Remember the general, not the cheater

Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus resigned from his position about two weeks ago following admission of an extramarital affair with his biographer and reserve Army officer Paula Broadwell.

Though many disagree, I don’t find the personal lives of public officials anyone else’s business, and I have felt this way about public officials for some time.

For example, I will continue to admire former Rep. Anthony Weiner as a champion of 9/11 first responders’ rights, and of my heart, despite his Twitter dick pictures.

Why?

Because it is simply unrelated.

As long as Weiner continued to vote to represent Americans in a manner that his constituents viewed as most beneficial, he was doing his job, and that is all that should matter.

If I found out my banker was into sexting, I wouldn’t stop using his or her services, that doesn’t influence how well they do their job.

Sure, this behavior arguably says something about his or her character, but it in no way inhibits the duties of their service.

It is baffling to me the amount of attention that is being paid to this scandal.

The amount of newstime, particularly in a conspiracy theorizing of a governmental cover-up of the Benghazi attacks, is astonishing.

The theory is that since Petraeus was scheduled to testify at closed congressional briefings about the matter Thursday, the timing of his resignation necessarily points to his evading divulging information.

In reality, its not like there was no way for him to be called upon for testimony.

Resignation does not result in instant amnesia, and Petraeus can, and likely will, be called to testify on Benghazi if the congressional council is not satisfied with the information presented by his deputy, Mike Morell.

It is curious how this obsession about the relationship between Petraeus’ position and personal knowledge about Benghazi has been so popular, while the implications of his appointment as CIA director in the first place went hardly contested despite a legitimate concern about this very kind of relationship.

Petraeus was a creator and commander of the counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, which was entirely counterproductive.

As CIA director, Petraeus took on the responsibility of evaluating that strategy.

Especially since the magnitude of failure of this approach has been severely not covered by the media, the implications of what is the impossibility of objectivity about this matter are highly alarming.

Even more alarming is the general lack of recognition or regard for this conflict of interest and potential minimizing of the costs of this failed strategy.

This can be namely seen in civilian lives, Afghan social order and a massive rise in anti-American sentiment.

Petreaus’ questionable decisions and actions began well before his extramarital affair, yet it took such a scandal for people to begin to pay attention to such issues.

When is this country going to start caring more about things like civilian deaths by America’s hand and less about sex and pointless conspiracy theories?

­— gcherney@indiana.edu