The Broader Implications of the Petraeus Resignation: Personal Behavior and Public Of

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The Broader Implications of the Petraeus Resignation: Personal Behavior and Public Office​

by Barry Rubin
November 11, 2012

General David Petraeus was the hero of the winning surge in Iraq. But he also has the distinction of becoming America’s first politically correct field commander. His strategy in Afghanistan was in line with that of the Obama administration by putting the emphasis on winning Muslim hearts and minds as a higher priority than military victories or even at times the safety of American soldiers. There’s a reason why President Barack Obama made him CIA director.

Leaving aside the question of the resignation’s relationship to the Benghazi debacle, in some ways, his fall is more discouraging than the election results. Don’t these powerful people feel that their duty is more important than their personal self-aggrandizement or pleasure? We should remember, too, that Petraeus’s predecessor in Afghanistan was brought down because of some incautious things said in a magazine interview.

Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, Herman Cain, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy, Larry Craig, Richard Nixon, and other politicians supposedly represented certain ideas, policies, and the hopes and dreams of millions of people who worked hard for them and put their trust in them. Can’t they put aside what they might also desire for the sake of those things?

I have seen with my own two eyes Kennedy drunk on the floor of the Senate and I know a lot from first-hand observation about the private adventures of former Senator Chris Dodd and Hart. And all of the above hasn’t begun to touch on financial corruption.

Of course, many do behave differently and far better. A few years ago, I’d have said that perhaps the media has become too willing and able to expose the foibles of those at the top. Yet after the spectacle of a Teflon Obama and his entourage, it would be more correct to say that the media only exposes those it wants to for political purposes. Then, too, Clinton and Kennedy didn’t suffer at all from their amorousness and bad driving.

If I’m not mistaken, there are now Democratic senators from Connecticut and Massachusetts who lied about their military records. The latter one, Senator John Kerry, may soon be secretary of State, which will be a global disaster of major proportions. There is also now a Democratic senator from Massachusetts who clearly lied about being a Cherokee in order to receive preferential treatment for a job.

I have seen in the National Archives the OSS report during World War II that a Danish journalist was a Nazi spy. And this is the woman with whom John F. Kennedy had an affair. For that reason, he was shipped out by his father to the Pacific front, where he would be made a hero through a combination of his bad navigation and subsequent brave behavior in the sinking of PT-109. General Dwight Eisenhower’s and President Franklin Roosevelt’s affairs during World War II are today well known. But those were times when things remained quiet.

Why, though, are these personal matters anyone else’s business? The debate usually focuses around an argument between what is proper morality and whether Americans are too puritanical. The French, we are told, rejoice when their politicians get naughty.

But there is another far more important issue altogether that is rarely aired. If a politician or major public figure believes in what he’s doing and knows that exposure of his misdeed would destroy that mission, how can they give in to temptation if they really believe in the importance of that mission or in the importance of keeping faith with those who are relying on them?

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Fox News Confirms U.S. Was Holding Prisoners At Benghazi Annex…​

We originally reported on October 26th based on conversations with sources in touch with those who were at the annex that night, that the CIA contractors had captured three Libyan prisoners who they handed over to the Libyan authorities when they fled Benghazi. Now we never knew who those prisoners were; we didn’t know what ended up happening to them but we have now learned that those three prisoners had been held for a few days at the annex and more than just Libyan militia members were held there. There may have been prisoners from other African countries maybe even the Middle East. They were interrogated allegedly by CIA contractors.

The CIA denies this saying the CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009. That’s when the President signed executive order 13491. The CIA claims any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is “uninformed and baseless.”


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