By Karen Parrish
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2013 – Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta
returned here yesterday after concluding a six-day tour of European
capitals that he has said was likely his last official trip in office.
Defense
Secretary Leon E. Panetta speaks with troops at U.S. Army Garrison
Vicenza, Italy, Jan. 17, 2013. DOD photo by Erin A. Kirk-Cuomo
(Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. |
|
Along the way, the secretary touched down in Portugal, Spain, Italy
and Great Britain. In each country, he discussed Afghanistan; all of the
nations Panetta visited over the week are coalition partners in NATO's
International Security Assistance Force.
He also grappled with
the Algerian hostage situation, and talked to troops, world leaders and
reporters about budgets, strategies and the crucial nature of strong
alliances in a world facing 21st century threats, including the
invisible but nightmarish specter of computer-based attacks that could
shut down the world's flow of money, energy and information.
Panetta also outlined a legacy, a vision and a dream: a legacy of
service; a vision of resolute, committed global security cooperation;
and a dream that he often says is not exclusively American, but simply
human: a better life "for our children."
Panetta frequently
speaks about public service, as he did to soldiers in Vicenza, Italy,
Jan. 17, and to students who attended his speech at London's King's
College Jan. 18.
The secretary started his own nearly
half-century career in public service with a stint as an Army
lieutenant, later representing his home state of California in Congress
for 16 years. He was chief of staff and director of the Office of
Management and Budget during Bill Clinton's presidency, and as part of
President Barack Obama's administration has led both the CIA and the
Defense Department.
Panetta has visited troops -- primarily U.S.
forces, but also Japanese, Afghan, South Korean and British service
members, among others -- on virtually all of his foreign and domestic
travels as defense secretary, and his respect for the military people he
leads is clear, as it was in Vicenza.
"The proudest thing that I
do as secretary of defense is have the honor and the pride to serve and
to lead the men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line
every day for our country," he said to the soldiers of U.S. Army
Europe's 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. "A generation of young
people since 9/11 who have come forward and been willing to serve this
country and willing to fight and, yes, to die, has been a great tribute
to the dedication of young people to what our democracy is all about."
Panetta told the students at King's College his love for democracy
dates back to his formative memories of Monterey, Calif., during World
War II. Born in 1938, he was too young, he explained, to understand all
that was happening in the world.
"I can still remember the
feelings of fear and uncertainty and vulnerability that pervaded those
years," he said. "Blackout shades, the air raid drills, the paper
drives, the soldiers and sailors who walked the streets of Monterey
before they were sent off to battle. Those are all memories."
But
his memories of that time also include some that seemingly still
inspire him. The man who helped to bring down Osama bin Laden spoke
warmly to the King's College crowd of his early impressions of Winston
Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Panetta perhaps
displayed the roots of his own "no refuge" approach to terrorists as he
described those leaders' resolve: "By making clear that they would
accept nothing less than the total defeat of fascism, Roosevelt and
Churchill were determined to shape a new world, and to do everything
they could to ensure it would never again descend into total conflict,"
he said.
"Their stirring oratory, their personal friendship,
their clear-eyed resolve inspired a generation at war and, I know,
continue to inspire all of us today," he added.
Panetta likely
will be remembered for some stirring oratory of his own. The former
congressman has not been shy as defense secretary in exhorting his 21st
century counterparts to carry out the duties they were elected to
perform.
As he told the soldiers in Vicenza while discussing
budget issues, "This is not an unsolvable problem. We can do this.
People have just got to suck it up and … take on some of the risks and
take on some of the challenges that are required by people in
leadership."
The secretary has taken on daunting challenges while
leading the Pentagon. A war-weary force has struggled with high suicide
and sexual assault rates. Insider attacks have tested the strength of
the ISAF coalition. Constant budget uncertainty has strained the
nation's defense industries and frustrated and worried military
commanders, service members and the defense civilian workforce.
Panetta spoke about that last item at the National Press Club here in
December, shortly after returning from a trip to Afghanistan.
"It's easy to get cynical and frustrated in this town," he admitted.
"And after 40 years, I know my level of cynicism and frustration. But my
confidence and my hope for the future is restored every time I have the
opportunity to visit with our troops on the front lines, as I did last
week. In them, I see the spirit of public service that has kept this
country strong for more than two centuries and which has helped us to
overcome every period of crisis and adversity in our history."
At
that same event, Panetta also displayed some of the same empathy he
showed in Vicenza, when a young soldier who had been standing in
formation waiting for him -- likely for quite some time -- started to
sway on her feet in the middle of the secretary's remarks. He stopped
and gazed at her in concern as two fellow soldiers led her from the
formation. "Are you all right, dear?" the leader of the world's
mightiest military asked her.
At the press club in December,
Panetta exhibited the same respect for others in discussing a far more
serious situation. He paid tribute to a reporter who had suffered an
explosive blast in Afghanistan, leaving her with a prosthetic left leg
and a shattered right foot that had been pieced back together.
"Journalists who commit themselves to doggedly pursuing the truth and
telling the everyday stories of American people are public servants in
their own right," he said. "On my last trip, I was honored to be
accompanied by Cami McCormick, an award-winning radio reporter for CBS
News who three years ago suffered a terrible injury … while covering the
war in Afghanistan. It was truly an emotional experience to be with her
as she returned back to Afghanistan for the first time after that
injury. She put her own life at risk in order to tell the story of that
war."
McCormick also accompanied Panetta on his European trip.
She delighted in a photograph she took of the Roman Catholic secretary
in Rome, after he attended a general audience with Pope Benedict XVI. In
the photo, the secretary's grin is incandescent. "It's perfect
Panetta," she said.
The secretary's legacy of public service
reaches even into his years outside the Capital Beltway. Panetta and his
wife, Sylvia, in 1997 founded the Panetta Institute for Public Policy
at California State University, Monterey Bay. The institute, as its
website details, serves the entire California state university system,
and under the direction of Sylvia Panetta -- before his return to the
national stage, the couple shared the job -- provides study
opportunities in government, politics and public policy. The institute
also sponsors other activities, such as the Monterey County Reads
program, which recruits hundreds of reading volunteers from communities
around Monterey to work with children in kindergarten through third
grade.
The institute's mission, the secretary told his London
audience, is to "help prepare the next generation for a career in public
service." He added, "I look forward to returning to the institute, to …
my wife and family, and, yes, to our walnut farm."
But last
week, Panetta's focus was far from Monterey. In Lisbon, in Madrid, in a
Rome wracked by thunderstorms and a London slushy with snow, the
secretary spoke of his vision: a NATO alliance retooled for a young
century's new threats, ready to foster security alliances and military
cooperation around the world.
"The goal of this trip is really in
line with that,” he told reporters traveling with him while en route to
Lisbon. “It's to try to strengthen and reaffirm the transatlantic
alliance, our relationship with NATO, to reflect on what we've
accomplished over the last decade of war, and to also lay the groundwork
for the future."
In Portugal, the secretary said the war on
terrorism continues. “We have made good progress,” he added. “We have
undermined their ability to conduct the kind of attacks that they would
like to conduct. But the war on terrorism continues."
In Italy, he noted that “this is the kind of war that's going to require continuing pressure over a period of time."
In Spain, he said efforts to implement the way forward in Afghanistan
decided upon at a NATO summit in Chicago were continuing as the alliance
members’ leaders had hoped. "Because of the work that has been done by
all the nations involved to help build the Afghan security forces, … I
believe we are on track to meet the goals that our nations agreed to
last year in Chicago."
And in London, the secretary asserted,
"NATO has been an unprecedented force for global security and
prosperity, developing into the most effective and capable and enduring
multilateral security alliance the world has ever seen."
During
his previous travels -- 18 international trips over as many months
leading the Defense Department -- Panetta has talked of a world that is
united against threats, where relationships that are not alliances, as
with China, can remain respectful and engaged, and where a common goal
of peace and prosperity becomes not exclusively the American dream, but
also a globally achievable objective.
Panetta famously credits
his Italian parents, who brought him up on that walnut farm after
immigrating to America with "no money and few skills," with instilling
that dream in him and his brother. The Panetta sons were the first in
their family to attend college, and then law school, he noted.
The secretary says openly he hopes to return soon to wife, family, farm
and institute. He told the troops in Vicenza that when their turn comes
to go home, "I hope … you'll have the same deep sense of pride that I
have in the service that we've provided this country. We don't make a
hell of a lot of money in these jobs, but if we can have a sense that we
have maintained our integrity and that we have given something back to
this country that has given us so much, that's the best pay we could
ever have."
His own greatest accomplishment, he told a soldier
who asked, is "being a part of something that really, I think, in the
end, helped all Americans and the whole world to be safer."
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