More seriously, Petraeus has one major feather in his cap: he allowed the U.S. to lose the war in Iraq gracefully rather than gracelessly. I don’t know how much credit the general deserves—maybe a little, maybe a lot—but when he took over, things were falling apart in Iraq, and when he left, things were calmer. Of course, Iraq gave us our walking papers—I wonder why! Maybe it was all the murders of innocent civilians by U.S. troops and mercenaries—and Bush had to sign them, but we walked out rather than being kicked out.
In Afghanistan, Petreaus accomplished absolutely nothing, except allowing Obama to make his own graceful exit from a disastrous situation, sacrificing thousands of lives to political considerations. And now he’s turned the CIA largely into a killing machine. Who needs “intelligence” when you’ve got killer drones?
So that’s the General’s splendid career, presidential ass-coverer in chief, and king of the killer drones. Definitely a useful man. If only he’d learned to keep it in his pants!
