NY Times Book Review by Dr. Leslie Gelb

[johnkarls]

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NY Times – 10/21/2014

Leon Panetta’s ‘Worthy Fights’
By Dr. Leslie H. Gelb

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Reading Liberally Editorial Notes --

Dr. Leslie Gelb crowned his 20-year Pulitzer-Prize winning career as the NY Times' OpEd-Page Editor and Foreign-Relations OpEd Columnist and, earlier, as their national-security correspondent -- by becoming President of the Council on Foreign Relations (1993-2003) which, inter alia, publishes Foreign Affairs, America’s premier foreign-policy magazine. [He continues to serve the Council as President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow.] After earning his PhD from Harvard U in 1964, he had also served as a senior official at the State and Defense Departments and at the Brookings Institution. Dr. Gelb is an opera aficionado, frequently attending the Metropolitan Opera where his son, Peter Gelb, is Major-Domo.

Dr. Gelb’s most recent book (Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy -- Harper 2009) was the focus of our 2/8/2012 meeting on the topic of “Real Politik (aka National Interest) and America’s Looming Attack on Iran.”

On Face the Nation on 1/8/2012, the Obama Administration in the person of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta proclaimed that Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon was a “red line” and (after his co-interviewee, U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey, confirmed military planning for a strike against Iran HAD INCLUDED POSITIONING OF MILITARY ASSETS) Leon Panetta stated -- “I think they [Iran] need to know that if they take that step [develop a nuclear weapon], that they’re going to get stopped.” The 1/8/2012 Face the Nation transcript is posted in the Reference Materials section of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org for our 2/8/2012 meeting.

As of 1/8/2012, the media was full of stories about how the American aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was racing across the Indian Ocean to join in the Persian Gulf the carrier Carl Vinson which had recently replaced the carrier John Stennis. One carrier in the P.G. is fairly routine while two in the P.G. had only happened during Gulf Wars I and II.

The topic proposal for our 2/8/2012 meeting had noted that as we had studied many times in the past, Egypt, Turkey and The Gulf State Six (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman) had each announced plans to go nuclear immediately after Iran acquires nuclear weapons because, like Charles de Gaulle who pulled France out of NATO and developed French nukes, they have no faith in the so-called American “nuclear umbrella.” And as we had studied many times in the past, 27.7% of worldwide oil production comes from the Middle East and another 20.2% originates “down wind” from the Middle East. Which is why the Middle East has always been viewed as a vital American “national interest.” Particularly since virtually all of the world’s agricultural fertilizers come from petrochemicals and a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East would immediately render unsustainable 50% of the world’s 7 billion population.

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Most readers will think they know Leon Panetta’s memoir, “Worthy Fights,” through his recent slash-and-burn interviews, damning President Obama for his lack of toughness in Iraq and Syria and for doing little to check the rise of Islamic terrorism there. But those who actually read his inside account of almost half a century in Washington politics will get a shock: He devotes a mere dozen or so of his nearly 500 pages to criticism of these Mideast catastrophes.

The scorching interviews are out of character for Panetta. He has been a careful, loyal colleague who gets things done, and his book reveals the very able and honest man who seemingly would never turn on his own.

So why did Panetta give those interviews? It’s not like him to purposefully cripple a president of his own party whom he basically likes. Nor has he criticized the White House in order to get it to alter its Mideast policies. Indeed, he says Obama is currently improving those policies. His interviews must somehow be connected to how he now wants his story to be read.

Panetta has had a banner career — and precious little public recognition for it. I can’t think of a single Democrat and only a handful of Republicans who have held as many blue ribbon positions in both Congress and the executive branch as he has. And he can claim substantial accomplishments: saving the food stamp program, masterminding the plan to kill Osama bin Laden, helping lead an effective war on terrorism, managing vast cuts in Pentagon spending without political and bureaucratic turmoil. But since this memoir contains not a single news bombshell, not one deliciously nasty word on a colleague and nary a chapter on how Panetta saved the world, only the pages on Syria and Iraq could attract attention. One senses that Panetta realized this after the initial reviews, and so in his interviews those pages have become the book.

But they are not the book. Young people searching for the role model of a public servant will find few as good as Panetta, and if they are willing to forgive the lack of uplifting prose, they will discover in “Worthy Fights” a plausible path to power and achievement.

Panetta climbed the Washington ladder as a strong Democrat who instinctively tried to accommodate most non-insane points of view. He was sound, smart, fair and tough when necessary, qualities that were rewarded with the chairmanship of the powerful House Budget Committee and, later in the executive branch, such key posts as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, White House chief of staff, director of the C.I.A. and defense secretary. Presidents and colleagues chose him time and again for difficult jobs because they knew they could trust him.

In a way, this son of poor Italian immigrants is the 21st-century embodiment of the 20th-century establishment type (a species now practically extinct). Like them, Panetta did not seek the spotlight. Like them, he skirted ideological gamesmanship. His technique was to encircle friends and foes with their common interests. Take, for example, his marvelously modest account of his role in saving the food stamps bill in the late 1980s. The votes weren’t there to feed the poor, but Panetta had enough backers to endanger the politically precious farm bill. Panetta combined the two bills, binding city Democrats and rural Republicans.

Panetta and I entered the Washington arena together in 1966. He worked for the California senator Thomas Kuchel, and I for Senator Jacob Javits of New York, both moderate Republicans. Panetta made his way into the Nixon administration, but was pushed out for his integrationist positions on civil rights. He returned to his beloved California, changed parties and ran successfully for the House of Representatives. We became friendly, not friends, and remain so (at least until he reads this review).

Panetta’s background was mainly in domestic and budget affairs until President Obama tapped him to head the C.I.A. He had the C.I.A. mentality. He tells the story of ordering the killing of a terrorist at an opportune moment even though it also meant the death of the man’s innocent wife. Notably, he puts this account in the book’s prologue so the reader can’t miss it.

Panetta set about arranging the assassination of Qaeda leaders without hesitation. He oversaw the launching of lethal drones at the American terrorists Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn. He viewed himself simply as the cop on the beat. He writes that on such occasions his deep Catholic beliefs and upbringing caused him great pain, but obviously not paralysis.

Some of his judgments when he was secretary of defense are frightfully thin. In 2011, he told American troops that Iraq would “bounce back” after the United States withdrew because “this damn country has a hell of a lot of resources.” Oil wealth did not preserve Iraqi unity; it only exacerbated hostility among the warring groups. And how does this “bounce back” remark square with his recent attack on Obama’s decision to leave Iraq? Later, he advocated for air intervention in Libya to oust Muammar Qaddafi, even though those attacks have produced chaos.

As for Panetta’s unhappiness at Obama’s failure to keep troops much longer in Iraq, questions abound. Would Iraq’s leaders have caved if Washington had put more pressure on them to allow Americans to stay? That’s not clear. Would Iraqi forces miraculously have fought the ISIS jihadis had they been supported by a few thousand Americans? The overwhelming fact is that they shed their weapons and fled. It’s hard to blame that on the absence of the United States.

On the failure of Obama’s policy in Syria, Panetta is dead right. The president’s unwillingness to act damaged his credibility. Still, Panetta knows better than most that the rebels he wanted to arm hardly constituted a genuine fighting force. In his book, he criticizes Obama’s decision to seek congressional authorization to attack Bashar al-Assad, claiming that the delay was purposefully designed “to scotch any action.” But in an interview last month, he suggested that the president should seek congressional approval to fight ISIS. That is, Panetta apparently thinks the White House is engaging in shocking illegality when it bombs jihadis, but he was all in favor of the executive branch deciding on its own to commit an act of war against a sovereign state. You can’t have it both ways. And don’t forget that none of the critics who have recently outed themselves — Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates or Panetta — felt strongly enough to bang on the table while in office or threaten to resign.

Panetta devotes considerably more attention to Afghanistan, where he was mostly on board with the White House and was one of its more sophisticated strategists. As the director of the C.I.A., he was angry with the Pentagon for its political gamesmanship in pushing for a big troop surge that seemed to put the war before the war aims. Indeed, he went further than most to argue that America’s problem was not with the Taliban per se, but with their harboring Al Qaeda. Panetta praises Obama for tacitly accepting this view, when the president announced that the American mission would be to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” Al Qaeda, not the Taliban.

Despite the media frenzy about his recent interviews, Panetta is generally positive about Obama, though negative about his inner team. While he shares the popular assessment of the president’s thoughtfulness and intelligence, Panetta also reinforces the common criticisms that Obama runs an overly centralized operation and is reluctant to fight political battles on behalf of his initiatives. He concludes: “Too often, in my view, the president relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader.”

The Washington memoir is usually a mélange of stick figures, false praise, avoidance of tough issues and banal style, and “Worthy Fights” fits the mold. But if it lacks value as a historical document or literary treasure, it can certainly serve as a playbook for how to behave with integrity in a city with limited virtue.