I agree that a strategy shift was needed, but I fear that this new SOD will be soft. We need a SOD who is ruthless and who is not willing to sacrifice any American troop for the sake of politically correct rules of engagement.
I fear that the principle reason we are losing so many troops of late is that they are under such oppresive rules of engagement that they cannot unload their weapons unless and until one of their platoon members is killed. An engagement policy of "shoot first ask questions later" is often necessary in an environment where everyone you meet is a potential assassin.
I think Gates needs to be given a chance.
More importantly, I think this nation has been at war 4 years in Iraq. That is as long as WWII. It's time to WIN this thing and wrap it up.
We need to:
1. Develop a winning strategy.
2. Execute it.
3. Wrap it up and move on.
Possibilities:
a. Assume a Cold War strategy of wearing down the Islamo-fascists.
b. Go on the offensive in a "take out the bad governments (Iran, Syria, Saudi, Sudan, Somalia)" strategy.
c. Partitioning of Iraq with border forces defending against and infiltrating of Iran.
d. Continuation of "condone, conquer, control" city by city.
e. others?