There has been fulsome praise for General David Petraeus since he resigned yesterday as head of the CIA after the FBI discovered he was having an extramarital affair.
President Barack Obama lauded Petraeus’s decades of “extraordinary service,” which includes his time as general in charge of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as head of the CIA, where Petraeus would have been in charge of Obama’s “secret” drone program which kills children and other civilians in several countries with no oversight or control from anyone.
Some have lamented, via social media, that wars, occupations, assassinations are not reasons to lose one’s job in the United States government. Indeed, such service gets you praised and promoted, while an extramarital affair will kill your career.
But what also struck me was the total absence in the extensive media coverage of another way Petraeus made a little history: by publicly criticizing Israel and enraging the Israel lobby.