Transcript: Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates' Interview With NPR --- GATES: Well, And as I said, I — as I say in the book, you know, if there were an outright threat to the United States or to our interest or our allies, I would be the first in line to argue for the use of military force. It just seemed to me that some of the areas where we were looking at potential conflict were more in the category of wars of choice. And it was those that I was trying to protect the troops from. If there were a threat to the United States, I'd have no hesitation to throw everything we had at our adversary, and including our troops. But it was in these gray areas, where there was no direct threat to the United States, but potentially our interests were involved, where I was leaning hard to the side of not using military force, in part because of the strain on our troops. --- GATES: — in Afghanistan within days, if not weeks, of becoming president. And I think that that attitude of suspicion of what the military was trying to do had its roots in that — in that discussion in February and March of 2009. And when it came to Afghanistan, and Iraq for that matter but mainly Afghanistan, fed a suspicion that the military was always trying to box the president in and force him into significant troop increases and so on. -- And so there was this feeling — and because of various public comments made by senior military officials, by the chairman, by General Petraeus later, by General McChrystal and others, the feeling that they were trying publicly to put the president in a position where he had no alternative but to approve what they wanted. And as I write in the book, looking back I always tried at the time to persuade the president that this was no plot, that the military didn't have a plan, if you will, to try and box him in. And, frankly, I don't think I was ever able to persuade him that that was not the case, again primarily when it came to Afghanistan. --- GATES: I think that this is one of those unfortunate circumstances where a series of unconnected events gave the impression of a pattern. And I write in the book that I felt that the senior military had come to speak too often, too publicly about issues that were under consideration in a way that could only increase tensions between them and the president. And to tell you the truth, as I make clear in the book, President Bush had the same problem with some of the senior military in terms of their comments with respect to Iran and Afghanistan versus Iraq and so on. So this was not unique to President Obama. - More, NPR, at: http://www.npr.org/2014/01/11/261711869/transcript-former-defense-secretary-robert-gates-interview-with-npr