Warning: America Has Been Weakened

America should be petrified of President-elect Obama’s official selection of Leon Panetta for CIA chief.  America should be concerned about Obama’s commitment to effectively fighting the war on terror. 

Immediately after September 11, 2001, President Bush explained that the war on terror would be unlike any war our nation has fought.  Progress would often be difficult to define.  There we no beachheads to take, no hills to secure, no enemy army to conquer.  Moreover, much of the success in this new kind of war would take place in the shadows away from the media spotlight to optimize mission success. 

Former Washington Post editor, Stephen Coll, describes the nature of such covert wars in his Pulitzer prize winner book, Ghost Wars.  While not the main subject of the book, Coll’s painstaking research shows a direct connection between the decline of our intelligence agencies under the Clinton administration and the events that lead to 9-11.    President Clinton’s ideology caused much of the decline.  As lawyer and Rhodes Scholar, President Clinton believed that terrorist should be brought to justice and tried in court rather than killed on the battlefield.  His appointments to key intelligence positions shared his view .  This viewpoint  prevented the CIA from killing Bin Laden on numerous occasions because the CIA was ordered to “capture” him so he could stand trial.

The Panetta appointment signals a return to the Clinton ideology.  Indeed, as Clinton’s chief of staff, Panetta was no doubt present in high level meetings when the “capture or kill” decision was made.  His criticism of the current war leaves little doubt which side Panetta was on in that discussion. 

As many former high level CIA operatives have commented, appointing someone to run the CIA with NO intelligence experience like Panetta will devastate the agency’s morale.  If you worked in a law firm would you be pumped if you new boss never practiced law before?  It is befuddling why Obama would want to ruin morale at arguable the most important agency in the war. 

In recent months, the CIA’s covert operations in Northern Pakistan have resulted in many high level Al-Qeada being killed, including two men on the FBI’s 25 most wanted list.  Do we really want a man with no intelligence experience and who opposes such clandestine operations running the CIA at such a critical time?  Be afraid, be very afraid.