The Second Coming of Petraeus?

Today is Thursday, 22 November 2012.

On this date in 1928, Ravel’s Bolero premiered in Paris.

Hoagy Carmichael, composer of the music for “Stardust” and “Heart and Soul”, was born this date in 1899 at Bloomington, Indiana, where he also attended college.  (I’ve had the honour of noodling around on a bar and grill piano that he would climb out the window of his dorm after curfew to play.)

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It comes to my attention that a passel of nitwits, who shall remain unnamed out of an uncharacteristically-over-indulgent sense of pity on my part, are claiming that pathetic David Petraeus has “suffered” enough, has been sufficiently “rehabilitated”, and should therefore be nominated to succeed himself as CIA Director.

“O brave new world/That has such people in’t.”

During his career as a commissioned infantry officer, Petraeus spent 1 year out of 37 as a combat commander, or 2.7%.  Except for two short tours as company and brigade commander, his entire career until the Conquest of Iraq was spent as a staff officer.  In other words, until his command of the 101st Airborne during the Conquest, he had never commanded more than approx. 4,000 soldiers.  And even as Major General with the 101^st, he “saw” combat from safe positions insulated from actual fighting.  (However, he can do a lot of push-ups, as well as pecker push-ins.)

The word mediocrite leaps unbidden to mind.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll, taken since the news of Petraeus debuted, gave him a 45% approval rating, down from 55% in March 2011 and 61% in September 2007 (both Gallup polls).  Apparently a wandering “member” exposing a CIA director to blackmail and thus potentially harming national security is of no concern to nearly half of Americans.

I might have been somewhat impressed, had Petraeus resigned his commission during the run-up to the Conquest of Iraq, warning of that which was obvious to hundreds of millions worldwide:  that the war was a criminal war of aggression under the Nuremberg Principles of international law, which could only replace one set of brutal and corrupt political gangsters with a fresh set of brutal and corrupt political gangsters, albeit one allegedly more amenable to the “guidance” of the United States Empire.
 
We are well rid of David Betrayus, even though millions of his ilk still degrade the world.