Obama's appointment of Leon Panetta to the Secretary of Defense and Gen. Patreaus as head of the CIA is a dangerous change for the US.
Panetta lacks the political weight to be as effective as Gates who has turned out to be a "Nixon to China" agent of change at the Pentagon, killing major wasteful weapons programs, advocating for real cuts in defense spending. As a right winger, Gates could go straight to the job. Panetta is going to spend his time trying to establish credibility with the generals by giving back the small changes Gates managed to eke out.
Patraeous is a national security nightmare, giving the Pentagon complete control of US intelligence and headed by someone who got Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan wars wrong from every standpoint, intelligence, strategy, tactics and national security priorities.
But Obama is seeking to mollify the military in an election year so he does what is good for Obama but bad for the US in every way.
What we need at the Pentagon is a hard nosed general (think Ike or Bradley) who understands that the real US strategic military need is to reduce US military from $1.3T per year in economic resources to $400B per (twice the spending of Russia and China combined). Ike and Bradley, the premier generals of the largest world war in history, understood the corrosive nature of military spending on bad wars like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What we need at the CIA is a CIVILIAN intelligence professional who can push the CIA for better intelligence. Panetta, CIA and US were completely taken by surprise by the level of popular discontent in Arab world for US allies like Mubarak, Saudis, Bahrain, Assad and Qaddafi. US fighting to prop up dictators when it should have had people in place to help lead the revolutions for democracy and to rid Middle East of Qaddafi the bomber of US airplanes the same as Bin Laden.
But no, Obama looks to re-election and by giving the military what it wants, weak civilian control at the Pentagon and military control over the civilian CIA, he hopes he will cut down on military criticism of him as he runs for re-election.