Leon Panetta: A dissenting view

I think Leon Panetta is a first-rate choice to run the CIA. I'll be the first to admit that there are plenty of people, and not just conservatives, who disagree with this. Their argument, which has merit, is twofold: First, we're fighting two actions abroad, Afghanistan and Iraq; second, and flowing from this, is that we need a seasoned, life-long professional intelligence veteran to run the CIA. In other words, you don't hire a stockbroker when you need a heart transplant.

Here's why I think this argument is wrong, especially given certain unpleasant realities at the CIA. First, as a former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, Panetta has as much administrative skill as any bureaucrat in Washington. The amount of balancing, managing, delegating, editing, referring and prioritizing that a president's chief of staff must do would boggle the average mind. During his tenure, Panetta proved quite adept at this job. And being a former solon helps too. Washington generally, and especially the waters in which the CIA must swim, are as political as it gets. Having long-established cordial relations with the congressional oversight and budgeting committees can only serve the higher cause of effective intelligence.

But there is another reason, one that folks on the left would be less likely to admit but one which President-elect Obama has obviously paid close attention to: the hard truth that the CIA has occasionally behaved as a rogue agency. There are two aspects to this. The first is one that liberals do like to talk about – the CIA's role in coercive interrogations and renditions. This represents some of the most disreputable practices of U.S. policy since the Alien and Sedition Acts.

There is a second aspect of CIA rogue behavior, one that liberals don't like to talk about – the fact that the agency is not always loyal to elected representatives, leaks like sieve and can damage U.S. foreign policy. One can disagree vehemently with that policy – as I did during the Bush years – but it is not the CIA's role to undermine the executive branch. Those liberals who delighted in CIA leaks during the Bush years may not feel as gleeful when, as and if President Obama becomes the target of disgruntled intelligence bureaucrats.
Panetta, as a politician loyal to Obama, and thus, to the American people, knows the leak game. He knows how to impose political as well as employment penalties on those with a bent for leaking. And one thing that Republicans and Democrats do agree on: Leon Panetta is a man of unquestioned integrity.
It may seem odd in a time of war, but sometimes one must not only think outside the box but also reach outside the box to see and solve a problem. And Leon Panetta is outside of a box that is badly in need of reform.

Why the conflict now?

I was sitting in the New Delhi airport while watching the latest news with a bunch of fellow passengers. Each viewed the invasion of Gaza with their own perspectives. As a columnist, I could not keep quiet. So I engaged the waiting passengers in an informal poll, asking each person what they thought of the ongoing news.

Most of the passengers who were from India believed that Israel was engaged at this point for two main reasons: The first was to make sure all the fighting was complete before President Obama takes office and the second was to make sure that there was a re-entrance of Fata in Gaza so that Hamas would be sidelined. During my week in India, I had been told by several sources that there has been many back channel sources between India and Israel. The activity surrounded technology as well as military goods and information. All this had to be carefully arranged to keep from formally upsetting the Chinese.

Most Western leaders have now fallen in line with "Israel's right to self-defense" and support Israel's destruction of specific missile sites. These sites should not be confused with silos and advanced weapon depots we have here in the United States. These "missile" sites are designed to be operated by low-tech operators and are designed less to cause damage then to annoy and provoke.

Contrast this with the West Bank which is controlled by Fatah, the Arafat founded political party that became so corrupt that the citizens supported Hamas. Television anchors interviewing Fatah leaders engaged in a great evening of political theater. You did not have to be an expert in body language or voice intonation to know that the Fatah leaders were evading the truth or even out and out lying. They all condemned Israel on camera. But the anchors kept pressing the point that that there was no agreement between Fatah and Hamas and that Hamas had no interest in a two-state settlement or peace process. No matter who was interviewed from the West Bank, the answer was the same. It went something like violence on the part of Israel would get more violence from Hamas. True enough, but you don't need to be a State Department diplomat to know that Fatah is secretly hoping that they can get back in power in Gaza.

The more a journalist covers international politics, the more they learn not to look at the public face of diplomacy. Countries employ proxies and let other countries do their work for them. Leaders make public statements for their home consituancies to claim plausible denial. Back channels and deals are made all the time, and the goal of an international journalist is to find the trail of the back-channel communications.
My guess is that Israel would not have taken such as step without a wink-wink, nod-nod to the West Bank leadership, nor without Abbas and the Egyptians giving the green light.

Leaflets were distributed to the citizens of the West Bank telling them to leave, but since Egypt sealed the border tighter than ever, there was no place for the citizens of Gaza to go. There are few if any bomb shelters in Gaza and no fuel in a cold winter. Food is scarce. Those citizens are suffering though this political chess game – a game where the major players are Hamas, Fatah and, of course, Israel with a behind the curtain cheering section made up of the European Union, the United States, Egypt and Jordan.

Israel would not have moved its ground troops into Gaza without informing President Bush and the Obama administration. The political question from our side is why is this happening now? Armchair analysts from India to the United States believe that this "clean up the missiles" operation has happened for two reasons; to give Obama a fresh start on working on a two-state solution and, second, for a way to make Fatah the administrator of Gaza.
Good luck to them. They are going to need it. As my cousin writes in his book, we have had too many years of negotiation in what he calls "The Much Too Promised Land."

Bush weighs in for America

Democrats, liberals and other traditional President Bush detractors must always give credit where credit is due, and this time the president deserves the credit. He bucked his own party on the issue of immigration and worked closely with the Democrats to no avail on this major legislation. His own party fought him tooth and nail. He also stood up and supported real standards within the education system in the No Child Left Behind legislation. That legislation is far from perfect, but it is a start. He has confronted the part of his own party that does not believe in the loan, or bailout, that has been proposed for Detroit. Taking on senators who have supported him in the war and in domestic policy can't be easy in the last month of his administration when he would like to leave with lots of goodwill.

He is about to turn on a green light for the $15 billion loan to the industry. It's described by the White House as a bridge loan to somewhere, either financial solvency or a structured bankruptcy. Republican senators are shamelessly exploiting this national corporate debacle in an effort to get cheap political points at the expense of one of America's core industries. That industry right now may be a handful of fat cat executives, but it's also tens of millions of workers and retirees. This labeling, however, lets us forget that these workers and retirees are someone's grandparents, parents, fathers, daughters, mother, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. They represent family members of tens of millions of Americans. In short, this is a community problem, not too different from how your local church responds when there has been a fire, flood or some local tragedy in the neighborhood.

Sure, maybe the UAW should be looking at future cuts in pay and benefits, but my questions to the naysayers on this government loan are the following:

• When Honda and Toyota successfully sought to build plants in the South to access our markets, did we demand that they pay our workers what their counterparts were getting at General Motors, Chrysler or Ford? Did we hurt our own people for the benefit of Japanese corporate fat cats?
• Did we sweeten the deal for these foreign companies by offering them goodie bags full of land deals, specialized zoning and tax credits?
• How many factories does Detroit have in Japan? If the wages are so much less there then why hasn't the Japanese government encouraged our automotive companies to come there? If there are none, then why not?
Does this seem fair to you? Of course not, but the Japanese model has been touted in America under the guise of "Detroit doesn't get it."
So, maybe President Bush has finally figured out that the free trade he and others have been touting really isn't so free after all. The American workers in Detroit are realizing that their counterparts may be earning substandard wages and benefits just a few states away on a very similar assembly line. The challenge then isn't to take more money from working people. It is to help them keep what they have and to still be part of the American dream. President Bush understands that, and he is providing the leadership we need in his final days.

Strength of a Nation

Thanksgiving weekend is often marked by movie going, and this weekend was no exception. I purchased tickets to "Milk" the Sean Penn movie about "gay" activist Harvey Milk. This is New York, and I knew enough to purchase the tickets early in the day. I was warned by the woman at the ticket booth to get there about a half hour earlier. I arrived 20 minutes early, and the entire theater was filled. "Gay" activists? No, the theater was filled with mostly heterosexual couples of the 50+ crowd. There were few if any under 40.

Harvey Milk, born in the early 1930s, was the generation that most of these moviegoers came from. Known as the "builders," most of them missed serving in World War II, but the men of that generation served in the military. Harvey Milk served during the Korean War. It was a generation that gave and gave, and many became activists later in life. Harvey Milk was in the closet until he was 40 and only then with the freedom that came with the late '60s and early '70s did he choose a life of activism and living a life that was open.

The men and women attending the movie could relate to the story. Here was a man raised in the traditional values of America who decided to put everything on the line for a cause he believed in. It is interesting to see how this happens in a rich and diverse democracy like ours. One person can make a difference, and protests can be planned and peaceful. What struck me is how much has been accomplished by our American methods of dissent. Although Harvey Milk's life ended in violence, killed along with Mayor Moscone by a former colleague on the board of supervisors, we can disagree and protest without having to resort to the kind of terrorism that we see unfolding before us on an all too regular basis. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, a country that is an absolute monarchy. There is viable means of dissent or of protest. If you do not like the king's policies, you may be able to write something in the newspaper, or maybe not. No flash mobs, phone trees or leafleting allowed. Anger and hopelessness will build in an absolute environment, and there is no steam hole in the volcano to allow excess anger to pour out.

Americans love stories about people who make a difference – especially those who grow up without privilege. Rosa Parks is famous sitting in the white section of the bus; Martin Luther King for leading the civil rights movement. Harvey Milk was no exception. He organized local business to create an economic and business force. He stood on a street corner with a bullhorn and proclaimed his policies. He acted as a consummate local politician by beginning a campaign in front of television cameras about stepping in dog poop. He championed the local working union member. He did what he needed to do to get various groups who had nothing in common with each other to support him. This is the story of politics in a democracy.

Like other politicians, he had a blind spot too. He could not hear the concerns of Supervisor Dan White who could not feed his family on the salary he was paid, and who felt humiliated by Harvey Milk and the other members of the board of supervisors. Feeling hopeless as he was not reappointed to the job he had just resigned, he killed the mayor and Harvey Milk. The lesson here is that hopelessness can lead to violence, as the hopeless feel they have nothing left to lose.

Yes, there was murder in this American story, but the greater story is how much can be accomplished without violence and by peaceful protests and working within our amazing system of participatory democracy. It doesn't exist in dictatorships or in an absolute monarchy. Citizens of those kinds of governments can feel hopeless without an outlet. We have at this Thanksgiving week much for which to be thankful. The movie "Milk" shows us how strong we really are as a nation.

Bail out the auto industry

When I was growing up my mother belonged to an investment club. Every week the ladies would gather and invest $10. In between meetings they would do their stock market research and carefully watch how their money was doing. In that far away place and time, before opportunities opened for women in the workplace, the ladies would also pay careful attention when their husbands talked about stocks. The idea was to make some money.

Most of all, they loved investing in blue-chip stocks in general, and General Motors and Ford in particular. It wasn't just the money – every time they bought a share they felt like they were buying part of America. It seemed patriotic. Looking back on it, and how much my mother and her friends loved this country, I must say that it was a patriotic act.

If my mother were alive today she would have been shocked by last week's Capitol Hill hearings. She would have recalled that the Detroit whose auto museums we used to visit (a three-hour drive from my hometown Cleveland) was peopled by industrious workers, great management and the promise of America. These were the men (and women) who built the tanks and the trucks that won World War II and who kept supplying our country's defense needs right through the Cold War.
But last week in Congress was a humiliating spectacle. The three fat-cat CEOs, so politically tone deaf that they each flew in on separate corporate jets, testified about their troubles. It was a poster-sized moment of our country's sad decline as a manufacturing power. And it was a moment that I never would have believed could happen.

But it did happen. The sheer stupidity of Detroit's management lo these 40 years has also happened. The public's understandable temptation is to wish a pox on all their houses and let them go bankrupt. I have also had those thoughts. And the truth is nonpartisan, for there is plenty of blame to go around. Was the UAW too greedy for too long? Has management been bloated, greedy and completely lacking vision while being outdone by our foreign competitors? The answer to both questions is yes, of course.

And yet, and yet and yet … I've also had to grow up and face another hard truth: These companies cannot be allowed to go bankrupt, period. Here's why:
We have allowed our manufacturing base to go overseas and with it, our national security. Suppose we ever got into a major land war elsewhere. Who will manufacture our tanks and trucks now? Our international rivals? Perhaps the countries we are fighting?
During World War II and Korea, our auto plants turned on a dime and cranked out war machines by the tens of thousands. Then we had the capacity to make what we needed to win the war. If American auto manufacturing is owned by the likes of Honda, we will no longer own and control the necessary means of production to protect ourselves.

Many automobile workers have worked for decades on assembly lines, not exactly a fun-filled job. Those assembly lines put generations of kids through college, bought houses, supported our larger economy. And the people – we shouldn't call them simply workers, because for many Americans, they are our grandparents and parents – expected health care and some retirement in exchange for long, tough hours. And here's another truth: If Detroit doesn't provide for these folks, the taxpayers must. Better to leave the Big Three in business than overburden our already overburdened doles.
There's also a question of double standards. Do we bail out the white-collar schnooks at AIG (and the like) whose stupid executives are still taking luxury retreats on the taxpayers' dime and not do right by our own Detroit workers? That's not fair. And in the world's eyes, the Big Three are so connected to American wellbeing that if they are allowed to fail, the effects on the dollar and U.S. standing in the global economy could be catastrophic.

Read me straight, here – there should be no blank checks. There must be management and union accountability here, and that means concessions from everyone: the fat cat boss, the current workers and the retirees. Some plants may have to be closed, and there must also be political accountability – just like closing military bases, we must avoid the "not in my state" congressional mentality. An up or down vote on a comprehensive plan is a prerequisite.

We need some economy of scale here and more green cars rather than making tens and tens of different models, all guzzling gas. There must be a plan for profitability.
All of this is possible. Perhaps the first project of President-elect Obama will be to unite the country around saving this critical industry. American blue chips have recently turned rusty brown. It's time to make them blue again.