I was never a David Petreaus hater. I saw him as a highly effective general who performed extremely well in a difficult and ignoble cause in Iraq. I didn’t chafe at the way he seemed to work the refs in Congress and the media, seeing it as mainly more evidence of his high degree of competence.
Even when my country embarks on ill-considered and poorly planned foreign adventures, I do expect and desire that our military officers will perform well. Many of them did not. Petraeus stood out from the beginning to the end as an exception.
Nonetheless, I saw his appointment as CIA director as a savvy and somewhat ruthless ploy by the president to eliminate a potent threat to his reelection. And I wasn’t a bit surprised to see the word that Petraeus would be sacked come across the wire within an hour of the Election Day exit polls being released that confirmed that President Obama would get a second term. His usefulness to the administration ended the moment his reelection was assured.
That the administration is now recommending that he be prosecuted and imprisoned is surprising not because the allegations don’t warrant a stiff penalty but because the general rule in Washington is that most high-ranking officials play by their own set of rules and are usually beyond accountability.
In the rare cases where someone does get held accountable, they tend to be fall guys who take a bullet for a superior (see: Scooter Libby). But there were no superiors to Petraeus at the CIA.
In a more cosmic sense, I am not sure Petraeus is even the most deserving former DCI to face justice. I suspect that Porter Goss and George Tenet have more serious things to answer for, mainly concerning gross human rights violations and obstruction of justice.
Still, one of the most dispiriting recent trends in Washington has been the way that high officials have skated despite the worst kind of malfeasance and incompetence. Holding anyone to the same standards we hold regular folks to would have to be considered a turn in the right direction.
If you want to restore some faith in government, you have to demonstrate that we’re capable, at least occasionally, of acting like there is one set of rules that applies to everyone equally.
Tossing Petraeus in prison would definitely send that message.
Having said that, I think his crime is significant but ultimately not that serious. His punishment should be commensurate with his offense.