An earlier 2005 op-ed “Looking for honesty in our leaders,” criticizes the Bush Administration for bogging us down in Iraq when “the fundamental focus of the United States and the world should be on going after al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. The truth,” Panetta wrote, “is that they remain the greatest threats to our security.” Panetta characterized our leaders as living in a “fool’s paradise” delivering “political pablum, double talk, and partisan baloney.”

Panetta’s commentaries published throughout 2006 call for campaign finance reform because “If nothing is done to change the way elections are financed in this country, history tells us that little will change.” They describe Congressional immigration reform measures as “the political equivalent of trying to build a dam in a flood and trying to push the water back into the dam.” The commentaries also warn of our nation’s energy crisis “In the absence of leadership, crisis drives policy.” And on Iraq Panetta states, “The government’s sheer incompetence in understanding the lessons of war and nation building have put our men and women in even greater danger.”

It is easy condemn the fear tactics, the use of violence, the detention of civilians and journalists, the mass arrests, and the bans on media, in countries across the Arab world where pro-democracy movements have spread. Yet to point the finger from the United States, at a time when our nation has been forced to reflect on our own anti-democratic nightmare, seems negligent and sadly ironic.

Though one cannot compare US policies in recent years with the autocratic and authoritarian state of affairs in parts of the Arab world, it is possible to imagine where we would end up if we continue on the path of the Bush presidency. What the bin Laden mission proves is that our values as a nation need not be compromised in a war on terror.

It is my hope that as Secretary of Defense Panetta will continue on the path of reclaiming an ideal standard for democracy – one that Americans and people who believe in freedom everywhere, can be proud of. In this way we can offer our nation and the rest of the world a democracy that is not in name only.

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