As you’ll probably know, Robert M. Gates has published his memoir Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War. Many reviewers have noted the genuine respect Gates seems to have for President Obama. Others highlight Gates’ accounts of rather bizarre and depressing bureaucratic infighting between himself and the Pentagon (e.g. here).

Another thing that people have noticed Gates’ reporting of, as others have before him, both Obama and Hillary Clinton admitting to him that they based their political stance on the Iraq war on electoral grounds. They opposed Bush’s 2007 surge because it played well.

It is truly beyond me how stories like this just come and go in the way they do. The behavior to which Obama and Clinton confess is truly horrific. There are thousands, more likely tens of thousands, of lives at stake in these decisions. Yet our highest elected officials (Obama and Clinton of course are no exceptions) take them in complete disregard of the relevant reasons or evidence. They do not even try.

And somehow, even someone as smart and thoughtful as Cass Sunstein can only write about how Gates’ memoir is a betrayal of loyalty:

Even if private conversations involve people who are no longer in office, the official should hesitate before using them to embarrass or attack those with whom he worked closely — certainly if his own motivations include selling books, settling scores, justifying his own positions or even defending his place in history.

And:

Officials should generally be entitled to assume that they can speak to their colleagues in confidence, and that their colleagues won’t reveal what they said or attack them publicly, certainly not while they remain in office.

Welcome to Washington.

Power corrupts. If you care about your soul, stay out of politics.