Petraeus Dumped by Rulers’ Battle Over War Strategies

After helping to slaughter millions of Iraqis and Afghans, the fact that ousted CIA chief and former general David Petraeus cheated on his wife should shock nobody. Like their U.S. bosses, military leaders propagate capitalism’s exploitation of women inside and outside the armed forces. What matters is the scandal’s political aspect, and how it points to the main finance capitalists’ push towards wider wars and the military draft that likely will be needed to carry them out.

Barack Obama’s policies faithfully serve finance capital’s outlook for long-term war. But while Obama won his second term in the White House, the Republican Party — despite deep divisions in their ranks over war policy — maintained its majority in the House of Representatives. This is the context that reveals the significance of the Petraeus scandal.

An Arab-baiting FBI agent named Frederick Humphries did Petraeus in. (Humphries helped entrap Muslims into “terrorist” busts, though few stuck.) He learned of Petraeus’s infidelity from a socialite who fraternized with top brass in the Pentagon’s Tampa-based Central Command, which runs all U.S. military operations in the oil-rich Mideast. Humphries informed Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who owes his allegiance to the Tea Party faction of the U.S. ruling class.

Petraeus Follows the Costly ‘Overwhelming Force’ Doctrine

Aside from his mass murder of working-class Iraqis and Afghans, Petraeus earned his ruling-class media fame by devising an expensive “Petraeus Doctrine” for fighting wars. In the spirit of Colin Powell, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (see page 2), it calls for 25 “counterinsurgent” U.S. soldiers for every 1,000 residents of an invaded country (Boston Globe, 11/28/07). That would add up to at least 750,000 troops in Iraq and a similar number in Afghanistan. Pro-Israel neo-conservatives, who advocate “war on the cheap,” tolerated Petraeus for a time because the U.S. domestic economic crisis prevented Obama from implementing the general’s costly policy. 

Two years ago, Petraeus became a more pointed threat to the neo-conservative line. As The Atlantic magazine noted, “Petraeus sees what so much of Washington refuses to see: that Israel’s year-long contempt for Obama, initiated by the [2010] Gaza campaign, entrenched by Netanyahu’s victory and compounded by continued settlements…is a problem. More than a problem, Israel’s total impunity for its intransigence is becoming a liability for the advance of U.S. interests around the world” (3/14/10). 

When Petraeus bungled the Benghazi incident, allowing Islamists to kill the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three CIA goons, the U.S.-Israel bloc pounced, though with a calculated delay that suggests a geopolitical deal at the highest level. Cantor, who had taken $5 million in campaign funds from Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire pal of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, took Humphries’ damning information to FBI head Robert Mueller. But it was withheld from other Republican leaders, who could have used it to torpedo Obama’s re-election.

One possibility is that the information was held back in return for Obama’s tacit go-ahead for Netanyahu’s Gaza slaughter.

Heading Toward A Military Draft

Petraeus had long enjoyed the backing of journalists like Thomas Ricks, a pro-Obama liberal at the Washington Post’s Foreign Policy (FP) magazine and a fellow of the Center for a New American Security, a finance capital think tank. On a book tour praising Petraeus, Ricks lamented the general’s demise but lauded public support for Obama’s push for increased war taxes and the mass conscription that would logically follow: “Nor is a draft out of the question to these people. To my surprise, the same crowd…that applauded the tax hike also warmly welcomed my suggestion that the country would benefit from having some sort of draft” (FP, 11/19/12).