(MintPress) – David Petraeus, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and former American commander in Afghanistan, is having a bad week. Allegations and evidence of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, 40, and the subsequent FBI investigation, forced a demand for his resignation from James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence. Adultery, a crime under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, became a striking point when threatening emails from Broadwell were received by Jill Kelley, a family friend of Petraeus, which triggered the FBI investigation. Petraeus’s resignation was made official Nov. 9.
Besides the legal ramifications — Petraeus, as a retired general, carries his rank for life, which makes him subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice and its prohibition against adultery (it is unlikely that any legal proceedings will be filed for this, however) — this issue dwells primarily into the bigger issue of the role sex plays in government. Sex and sexual ethics have been used as a weapon in politics for as long as politics existed, but in the last 20 years, the number of sexual-based charges against high officials have exploded, raising a valid question: Does sex have a role in government?
Despite all of this, the concerns of a person’s personal life is not necessary either of policy or political concern. If we were to argue the demonification of David Petraeus, more suitable topics may deserve consideration.
Greater, unpunished sins
In June 2004, Petraeus was promoted to lieutenant general and became commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq. During his command, in November 1994, Operation Phantom Fury was carried out toward the goal of recapturing Fallujah. During this raid, more than 1,350 insurgents died, with approximately 95 Americans killed and 560 wounded. Allegations were raised that the U.S. used white phosphorous — an incendiary capable of causing severe burns — as an anti-personnel weapon, which the U.S. first denied and later admitted to. War crimes, human rights abuses and outright massacring of Iraqis were alleged to American troops under Petraeus’ command.
Also during his command, 30 percent of all weapons shipped to the Iraqi security forces were lost. The General Accounting Office attested that weapon distribution did not meet standard procedures during Petraeus’ administration, and many of the weapons made it to the hands of insurgents.
In 2010, Petraeus became commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. In March 2011, he apologized for an NATO airstrike under his command that resulted in the deaths of nine Afghan boys and the wounding of a 10th.
In 2011, Petraeus retired from the Army and took command of the Central Intelligence Agency. During his tenure, the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya brought sharp criticism of Petraeus’s management. Of those evacuated from the Embassy during the night of the attack, only seven did not work for the CIA. According to the Wall Street Journal article, “The CIA didn’t have the same understanding about its security responsibilities” in regards to the formal agreement to provide security to the State Department.
David Howell Petraeus was born Nov. 7, 1952 in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York to an American librarian mother and a Dutch sea captain father. Graduating 43rd in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1974, Petraeus married his wife Holly, the daughter of the academy’s superintendent. Throughout his life, he classified himself as a Rockefeller — or moderate to liberal leaning — Republican.
Petraeus would go on to earn top graduate distinctions from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College for the class of 1983. He would earn his MPA in 1985 and his Ph.D. in 1987 in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. His list of commendation is immense, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with clusters, the Distinguished Service Medal with clusters, the Defense Superior Service Medal with cluster, the Legion of Merit with clusters, the Bronze Star with V device and the Army Commendation Medal with clusters. He carries the permanent rank of General (O-10).
An infantry soldier, Petraeus started his career in the 509th Airborne Battalion after finishing Ranger School. He became an assistant operations officer with the 2nd Brigade, 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized) before assuming command of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 19th Infantry Regiment (Mechanized).
Through the ‘80s and ‘90s, Petraeus moved from command post to command post, until in 2001, he served in Bosnia as the NATO Stabilization Force assistant chief of staff for Operations and Deputy Commander of the U.S. Joint Interagency Counter-Terrorism Task Force. In 2003, in his first combat role, Petraeus oversaw the 101st Airborne’s drive into Baghdad, which included the longest heliborne assault in history to reach the Ninawa Province. Many have been critical of this drive, which led to a large number of civilian deaths.
The facts of the matter
During the spring of 2006, while working on his counterinsurgency manual, Lt. Gen. Petraeus met Paula Broadwell, a master candidate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. (She would earn her Masters of Public Administration in 2008.) The general was giving a speech about his experiences in Iraq.
Paula Broadwell is a military officer, having graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1995 and having served in both the United States Army and the Army Reserves; she currently holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Broadwell’s and Petraeus’s relationship initially was professional. Broadwell approached Petraeus after a speech he gave and discussed her research goals. After he offered to assist, Broadwell used a case study of his leadership in her doctoral dissertation. She also co-authored Petraeus’s biography, “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus,” with Vernon Loeb.
As of the publication of this article, no one has come forward with convincing evidence of when the romantic affair began, although retired Army Col. Steve Boylan reported that the affair started around November 2011. However, around May, Jill Kelley, social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., began to receive threatening and harassing emails, which is a federal offense. It was Kelley who contacted the FBI, who traced the emails back to Broadwell. The emails accused Kelley of starting an affair with Petraeus. With the surrender of Broadwell’s computer, the case exploded.
Around July — again, according to Boylan — the relationship ended. Attorney General Eric Holder was advised of the situation in late summer and made the determination that the situation was not a threat to national security and did not warrant governmental intervention at that time. However, it was determined that further investigation in the matter was warranted.
On Oct. 27, Majority Leader to the U.S. House of Representatives Eric Cantor (R-Va.) was tipped off to the affair by an FBI employee. This call was arranged by Rep. Dave Reichart (R-Wash.), who received a tip from another FBI official. By this time, Petraeus and Broadwell both admitted to the affair and a political headache that could have influence the election was in motion, but it exploded too late. One week before the election, on Oct. 31, Cantor’s chief of staff called the FBI’s chief of staff to inform him about the call, and on Election Day, the director of National Intelligence was informed. He immediately requested the resignation of Petraeus.
That Wednesday, on the general’s 60th birthday, the White House was informed of the situation. The following day, the president was advised, and Petraeus was formally asked to resign. That Friday, the president accepted the resignation, Broadwell was identified and her book jumped 76,691 spots up Amazon’s bestseller list.
Gen. John Allen, Petraeus’s successor in Afghanistan and candidate for commander of the U.S. European Command, is currently under investigation. His nomination has been held by the president, in regards to a request from Leon Panetta, the U.S. Secretary of Defense. It is currently being alleged that Allen has engaged in 20,000 to 30,000 pages of “inappropriate communications” — emails and other documents from communications — with Jill Kelley from 2010-2012.
If Allen was found to have had an affair with Kelley — unlike Petraeus, who is considered to be retired — Allen could expect a general hearing in regards to his violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and can face jail time.
Congress is complaining that the timing of the release of this information was politically coordinated to minimize damage to the president. Information about the communication trail was known as early as the summer. The Justice Department retorted that detailed information regarding criminal investigations is not supposed to be shared with the White House; this is a policy adopted after abuses and mistakes that happened during the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal. In addition, it was ruled that there was no security breach or threat to national security; as such, informing Congress or the president would be improper.
Due to the nature of intelligence work, adultery is seen to be a potential breach of security because of the possibility of blackmail.
A large number of the emails in question were never transmitted. Instead, the messages were “dropboxed,” in which messages are composed and saved as drafts to an anonymous Gmail account that the recipient has the password to. The recipient then reads the unsent drafts and deletes them, without sending them through an email server, recording the transmission into the server’s history or subjecting the message to any number of external filters, firewalls or software agents.
As Petraeus has not committed a crime, the FBI has not targeted a criminal investigation against him and is not expected to in the perceivable future.
The non-roll of sex in governance
So, all of this begs the question, “Who cares?” It is fascinating to dwell in the secret life of the famous and influential — it’s like a real-life soap opera — but does this justify the destroying of a life? Does someone’s sexual dalliances justify public distrust and disinvestment?
Maybe.
America — despite Hollywood and its fascination about sex and “formulated beauty” — is a Puritan nation. This country has alway had a problem talking honestly about sexuality in public; the topic make people turn away or blush uncontrollably.
It’s almost as if we are a nation of pre-adolescent boys.
We laugh, we giggle, we point. It fills late-night comedians’ monologues and satisfies news programs’ and newspapers’ soft-news requirement. Preachers prostrate about it, finger-wavers gossip about it and a nation obsesses about the dirty business politicians do when they are not doing the people’s business.
But, at its core, it is meaningless and much ado about nothing. When Eliot Spitzer resigned as governor of New York state March 17, 2008 for frequenting the Emperors Club VIP — a call-girl service — it was in response to a Republican threat to open impeachment hearings, despite the fact that the FBI found no wrongdoings besides the frequenting of prostitutes — a state misdemeanor. As stated in an editorial written by political philosopher Martha Nussbaum, “Spitzer’s offense was an offense against his family. It was not an offense against the public. If he broke any laws, these are laws that never should have existed and that have been repudiated by sensible nations.”
The problem lies in the notion that the nation still considers itself as a Christian nation, and Christianity has alway had an issue with sexuality.
The issue with sexuality started before the religion even codified. Among the Jewish tribes, wives were considered property. Laws were codified to protect the three major property types — livestock, wives and housing — against corruption or violating the “purity” of the possession. It was particularly feared that Judaism as a whole could be diluted by having sex with non-Jews. Scriptural laws were written to reflect this, and the definition of honor grew to incorporate the purity of one’s household; even rape of a wife came to mean a slight against her husband. In the Middle East today, shame killings are still a common occurrence because of this.
St. Augustine, a fourth century bishop, helped to define the modern Christian perspective on sex. Augustine was, by modern definitions, somewhere between obsessive-compulsive and borderline psychotic. He was influenced by the philosophy of the time that spoke over the superiority of the mind over the body and wrote extensively on the wickedness of the flesh. This linked to the prevailing view of women as a heightened sexual creature, which was to be feared and controlled. This manifested as witchcraft and a number of other slanderous descriptions.
Ultimately, sexuality represents an uncontrollable element into life; a diversion from the “straight and narrow.” It is a direct affront to the sense of nativism many embrace for comfort, a deviation from the idealized world that they fit in comfortably. Sex is uncomfortable. It’s messy and it is always chaotic.
Hence, the nation’s fascination with it; it’s the ultimate dirty secret, and it is confrontational to expose it to those unwilling to admit to its public existence. But this is an indictment of the blushers, and not those that made them blush.