deep state managerial perspective....,

Washington Post | Gates's views on the terrorism threat offer the most interesting bridge between President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama.

In October 2004, for example, Bush said that "we are fighting these terrorists with our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and beyond so we do not have to face them in the streets of our own cities." Although Gates does foresee that there could be "similar challenges in a variety of locales," he writes in Foreign Affairs that the proper response is building the security forces of partner governments to prevent "controversial direct military intervention." The United States "is unlikely to repeat another Iraq or Afghanistan -- that is, forced regime change followed by nation building under fire -- anytime soon," he writes.

In the Charlie Rose interview, Gates emphasized that the Cold War focused Americans on an existential threat to the homeland but said he does not think that violent Islamic extremists pose "the kind of threat to the existence of the United States that the Soviet Union did, or of the same kind of threat to freedom around the world."

Terrorism, Gates told Rose, is an "ideological conflict" in which the irreconcilables will have to be killed but there are many more potential enemies who could be persuaded not to join them.