Guess who slithers out and weighs in?

The way the U.S. handled its withdrawal from Afghanistan has done damage to the United States’ credibility and reputation abroad, said David Petraeus, former head of the CIA and former commander of U.S. Central Command.

[ … ]

“There is damage to our credibility and to our reputation,” he said in an interview with CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett for “The Takeout” podcast.

The Biden administration recognizes that, and will need to work very hard to craft a “whole-of-governments” approach to the world and to China as it so “skillfully” did in the first seven months of the administration, Petraeus said.

“And again, that was very very impressively carried out, but clearly now there will be some damage, in a way and they’ll have to work extra hard to do that,” he said. “And it will be done, as always, with deeds not just with words. Words will be needed but people will really be watching for the deeds.”

Yes.  “Skillfully,” you see.

I laughed out loud when I read this.  It’s the only time I’ve ever seen the word “skillfully” and this administration used in the same sentence.

Not posed or answered: “Did the administration’s crap weasel approach to the exit from Afghanistan do as much damage to the U.S. reputation as did your divulging classified information to Paula Broadwell during your extramarital affair do to your own reputation and the campaign?”

The Atlantic.

As I have watched Confederate monuments being removed by state and local governments, and sometimes by the forceful will of the American people, the fact that 10 U.S. Army installations are named for Confederate officers has weighed on me. That number includes the Army’s largest base, one very special to many in uniform: Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. The highway sign for Bragg proclaims it home of the airborne and special operations forces. I had three assignments there during my career. Soldiers stationed at Bragg are rightly proud to serve in its elite units. Some call it “the Center of the Military Universe,” “the Mother Ship,” or even “Hallowed Ground.” But Braxton Bragg—the general for whom the base was named—served in the Confederate States Army.

The United States is now wrestling with repeated instances of abusive policing caught on camera, the legacies of systemic racism, the challenges of protecting freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights while thwarting criminals who seek to exploit lawful protests, and debates over symbols glorifying those who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The way we resolve these issues will define our national identity for this century and beyond. Yesterday afternoon, an Army spokesperson said that Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy is now “open to a bipartisan discussion” on renaming the bases. That’s the right call. Once the names of these bases are stripped of the obscuring power of tradition and folklore, renaming the installations becomes an easy, even obvious, decision.

I wonder if this has weighed on him as much as his decision to become an adulterer and be unfaithful to his wife, violating her trust, his own vows, and God’s laws?

I wonder if this has weighed on him as much as putting into place a set of rules of engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq that killed and maimed American boys?

I wonder if this has weighed on him as much as his involvement in creating the completely bogus talking points about Benghazi, or leaving those American fighters there to perish without help?

I wonder if this has weighed on him as much as the violation of his oath to the constitution by advocating gun control?

I wonder if this has weighed on him as much as divulging classified information to Paula Broadwell?

Pardon me if I don’t give a rat’s ass what Petraeus wants to do concerning the names of military installations.

USA Today:

A coalition of retired admirals and generals, including former CIA director and retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, are protesting “irresponsible and dangerous” legislation they say would put mentally ill veterans in harm’s way by giving them easy access to firearms.

The Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act would prevent the Department of Veterans Affairs from reporting veterans’ records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System after they’ve been deemed incapable of managing their financial affairs because of a disabling mental disorder. The bill would prohibit the VA from considering such veterans “mentally defective” without a magistrate or judicial authority ruling that the beneficiary is a danger to himself or herself or others.

In a Tuesday letter, members of the Veterans Coalition for Common Sense urged House and Senate leaders to oppose the bill. The House is expected to take it up on Thursday.

“The bill you are debating comes at a time when an average of 20 veterans commit suicide each day, two-thirds of whom do so by using a firearm. We know that non-deployed veterans are at a 61 percent higher risk of suicide compared to the American civilian population, and deployed veterans are at a 41 percent higher risk,” they wrote. “When vulnerable veterans have access to firearms, they can do harm not only to themselves but also to family members and loved ones. The impact of these tragedies is felt in communities across our nation.”

Petraeus, who is an adulterer, and McChrystal who is a murderer of the men at Ganjgal, along with losers Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli and others, want to report veterans to the NICS.  To link this up to causation, they use having someone else do finances as a trigger.  Just like the elderly who want someone to assist with finances, veterans cannot have their mother or wife assist with finances while they attend college classes for fear of loss of gun ownership rights.

Forget repairing the dysfunctional Veterans Administration, giving better health care, or any one of a myriad of things that would seriously help veterans.  No, take their guns away from them.  This is a disgusting and un-American display of total abandonment for the purpose of driving a political agenda.  This gun control agenda has been pressed by both Petraeus and McChrystal in form, fit and function completely different than the context here with veterans.  Veterans are being used by McChrystal and this group.  So much for their love of country or men with whom they served.

It’s sad, and if you’re a veteran, you need to (a) dissociate yourself from such terrible men, and (b) be very careful what you say to the VA or anyone else for that matter.  The very men who the country should be honoring are on the chopping block for loss of rights.

Prior:

David Petraeus And Stanley McChrystal Lead The Charge On Gun Control

Stanley McChrystal On Gun Control

George Webb does a good job of connecting many dots he has drawn for us over the last several weeks.

I just have a few comments.  First of all, these kinds of operations will continue until the culprits are found and dealt with.

Second, you no longer have to wonder why David Petraeus is a gun controller when you consider his role in all of this.  In his mind, none of this could ever obtain with an armed citizenry.

Finally, none of this could ever obtain anyway.  The American people aren’t the Libyans or Syrians, and a good portion of America is still Christian even if it doesn’t feel like it.  Christianity is the foundation and basis for liberty, and is inimical to statism.  Americans have more guns than the world’s armies put together and enough ammunition in gun safes and garages that it’s raised the cost of training for the U.S. military.

COIN and counterterrorism cannot control America.  Stability operations might be something one discusses concerning Egypt after the fall of the MB, but not in America.  The only stability operations conducted in America is being done by the police in confined, geographically small urban areas like Chicago, LA, St. Louis and Houston.  An Army trying to control suburbia and the countryside of America would get cut to pieces.

During my coverage and commentary on Operation Iraqi Freedom And Operation Enduring Freedom, I never liked David Petrarus or Stanley McChrystal.  As for the campaigns (because that invariably comes up), I didn’t agree with OIF1 or in other words the initial invasion of Iraq, I did agree with OIF2 and OIF3 because 80-100 jihadist fighters were coming across the Jordanian and Syrian borders per month to fight U.S. troops who might have crossed American borders instead if we didn’t finish the campaign, I agreed with the initial stages of the campaign in Afghanistan, but when I saw that we had busted the Northern Alliance with were courting the Pashtuns, I opposed the remainder of the campaign, and when I saw the complete debacle we made of both campaigns, I called for total, immediate withdrawal from both theaters.  Now that roadblock is out of the way, let’s proceed.

Aside from the campaigns, Petraeus and McChrystal are part of the class of generals who believe in COIN and waging “armed social work.”  Their rules of engagement were a function of that, and the rules got many good men killed and maimed.  You may drive or walk right by young men who are getting along with no legs or arms, but I don’t.  I stop, sometimes shed a tear, and beg forgiveness for not finding the son of a bitch who started all of this and cutting his balls off and feeding them to the dogs.

Petraeus and McChrystal won’t cease and desist showing us what kind of men they are either.  Just recently we learned that they don’t take their oath to the constitution seriously, or better yet, they lied when they took their oath.  They are leading the charge on gun control for the progressives.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus is teaming up with former astronaut Mark Kelly to form a gun-control advocacy group that “respects the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”

Kelly has made frequent appearances on the 2016 campaign trail with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, as well as his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who sustained a serious brain injury after being shot in Tucson in 2011.

Petraeus and Kelly are joined by other military veterans, including retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, in launching the “Veterans Coalition for Common Sense.” The group’s stated purpose is to urge lawmakers to do more to prevent mass gun tragedies.

Shamefully, there’s even a Marine in the mix.

“I believe that our Constitution affords responsible Americans the right to own guns, but we need to keep dangerous people from having easy access to guns. Felons, domestic abusers, even known terrorists can buy a gun here without something as simple as a criminal background check. This has to stop,” retired Marine Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney said in a statement. “Our laws don’t support responsible gun ownership, and far too often guns fall into the hands of dangerous, irresponsible people.”

So let’s rehearse what I said about Stanley McChrystal when he first came out as a gun controller progressive.

But the irony is that McChrystal, who issued the most restrictive rules of engagement ever promulgated on American troops, waxes know-it-all on what it takes to keep our people safe.  He can micromanage the campaign, release a bunch of inept, bureaucratic, PowerPoint jockeys into highly protected mega-bases to command the troops under fire in the field, turn so-called general purpose troops into constabulary patrolmen, and become a laughingstock when his juvenile staff turned party-animal with Rolling Stone.  But he didn’t manage the campaign in such a manner as to keep our children in uniform safe in Afghanistan.  If he didn’t do that, why should I care what he has to say about anything else regarding my safety?

This is what happens when media stars think they know something about policy.  So here is a suggestion for Mr. McChrystal.  You go read the lamentations at this article from the families and widows of SFC Kenneth Westbrook, Gunnery Sgt Aaron M Kenefick, Corpsman James Ray “Doc” Layton, and others in the Ganjgal engagement.  You know the one I’m talking about, even if others have forgotten.  You and I will never forget.  The one where they left our men to perish without fire support because of your rules of engagement.  You sleep with this reality, if you can, you ponder on those men and their lives morning and night, and you lament with the widows and families.  And then you tell me why I should give a shit what you have to say about anything, much less what it takes to keep my children or loved ones safe?

I don’t retreat one iota from what I said there.  McChrystal, with his ROE, is a murderer.  I don’t give a shit what he says about anything.  As for Petraeus, he is an adulterer and that during deployment when men under his charge were suffering and dying.

I’m glad those are the best two men this ungodly bunch could come up with.  Those two men should be embarrassments to the gun controller crowd.  It gives me amusement and pleasure to have them as enemies.  Sometimes good things do happen.

There are all sorts of questions surrounding how the FBI found out about this affair, why they waited so long to inform the chain of command, and why it was made public when it was.  Those questions will eventually be answered, just like all of the questions surrounding Benghazi.

But focusing on the situation at hand, I am not opposed to making moral judgments.  We – you, I, all of us – make moral decisions and value judgments all day long, every day, on all sorts of things.  But the point of this isn’t to make judgments as to the moral challenges that General Petraeus faces.  Petraeus will have to face God and his own wife, and apparently according to reports, his own wife isn’t very happy.  She shouldn’t be.  She made a promise long ago, and so did her husband.  I do not give him a pass regardless of how difficult his career and life.

I have never been a fan of the General-worship that seems to engage America and American military history.  I didn’t and do not now agree with the doctrines of population-centric counterinsurgency, and I believe that FM 3-24 is filled mostly with fantasies and pipe dreams from neverland fabricated by people using as their basis primarily nineteenth and twentieth century secular psychology.

According to one high level staff officer who interacted with me during the surge, when Petraeus deployed to Iraq he brought a plan, and that plan survived right up until the logistics officers got hold of it, which was immediately, and then it died.  That being said, this same officer told me that to the credit of Petraeus, he adjusted very quickly to something that would work.  I have this for which to thank Generals Odierno and Petraeus.  They left the Marines alone in the Anbar Province in 2007.  They stayed out of their way, didn’t press them to change the way they were doing business, and allowed them to free reign to do what the Marines do best.  That is a lot more than can be said for Generals McChrystal and Rodriguez in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the General’s son served in uniform.  2nd Lt. Stephen Petraeus served in Afghanistan as a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.  General Odierno’s son, Anthony Odierno, lost his left arm in Iraq.  The General wasn’t willing to hold back on committing his own son to the war effort.  Michael Yon is also heaps praises on General Petraeus.  Mr. Petraeus is fortunate to have advocates like Yon.  But it pays to remember why it’s simply unacceptable to have these kind of affairs going on in the chain of command.

Hidden and hurtful things like affairs are an opportunity for extortion and blackmail.  The nation cannot tolerate men in positions of power knowing secrets, intelligence, and sensitive information who also have undisclosed secrets that could be used against them.  For the same reason, heads of corporations have moral turpitude clauses in their contracts.  Information on company holdings, good and bad financial reports, and mergers and acquisitions, can affect stock prices, retirement plans and ultimately jobs.  Separate from moral judgments, certain things are required of certain people. In the words of reader and commenter Jean, if you don’t want to commit to the job, get out of the way and let someone else pick the targets.  Jean says Petraeus should have been reading intelligence reports from Kunar.  Yes, and Helmand too.

As for Paula [Edit: spelling corrected] Broadwell, she is apparently delusional on a number of levels.  She considers Petraeus to be her man, as if they’re married.  But Yon brings to us another tale of silliness as he describes what he knows about Broadwell.  “She believes that women should be Rangers, and infantry officers, and are capable of standing beside men in combat. Ironically, her role in this spectacle serves as a counter to her own argument.”

Broadwell only believes those things because she has never attempted to be an infantry Marine officer or join Special Operations herself.  Looking at her physique, she wouldn’t last a day in either the infantry Marines or Special Operations.  But recall what I said about such people.

If you have some sort of androgynous, genderless vision for the armed forces – if you believe that Navy Corpsmen should be able to treat the field diseases of both men and women and understand what mud and parasites in the various different cracks and crevasses and holes of men and women do, if you believe that men and women are on equal footing pertaining to physical abilities, if you believe that machines like the ridiculous Army future combat systems robotics and the silly machines like the big dog can ever replace mules and the backs of infantry Marines, if you believe that men and women will be able to interact socially as a cohesive fighting unit without the behavior that attends the opposite sexes – I think you’re weird and creepy.  Not that we can’t be friends, but just that you’re weird and creepy, at least to me.  Machines cannot replace strong men, and even the Russians found out in Afghanistan that women had a higher number of lower extremity injuries than men, causing severe under-manning of forces.

I take no delight in the General’s demise.  But I do take particular delight when a person creates the definitive defeater argument for their own views.  That’s what Broadwell has done, and Michael is right to point it out.  She has demonstrated to us yet again that men and women in the field of battle behave like men and women do.  If it can happen to Generals, it can happen to infantry Marines and special operators.  Even with the unfortunate affair that has taken down a General, Paula Broadwell has done us a service in spite of herself.