Can Leon Panetta handle the defense department?
The choice of Leon Panetta to head the Defense Department is not surprising. In fact, I really wish I could've put money on it in Vegas earlier this month. It's making the best of a bad situation in terms of potential nominees - the best candidates for filling the key administration position under President Obama didn't seem particularly eager to do so, and the candidates who did seem to want the job all had negatives.
About to turn 73, Panetta is older than Bob Gates, and while a seasoned D.C. hand, he's been commuting for years to his home in Monterey, Calif. But his challenges in taking over DoD could not be greater. He's coming in at a sour moment, when Afghanistan and Libya hang in the balance. Gates, always popular with the troops and respected on Capitol Hill, is leaving after setting the Department on a solid track toward internal reform - but also after publicly criticizing the president's ham-handed and unexpected demands for further cutbacks. Pressure from Congressional factions is coming from a half-dozen directions, frustration from the president's base threatens to explode, and Panetta's tenure at the CIA was marked by several failures in management - the Christmas Day bomber and more. From Politico earlier this month:
'Two of the biggest mistakes came in December 2009, 1 months [sic] after Panetta was sworn in. On Christmas Day, a Nigerian man, Umar Abdulmutallab, allegedly attempted to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit. White House and Congressional investigations faulted the CIA for failing to quickly pass on intelligence about Abdulmutallab, to connect reports on the suspect and to correctly search for his name in databases.â??There were a lot of mistakes that led up to that guy being able to get on the plane,â? said Thomas Kean, a former New Jersey governor and co-chairman with Hamilton of the Sept. 11 Commission. â??The CIA was in that loop. Whether it ever got to Panettaâ??s level, I donâ??t know, but it was definitely a problem.â?Â
Five days after the Detroit attempt, a suicide bomber who had been cultivated by the CIA as an informant killed seven agency operatives at a base in Khost, Afghanistan. It was the deadliest attack on CIA personnel in more than two decades, and was seen as a major operational failure.
More recently, the CIA was criticized for not providing adequate warning that unrest in Tunisia was likely to bring down the government there and would spark a popular upheaval in Egypt and foment public disturbances across the Middle East and North Africa.
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Even though he's a better fit for this role than he was at CIA, it is hard to see how Panetta will navigate this treacherous scene. Unlike Gates, who still had the fire in the belly for his tasks under George W. Bush and Obama and seemed happy to wait on his long-awaited retirement to the Pacific Northwest, one wonders if Panetta will not be all the more eager for Monterey after a few months in the Pentagon.