed his own people and deployed military helicopters against them using counterinsurgency tactics. Humiliated after fleeing to his underground bunker, he has fortified the entire White House like a tinpot despot. Trump topped it off with a vicious sword and cross moment by having peaceful protesters assaulted so he could saunter to church and paw a Bible (Grab by the pu$$y)for the cameras.

    1. @Raoul Fleckman He didn’t make it up, one of his “news” sources did and he blindly believed it.

    2. @Hopsta YOUR COMMENT SAYS U HAVE NEVER SERVED IN ANY MILITARY BRANCH- THE FIRST THING DRILLED INTO THE BRAINS OF NEW TRAINEES IS FOLLOWING ORDERS OF YOUR SUPERIORS NO MATTER WHAT – TO GIVE U SOME BETTER UNDERSTANDING IS WHAT HAPPENED IN WW2 BEFORE D-DAY. EISENHOWER TOLD EVERY SOLDIER TO KEEP THEIR MOUTH SHUT AND NEVER SAY ANYTHING OF THE D-DAY DEPARTURE TIME FROM ENGLAND. THERE WAS A 3 STAR GENERAL (mILLER) WHO WAS THE ROOMMATE OF EISENHOWER AT WEST POINT. MILLER GOT DRUNK ONE NIGHT AND SAID OUT LOUD THE TIME OF THE DEPARTURE . EISENHOWER TOLD MILLER THAT HAD NOT BEEN HIS ROOMMATE HE WOULD HAVE PUT HIM IN FRONT OF A FIRING SQUAD; INSTEAD HE DROPPED MILLER’S RANK TO A colonel AND SENT HIM BACK TO STATES . MILLER RESIGNED HIS POSITION AND REMAINED IN THE US DURING THE WAR AS A CIVILIAN.

  9. If we oust Trump we will also get rid of Mnuchin, Kudlow, Barr and all other grifters in the administration.

  10. Had Private Bone Spurs not been successful in dodging military duty all those years ago, what is the likelihood he would have died by intentional ‘friendly fire’?
    Imagine sharing a foxhole with Donald in combat? He would have been the least liked member of any company, if he made it through BT.

  11. I understand I’m asking a question from the choir, but how many times would someone have to lie to you before they lost integrity? One, two or would it take thousands of lies? How many times would someone have to hit you with a shovel, before you felt it?

  12. The confession that our senior leaders don’t read enough history was a sign of progress coming from a person of his ranks.

  13. Why is america so obsessed with wars? I mean, your government is lying just to start wars, how can anyone support that?

    1. @frank hayles means your economy is based on murdering innocent people? I would say that’s not an economy at all, it’s just robbing foreign countries.

    2. not all Americans support war! We can’t control what our government does even in a “democracy. ” It is so sad.

    3. Well, we now have a President that is doing everything that he can, not to start any wars…and the generals are turning against him cause he won’t.

  14. Dump doesn’t care about any of that, he’ll exploit ANYTHING,if it helps him politically, financially,or in any other way, malignant narcissism and sociopaths don’t care who suffers or does as long as they prosper

  15. The US bringing civil rights to the world…, how about the US bring civil rights to all Americans 🤔🤪

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