By Fe Bongolan
While the world watches reruns of the royal wedding for this century, America’s military and international intelligence policies are taking a swerve toward a different direction. The announcement by President Obama of the appointment of CIA Director Leon Panetta to the post of Secretary of Defense, and the promotion of Commander of the US Afghanistan forces General David Petraeus to head up the Central Intelligence Agency, also known as the CIA, is the signal of that change.
The White House is faced with two wars, a thing in Libya that looks and sounds a lot like a war, a continuing budget shortfall, a bloated military budget and a Congress and nation divided. With that in mind, the selection of Leon Panetta — a liberal — as Secretary of Defense is a good thing. The placement of Panetta signals the Administration’s intent to implement reorganization of the Department of Defense, with the goal of ultimately reducing its budget by $400 billion over the next ten years.
Panetta, a former Congressman from Northern California presided over a peacetime boon from the end of the Cold War, transitioning military bases towards civilian use while Chief of Staff under President Bill Clinton. The Presidio in San Francisco and Cal State Monterey are two models from Panetta’s home state where military bases were re-purposed for peacetime civilian use for public benefit.