November 27, 2008	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 28, 1429

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama’s campaign credo: change is good. President-elect Barack Obama’s credo: when it comes to war and peace, maybe wisdom is better.

Obama has assembled a national security brain trust populated by greybeard establishment figures with decades of combined experience and even a few medals. He is entrusting critical wartime management to people with unassailable credentials and low buzz factor.

The best example of the Obama Battleplan Version 2.0 is Robert Gates.

Obama’s insurgent candidacy was founded on his opposition to the Iraq war and a promise to end it, fast. But with a crushing global financial crisis supplanting Iraq as the No 1 priority, the Democrat has turned to the very man running the Iraq and Afghan wars for the current Republican president, officials confirmed to The Associated Press.

Gates, who has served as President George W. Bush’s defence secretary for two years, will remain in the cabinet for some time, probably a year, according to an official familiar with discussions between him and the president-elect. His appointment would fulfil an Obama pledge to include a Republican in his cabinet.

A source close to the current Pentagon leadership cautioned that Gates had not agreed to a specific exit date. Like those describing Obama’s job offers, the source spoke on condition of anonymity because Obama has not announced the personnel choices.For the critical inside job of national security adviser, Obama wants a 6-foot-4 retired Marine general who hung his hat most recently at the US Chamber of Commerce. A Democratic official said retired Marine Gen James Jones was Obama’s pick to head the National Security Council, the part of the White House structure that deals with foreign policy.

Jones, 64, has been a respectful critic of some Bush administration war strategy, especially in Afghanistan, and his priorities and worldview seem in line with Obama’s. But he’s no liberal. The former NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe was named last year to head an energy initiative for the Republican-friendly Chamber of Commerce, and he also served as a special Mideast peace adviser for the Bush administration.

Democratic officials earlier confirmed that Obama had offered the prestigious post of secretary of state to Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Clinton pick brings a vanquished opponent into Obama’s fold. It also means the 47-year-old Obama is hiring a respected foreign policy person who argued during the tense Democratic primary that she was the person you really wanted answering that 3am phone call of doom.

Obama is expected to announce his national security roster next week.

“You have a young president still trying to establish his bona fides and he has to have a seasoned team,” said Stephen Flanagan, director of the international security programme at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Where do you go to get a seasoned team? Well, to people seasoned in one previous administration or another.

Flanagan counts Gates and Jones as career public servants without a strong ideological stamp. Clinton, 61, may carry ideological baggage, but she also brings a record of bipartisan cooperation in the Senate and tested Midwestern grit and determination.The Gates pick affords Obama some time to cope with the crumbling economy even as it risks disappointing the anti-war Democrats who launched his candidacy.

Gates was a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and is widely respected by Democrats in Congress, but he retains strong Republican lineage.

The 65-year-old climbed the CIA bureaucracy from an entry-level position to become director under President George H.W. Bush. He also served on the elder Bush’s National Security Council, as he had for Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Gates helped lead US efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s while at the CIA and was deputy national security adviser during Operation Desert Storm, the first US-led invasion of Iraq.

Gates is a close friend of the Bush family. Gates spokesman Geoff Morrell would not confirm that Gates has been offered the job by Obama.—AP