The CIA for years has been a sick child of our national administrations. Its blunders have been dramatic and catastrophic. To name a few: it missed Saddam's attack on Kuwait; it botched the presence of WMDs in Iraq; it missed the Russian invasion of Georgia; it missed 9/11. To compound its blunders, it has harbored a virtual fifth column which has acted on the very cusp of treason in leaking information to media such as the New York Times in an effort to unhorse George Bush and stop the Iraq war.
It is perfectly plausible to believe the Barak Obama is more concerned about bringing the CIA to heal at the side of its new political masters by installing commissar Panetta there to put the fear of God in the apparatchiks.
By way of full disclosure, I had been a poster stridently arguing before the election that Obama's whole record points to the danger of making a Manchurian Marxist the most powerful man in the world. Since the election, I confess that I have been surprised by the relative conservatism of his appointments. These appointments suggest that our fears expressed during the campaign were misplaced. On the other hand, these foreign affairs appointments might simply mean that Obama is aware of his immaturity and ignorance in this arena and is willing to hand off the problems to establishment figures. It might also mean that Obama intends to work his socialist agenda not through foreign affairs (i.e. the treaty making powers) but through the economy and the restructuring of the capitalist system. To achieve that, he might simply want to put foreign affairs on ice for a while.
The appointment, equally, might be part of a larger pattern developing around Barak Obama, at least in foreign affairs, in which he is installing appointees who will give him some insulation in the event of failure of policy. Certainly Gates at defense, a Republican holdover, provides Obama with cover in the event of a failure at defense. Similarly, Hillary as a megastar in her own right can draw a lot of the blame for failures of diplomacy. To a lesser degree, Panetta would serve the same function in the event of a failure of intelligence.
Panetta's appointment could also signal an intention to utterly politicize the CIA and shape it as an instrument of a leftist policy. Panetta's whole career, most recently his work and looking into the fairness doctrine, demonstrate that he is a willing apparatchik for any leftist policy goal. Give in Obama's shadowy but clearly extreme a leftist history, one is entitled to ask what it is that Obama has in mind for the agency.
Whatever his motivations, Obama has clearly failed to select someone who can get on with the job of restructuring and professionalizing a very, very sick but vital leg of our national survival. The appointment is not frivolous but political, and the question is why?
