Secretary of Defense Panetta appears to have a problem with language. He regrets the cost of his weekly trips home, but he tells us it has to be, that he needs these trips because he “needs time with his family.”
To regret is to feel sorry, disappointed or distressed. That's the literal meaning. But the meaning implies, at least among morally consistent souls, that there will be a change in behavior. ‘I regret my actions and I will change.’
But, while Secretary Panetta says that he is looking for some way to reduce the costs, he also defended the trips saying that “[I]t’s healthy to get out of Washington periodically just to get your mind straight and your perspective straight.”
Now, I am sure that the psychiatrists and psychologists out there have a fancy name for it when someone says he ‘regrets’ a certain type of behavior that he keeps engaging in, and then turns right around and defends it. But from where I sit, there aren’t a lot of options. Either you regret something and you are going to stop it, or you don’t really regret it all that much. So you are going to keep doing it.
(Note, we aren’t talking about those particular events such as war – we can regret going to war, but still feel it is necessary. Nor is this like a bank foreclosing on someone’s mortgage, also regrettable but also sometimes necessary. This is about personal choices and personal behavior.)
In short, if a person truly regretted some sort of personal behavior, behavior that is a matter of clear choice, he would stop it. If he truly regretted this cost, he would stop doing this. But Secretary Panetta, while he ‘regrets’ this, clearly feels entitled to it – he deserves it. Apparently the other people in the DOD or the rest of government who have to be separated from family, who have to work long and stressful hours, they simply aren’t as special as he is. He is entitled to more special treatment then they.
There is a word for that; it’s hubris. And while theologians will tell you that hubris is the intellectual and spiritual foundation of all sin, in politics, hubris is the foundation of all abuses of power.
What the Secretary really regrets is that this has become a subject of discussion. Power has twisted him and in the self-absorbed world of Washington, he clearly feels he deserves this special treatment. He is not in that office to serve the nation, he is in that office because he has agreed to provide the nation with his assistance, as long as the nation recognizes his needs, and those needs supersede other, lesser considerations. Of course, he has done such a ‘superb’ job at Defense; retiring ships and airplanes, cutting troop strength, cutting programs and reducing capabilities, without seriously pushing back against the White House, apparently confident that conservatives in the House, more interested in preserving various DOD capabilities, will defend enough programs that he can do the President’s bidding, remain a committed liberal, and yet boast of having preserved the security of the nation.
This is unseemly behavior, but it does serve to point out what kind of person we have as the Secretary of Defense. The corruption of power is sometimes best observed in how people respond to the little things. No one begrudges the Secretary of Defense his secure vehicles or his military aircraft: he needs them to maintain his control over US forces. But the fact is that the Secretary has come to view these as his ‘due,’ as if somehow his tour as Secretary is different from the rest and that he therefore deserves different – special treatment. In a democracy such behavior is repugnant to the citizenry. We should insist on the Secretary’s removal – not for spending some several hundred thousand dollars, but for thinking himself to be apart, and clearly above, the citizens for whom he works.
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