All of three days ago I offered my analysis of the emerging Petraeus debacle. Over the last seventy-two hours so many unpleasant details have popped up which are shocking to even a moderate cynic like myself that I don’t want to proffer a guess where the next few days will take us with this drama. First it was a legit news story, then it became a Lifetime episode, suddenly a reality show on Bravo, now it’s looking like a Coen brothers’ script. The only guess I will venture is: nowhere good.
It has emerged not only that Paula Broadwell, Dave Petraeus’s main gal not his wife, is pretty nuts, between online threats to perceived rivals and generally stalkerish and inappropriate behavior, but that she’s actually the kinda boring one.
Fortunately we now have Jill Kelley, the other doctor’s wife in this tawdry story, who is vastly more entertaining. Paula – she’s wound a bit tight, too West Pointish with the running obsession. Jill, however, is something else with her multiple aliases (Jill Kelley AKA Gilberte J. Kelley AKA Gigi Kelley AKA Jill Khawam AKA Gigi Khawam … and those are just the ones we know so far), the shady financial shenanigans (ok, it’s not officially fraud since no convictions yetdespite obvious “financial issues”), the overt status whoring (since when do Combatant Commands have “social directors”? do they work for the J3?), the absurd posturing (normal women do not call their husband “Dr. Kelley”), and I won’t even mention her, ahem, fashion sense. The gal’s a Levantine macher from central casting.
Basically Jill Kelley is a more effective Tareq Salahi, minus the winery. Despite obvious huge issues here which ought to have scared off any normal person, especially anyone in a position of responsibility with a public image to protect, she and General John Allen, our commander in Afghanistan, traded tens of thousands of emails now considered “inappropriate.” I could care less if those two were doing naked pushups together, but I do wonder where Gen. Allen found all that time, since losing a war as badly as NATO is in Afghanistan is nothing if not a full-time position.
Since I have no trouble believing – as Paula obviously did – that Jill is a seductress who had her eyes set on guys with stars, including very possibly her very own general/boyfriend, questions will be asked what was up between Jill and Dave too. Can’t wait to find out. She had enough pull with both Allen and Petraeus to get them to go to bat for her “psychologically unstable” twin sister - because this story couldn’t be perfect without a crazy doppelganger for at least one of the mistresses – in her incredibly nasty custody battle.
With exquisite timing, the Army today announced, after an absurdly long delay, that it is “punishing” General William “Kip” Ward for his ridiculous bling-bling lifestyle as AFRICOM commander by having him retire as a three-star: a bit of a financial loss, but hardly the GULAG. So now we’re up to three – yes, three that we know of so far – four-star generals who all displayed, over a pattern of years, worse judgement than most parents would expect of teenagers.
Or than the military consistently expects of its junior personnel. L’affaire Dave et al isn’t about sex – though sex, broadly defined, is what sells here – rather judgement. These scandals are so bad that the military, the Army especially, can’t do its usual trick of punishing the most junior soldiers and letting senior officers, plus every general involved, get away scot free (see: Abu Ghraib). This is so public that Petraeus and Allen will have to suffer something beyond humiliation – though, as with Kip Ward, DoD will try and drag their feet as long as possible.
There is a serious angle to all this which Americans need to think about. For the last decade especially, we have lionized our military beyond anything resembling what it actually is. Americans in uniform are presented to us as something like martyrs, and some are possibly even saints living among us; that everyone who’s ever actually served in uniform knows this is ridiculous doesn’t matter, since the vast majority of Americans know nothing about the military except from a very safe distance. Americans love to put out yellow ribbons and offer discounts to military members, but they’re not big on actually joining up themselves. Not to mention that Americans’ long-distance love affair with its armed forces probably says more about the dysfunction of pretty much all our nation’s other institutions than it does about the Pentagon, which only looks efficient and honorable when compared to, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles.
No one in recent years benefited more from this lionization than David Petraeus, who has lived a very charmed life as a conquering hero (without actually conquering anything) in a country which treats its military, especially its generals, very lavishly, but that bubble has burst, lost in a haze of tawdry love gone very wrong, and that cult – for a cult it surely was, as even formerly hagiographic journalists are conceding – is over. The saint is revealed to be a sinner, and we can assume that the gods, and the public, will not be forgiving.
John R. Schindler is professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he’s been since 2005, and where he teaches courses on security, strategy, intelligence, terrorism, and occasionally military history. Before joining the NWC faculty, he spent nearly a decade with the National Security Agency as an intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer
Timing, timing, timing.
ReplyDeleteWITHIN A DAY OF THE ELECTION????
What an amazing coincidence! It has never been a secret that the key wearing birds and stars is some competence plus an unwavering ability to look the other way when confronted with your senior's moral weakness.
Such men eventually submit to their own moral weakness. It corrupts, Lord Acton told us.
True. True.
BUT WHY NOW?
There is more coming and it won't be good for you or me.
Because as bad as these guys look...they are the boy scouts on Capital Hill.
So... if these misbehaviors are nothing new - publicly known as far back as Eisenhower and his driver;
And if they are not commonly punished, then why, why now? And at such a rate!!
We're only in the second week of the new administration!
Rationalize all you like.
The whole soap opera, while nutty, is pretty meh. Perhaps the only good thing to come of it is some much needed tarnish to remove the shine off of top-men, and demystify the military. I'd rather have an old curmudgeon General who's honest and unapologetic about grabbing ass, but with enough discipline and maturity to separate work and play.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it's no coincidence that it's after the election... but that's politics for ya.
What _is_ interesting though, is the account of the secret prison leaked by Paula that few seems to be asking about. The MSM just took the official CIA denial at face value and that was the end of that. It seems connected to the coordinated and well-armed militia strike on Benghazi. But the administration has convinced the world, including all Muslims, that it's about some heretofore unknown, cheesy, heretical youtube video uploaded months ago. The debate over free speech is a legitimate one--with a very easy and straightforward answer, whos response by the left, Obama and Hillary pissed me off--but served as a diversion in what may be the real source of contention over the attack.
This was in-fighting among factions. These guys (Petreus et al) lost and someone else won. These guys will sit on the sidelines while someone else wields power. Every empire has its cabals and plotters. Most of the time we don't see them. The only reason we see these guys is because they are being forced out of their positions of power while some hidden plan goes forward.
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