Obama and Gates play a semantic shell game

Addressing West Point’s graduating class, President Obama embeds Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ latest strategy to win the war in Afghanistan with this comment “We have supported the election of a sovereign government - now we must strengthen its capacities.” Gates who once warned of “creeping militarization aspects of United States foreign policy,” now insists it is our military’s duty to directly influence on a long term basis Afghanistan’s “military, the police, the justice system, and other governance and oversight mechanisms.” Gates calls this strategy “building partner capacity.”